Article May 30, 1988 Issue

Have you been disillusioned?

How can we heal the hurt when we've been betrayed by someone we trust?

Lucinda Baker Greiner

When we have been betrayed, we are sometimes too apt to feel that we will never trust again, and under our hurt may be a secret, surging anger. We may reason that behind the attractive facade of human relationships and experience there is always lurking betrayal, hypocrisy, deception, and selfishness, and that therefore we should look out for "number one"—first, last, and always. We may even decide that the sooner we become "realistic," the better! Then we can suffer no more disappointments. If we expect little of others, we are protected from them. We won't risk being friends with them or loving them again.

There seems to be a certain comfort in such reasoning, of course, but it can soon become wearisome and leave one feeling sad and lonely. And those aren't feelings anyone enjoys!

One day, in the course of my daily study of Christian Science, an idea occurred to me with such force and definition that I had to stop and consider it. It was that while disillusionment (the common, bitter type just described) is not desirable, another kind of disillusionment is very, very desirable—something we should welcome, in fact! I came to think of it, as my study progressed and unfolded, as the disillusionment with materiality that comes as we begin to perceive the nature of divine reality through spiritual sense.

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