One day he [the serpent] asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

Genesis 3:1b, NLT

Partial truth lies are the most dangerous.

We see the example of this here in the story of how humans sinned and fell from grace. The serpent takes the truth that God prohibited eating from one tree and exaggerated it to all trees.

This dynamic is often at play with situations with infidelity.

I see it at play when pastors believe and teach “The Shared Responsibility Lie” that falsely says we share responsibility for another’s sins. It trades off the truths that relationships require both parties, and both parties are sinners who bring sins into the relationship.

The full truth is we do not give up our full personal responsibility for our sins just because we committed those sins while tied in matrimony (see 2 Corinthians 5:10).

A pastor looking for sins in the marriage will likely find them as both are sinners. The problem is a pastor who takes such sins as equally damaging to the marriage. Saying something disrespectful and mean about one’s spouse–while sinful–does not have the same damaging impact as conducting a double life for years with multiple adultery partners. Yet some pastors will focus on the hurtful statement to the exclusion of dealing with the years of sins committed by the cheater.

Another way this dynamic plays is with cheaters who beat up their partners in counseling sessions with pastors and Christian therapists.

The way this work is they take a real shortcoming or a moment of failure and exaggerate it. This is a tactic to weaponize the pastor or counselor against the faithful spouse.

For example, the truth is the faithful spouse called the cheater a name once in a heated exchange (and say, apologized, immediately afterwards). The cheater takes this into a session and exaggerates it into meaning the other partner is an emotional abuser, which is a lie.

These sort of things can be the most damaging part of ending a marriage to a cheater because such lies are hard to battle when a partial truth is embedded in them.

Beware of the partial truth lies. They are the most dangerous and damaging. The only way to combat them is with the full truth and meditating on that. *A version of this post ran previously.