7 Times Stabbed, 8 Times Loyal
“I am betrayed!” Those words mark unparalleled pain – because we are hurt not only by the injury but even more by the surprise of who hurt us. The injury came from someone we trusted, someone whom we never expected. So came about the expression “a knife in our back” because someone we knew and thought loved us, someone we let come beside us and even to cover our backs – instead plunged a dagger into our spine.
I have been betrayed several times in my life. I have had students that broke in and stole from us. I had a teacher after almost two decades turn savagely on my wife and I and tried to hurt us and our school for completely made up reasons. I had a dear friend – a best man at my wedding – stop talking to me completely because he was told to do so by the same teacher. People I thought loyal to me, who already knew my faults, weaknesses, strengths, quirks and personality for some selfish goal or reason completely turned against me.
Grey is the level of “loyalty.” Loyalty is the opposite of betrayal. Here is the person who protects us and our family and our system. Someone who has been around long enough to know who we are and what we are really
about. They have been served and loved and taught, and by this ‘time’ they can now elect to serve faithfully,
loyally. They can be trusted with more; but more is expected. This is not a “blind” loyalty. People need to be
loyal to the truth, to fairness, to God first. But “not crime” faults can be overlooked and understood with loyalty.
People remain faithful to others even with their school’s, family’s, teacher’s and/or friend’s faults.
Will I stop trusting people because of these bad experiences, these daggers in my back? If I do it will be a
loss to ME. For I will lose the trust of all those who never betrayed me, all those who remained loyal, those now
and in the future. And I will be disloyal to myself if I don’t keep trusting again. For love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (I Corinthians 13:7). Love is always therefore loyal.
