“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?”
-I John 4:20, NLT
Religious cheaters are the worst.
It is bad enough dealing with a cheater. A religious cheater committed to protecting his or her image adds another level of mind-screwing to the picture.
This sort of cheater is committed to painting the faithful spouse as “the sinner.”
They lack the capacity (or the simple willingness) to be honest. When caught, these are the type who try their best to protect their image even with their pants down around their ankles. Actually giving information helpful to the faithful spouse for healing takes back seat priority to protecting their religious image of self. That is the idol that they feel compelled to worship. And they are truly slaves to this idol of self image.
Religious cheaters try to drape their wickedness in the cloth of altruism as if they were doing a noble thing by cheating on and lying to their spouse.
This causes all sorts of damage to the religious community. It sows confusion, and pastors can add to that confusion by sanctioning such lies. Instead of treating adultery and lying as serious sins, pastors and other Christian leaders sometimes treat them as mere symptoms of marriage circumstances. This plays into this wicked matrix. These leaders who buy this lie, become pawns in the cheater’s commitment to idolatry.
I run this blog in great part to help do damage control in addressing such awful abuse because it is sadly common.
Religious cheaters are the worst. It would be better for them to be honest with themselves and their partners. That honesty is as simple as acknowledging their affair(s) and that they cheated because they wanted to. It was what was in their hearts (see Mark 7:21).
