Harvard professor Francesca Gino, with over 130 published academic articles on fraud, has been found to have engaged in fraudulent research and has been released from her position. Who can you trust? Her 135 collaborators over the years took a risk…and lost. (Chronicle of Higher Ed). From the hometown perspective, Roger Grossman wrote in his Warsaw sports column that a quality coach really wants in players is… trust.
Trust is vital to realizing our humanity, yet when we put our trust in someone, we are taking a risk…we are entering a zone of ambiguity. We want to rely on certain partners like we rely on ourselves, but what if…?
Today I rely on Grace Professor, Dr Tom Stallter, who has written on the issue of trust in his book, The Gap Between God and Christianity (2022). His point is that trusting is not just a risk; it requires that we change to include a new person or a new idea. The bigger the area of new trust, the more our old ways are obsolete.
Examples in society include the demise of public transportation after the 2020 pandemic and summer demonstrations. While London has recovered 87% of its 2019 ridership, San Francisco has recovered only 37%. Chicago and New York suffer similarly. The Economist (June 17, 2023 p18) notes that “rising crime and disorder have kept some passengers off the subway in New York.” “Crime also makes holding on to employees trickier,” said an Illinois legislator, “(Bus) drivers I know have walked away because they don’t feel safe.” They do not trust.
It takes trust to get on a bus for both passengers and drivers. Second, a lack of trust has kept people who need a bus from using it. Finally, this has been treated as a financial problem (more money!), but the essential issue is not the cost but the trust it takes to use buses. Money is an old and obsolete solution to a new problem.
Tom Stallter wrote, “trust opens the door to ambiguity.” (152-3). For example, Abraham did not know what he was getting into when he left his home in the Chaldees and journeyed with this new God to the unknown land. Ambiguity? Imagine Sarah asking, “Where are we going?” “Not sure.” “Who is this God?” “I just encountered him.” Over two thousand years later, Nicodemus could not, at first, handle the ambiguity of what Jesus meant by being born again. Slowly, this risky idea unfolded before him; Abraham grew slowly, too.
It may be safer to trust no one than to take the risk of trust, but then life would be lived in isolation, and we would be immune to the help of others and from God. But a new and significant commitment of trust requires changes. I remember the cold winter day when I, with a ring in my pocket, wondered if I had what it takes to enter the ambiguity of engagement and marriage… hardly like riding CTA in Chicago.
Here’s Stallter (in italics): To the extent we move beyond a mere cognitive response and are willing to trust God, we will grow. We start by recognizing God as a creator who knows me. This start will cripple our old cultural options, making them eventually obsolete as our ideas of what is true or possible have changed. It’s an open door for new patterns of trust and behavior. Our old system for survival is strong, even blinding. (Stallter, 152-156)
Rather than trust God, we try in vain to Christianize our old ways. “Being born again includes an entirely new perspective. Nicodemus gave evidence of that when he joined Joseph to care for the body of Jesus (Jn 19). His new trust-action was based on a new view of what is real and possible because of his new faith-trust in Jesus.
“Do we trust God’s goodness enough to make continual signs of it unnecessary?” (p.200). “Do we trust him enough to set aside the naive expectations we have laid out for him? Do we believe enough in his greatness to accept that there is a great deal we do not know? Do we trust him enough to allow mystery in his being and his plan for the universe even if we may not know it? Do we trust God enough to let him use weakness and suffering in our lives for his purposes? He is more faithful than the laws of the universe he has made. Let us not talk of him as if he were not” (p.201).
Trust may open the door to ambiguity, but it also opens the door to robust relationships that ensure our thriving, satisfaction and even confidence in society, family, partners, friends, and in God.
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