I have been giving this a lot of thought as to how I can express how it feels after 28 years in “the Truth” and never being told there was a founder?
#1: The only way I can think of is to likening it unto a young man who in the natural course of time has had, in his young years, a few nice girl friends, but then one comes along who is special. She is special because she has NEVER had a boyfriend or even a date before. He KNOWS this because SHE has told him so. Since he had no one to come forward, even in the FAMILY, to tell him differently, he was ecstatic that he had found the one PURE girl who is so BEAUTIFUL.
He takes her as his bride and they live a good life, except for quite a few times when he notices a few flaws, but that doesn’t matter because she is the only pure and beautiful one.
Then one fine day someone comes along who tells him that his wife of 28 years was all based on a LIE. That she had someone before she had met him, and even had children before and had all the documentation to prove it. This would have been a quite a shock and one that would have likely have destroyed the marriage. If she had told him before the marriage, he might have married her anyway, and after a while it wouldn’t have mattered anymore and might have worked out.
I think this is what some of are trying to get across to some who have never experienced these things. If you knew from the beginning about a founder, you couldn’t possibly know how it feels to have been betrayed by those whom you have loved and respected all these years.
#2: Consider, for us, that it is somewhat like a woman who has pledged herself to a man. Later she later discovers he had lied to her about who he really was, and his past relationships. She discovers this after she went about telling wonderful ( untrue) things about him to others.
For many of us, it is exactly the same type of situation. We abhor the deceit, the lies, for that IS what they were, which we were taught and which subsequently we retold.
The word is integrity. When such things are said not to really matter, the integrity of that which we once knew as “the truth” falls apart.