Trust

Okay, here’s the reality.  We are not independent actors in living our lives.  We find we must trust the abilities, focus, alertness and claims of myriad other people in almost all that we do.  (But then, too, we must have some doubt until evidence suggests otherwise.)

Take, for example, the common experience of driving our car down any road at almost any time of day.  To go on the road ourselves we must trust the abilities, focus, and alertness of every other driver who comes our way or whom we encounter.  Likewise we trust our surgeon, our dentist, our auto mechanic or service technician, our airline pilot, our religious leaders.  We trust our friend, our spouse, our parents, our teachers. And we should be able to. 

Since we can’t personally evaluate every driver who comes our way; since we can’t test the competency of every ‘doctor’ who puts out a shingle; since we can’t look into the heart of every person who steps up to a pulpit or sits down in the halls of congress we must initially at least trust in the license they carry or the authority with which they were vested. 

 

But life teaches us that some individuals or categories of individuals might be more trustworthy than others.  Some we might or must trust because of their competencies and our need, but wisely repose less trust in their character.  Some categories may even be inherently or historically more trustworthy than others.  Politicians, car salesmen, financial speculators and the like have sometimes categorically been discredited because of the untrustworthiness of some (or many) in their profession. 

One social/spiritual institution that has taken a major hit regarding trustworthiness  in recent years—which formerly had been a bastion of trust—is what is generically called the ‘church.’  Yet we must not forget there are many churches and some are much farther from the truth than others.  Unfortunately, many “teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” 

 

‘In God We Trust,’ we all know, is embossed on our currency and was a foundational pillar upon which our nation was founded.  But there is much to be skeptical about pertaining to the egregious behavior of some practitioners of some of the churches (who are men, not God) and even some of the churches themselves that claim a trust in God.

Sexual predators and pedophiles can rightfully be judged as among society’s most untrustworthy and corrupt people; Jesus himself called them ‘whited sepulchers,’ yet many of them have found a base for their evil operations in at least one well-known denomination.  So too are religious extremists of another religion who resort to terrorist acts in the name of God as a cloak for their perfidy. 

It is sad that trust in God or ‘religion’ in general as a social institution of stability and hope has become so damaged by the actions of some of its adherents that many have entirely drifted away from faith in God because they cannot have faith in man.  But therein lies the problem—man.  We are not expected to have religious faith in man, but rather in God and in his son Jesus Christ.  It is also strange that one denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, among those of Christian faith has had so many perverts in positions of trust.  And it is strange that among another of the world’s so-called ‘great religions’ that one, Islam, has had so many terrorists in their ranks who do un-Godly things in the name of religion.

   

My plea in this piece, however, is that rather than assume that all religious people or the denominations they belong to are evil or corrupt (for they are not—but some are much farther from the truth, or embrace far fewer truths than others) consider the criteria that Jesus gave us to judge their veracity: “That which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually . . . .  It is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil. . . for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ.” And, of course, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” 

 

In the end there is ‘trust’ and there is ‘TRUST.’  Some people I would trust to hold the ladder I am climbing but I would not trust to catch me once I got to the top if they said to jump.  If it were my Savior at the bottom and He said to jump it would be no problem.