Betrayal

At what point do fiction and reality meet? When does the one become indistinguishable from the other? That is the fascination which lies in spy stories real and invented.  Fiction enthrals, fascinates, gives us a break from the everyday and, more dangerously, perhaps, a chance to make sure that fictionalised reality remains safely within the confines of the imagination. Reality TV, whether it is part drama or entirely documentary, allows us to look at reality objectively. But being an onlooker in regard to the suffering of others can also disempower the onlooker by inducing a form of sterile guilt, for which see my earlier post on the dangers of political apathy. 

When it comes to distinguishing the real from the unreal, we need to be able to recognise lies and betrayal for what they are. Take, for example, the excellent BBC documentary drama about Kim Philby, the notorious double agent (Kim Philby – His Most Intimate Betrayal BBC2). Real footage set into the drama allows the viewer to look at the actor alongside the real man, and so observe, in a fairly objective way, what a liar looks like. Lies have a powerful attraction, perhaps because they are at the root of much that goes wrong in the contexts in which power is exercised and maintained. Raw power is potent and addictive, and those who depend on it will inevitably need to lie and betray others. Unfettered power is also ephemeral. There is something not quite real about it, so those who want to keep it at any price must reinforce it with something equally unreal which they must first find in themselves. At what point, then, does the real person merge with the unreal?

Lies create their own fantasy realm which is how illicit power is maintained over nations. When it comes to exercising and maintaining power in the more intimate context of family relationships, the one who is being lied to must be persuaded that he or she is in fact the liar. This is the worst form of betrayal because it makes the victim’s self understanding neither truthful or real. The real merges with the unreal and he or she experiences inner fragmentation, like a tower block which, when dynamited at the press of a button, collapses in on itself and is, in effect, obliterated. Betrayal and lies obliterate their victims from within. Christ experiences something similar when he is betrayed by one of his friends, an inner fragmentation which culminates in his forsakenness, his seeming obliteration, on the cross.

The nature of redemption is that it restores things to what they should be. Redemptive love restores those who have been forsaken in being lied to and thereby betrayed. It also restores the liars and betrayers. The cross, and what it seems to have destroyed in the betrayed and disfigured Christ, is in fact the making of a new creation. Redemptive love takes betrayal into itself and ‘re-makes’ whatever it is that has distorted a person and turned them into a liar or a betrayer. It redeems, or ‘buys back’, the goodness which they once had and, in so doing, redeems the person. 

Since time and all things are interconnected, all things, and time itself, are destined for this ultimate redemption. All betrayers, and all the victims of betrayal, are held within the embrace of the cross. They are ‘steadied’ and await justice in this moment of equilibrium. The justice will restore the victims of lies to their rightful place in God’s good purpose which is his mercy, a mercy which draws all things into himself, so making peace by the blood of his cross.