Having been treated with malicious intent, under the auspices of what was ostensibly supposed to have been the most perfect distillation of divine love, constitutes a special kind of irony. Spiritual abuse is all too common, though.
Religion is supposed to empower us to be conduits of real love, each of us designed to be a unique kind of communicator of heaven here on this Earth. The human condition itself appears to occur most readily in the form of a liquid, though, and the natural parts of our mind — the parts not yet regenerated by grace; the selfish parts — appear autonomously bound and determined to simply conform to the shape of their container (whether that be addiction or religion, or what have you…six of one, half a dozen of the other.)
These are the things we revert to without love. The authenticity of the original conversion notwithstanding, harsh, grueling, performance-based systems will emerge once again, and come back to the fore, if love is not maintained first before all things. We become what we feast upon. Genuine, current relationship with God is characterized by the fruit of the spirit. Hypocrisy is revealed by the works of the flesh. Pretensions to spiritual practice mean nothing. The present moment is everything.
May I find myself capable of aligning fully with love, so that I may walk out the fruit of this revelation in my own life. That is all one can really ever hope to do for sure.
