I am a latecomer to the TV phenomenon Traitors, a game show in which the contestants must live together in a Scottish castle and work out which of their number is a ‘Faithful’ and which a ‘Traitor’. Before being unmasked, the Traitors must do their best to ‘murder’ all the Faithfuls or have them banished from the castle. If they succeed, there is money to be won. Presiding over all this – a beady eye peering from beneath her fringe - is Claudia Winkleman, a torturer in striking knitwear.
Watching Traitors is a guilty pleasure. We eavesdrop on shifting alliances, broken friendships and devious acts of treachery. The game demonstrates how good we are at deceiving others and how poor we are at spotting others’ deceptions.
Yes, it’s only a game - as the contestants constantly remind one another with less and less conviction - but it is often through play and games that we might safely explore the darker side of human nature. As the series progresses, the stresses of living in an atmosphere of suspicion and doubt begin to weigh heavily on the contestants’ spirits. Who can you trust? Even in this artificial community created for TV, the question means something as it does ‘in real life’. In whom can you safely confide? Who can you rely on for support? Who is really a friend and who might be simply using your friendship to further their own ends?
It should come as no great surprise to Christians that people are adept at betrayal. At the most solemn part of our liturgy, we remember that “on the night he was betrayed, he [Jesus] took bread...” Even in this fledgling Christian community, there was treachery and treachery denied. “'One of you will betray me' … 'Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?'”
We too will have been betrayed and sometimes have been the betrayer. Happily, we are rarely tempted to murder; our acts of betrayal are more modest - the illicit glance cast, the gossip shared, the friend undefended, the pressing need ignored, the white lie told. We don’t like to admit it, but we are all traitors sometimes: “Surely, you don’t mean me, Lord?”
We know God calls us to be faithful. This means faithful to the truth, faithful to one another and faithful to God. There is no other basis on which we can live, or upon which communities can thrive. Treachery – great and small – is acid on human relationships and leaves us wretched.
At our baptism we are called to “fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil, and remain faithful to Christ to the end of our lives. ”We humbly admit our complicity in betrayals of all kinds but resolve to be Faithful to Christ (which includes being faithful to others) through repentance, amendment of life and by the grace of the Holy Spirit. God does not want to banish us or kill us off. Rather, God, ever Faithful, calls us to newness of life in Christ.