Recently, a truck passed me on US 30, and I suddenly felt that he was about to hit me. Having a truck within 20 inches of my car should have made me react suddenly, except that I trusted that he would be careful not to hit me. Trust. There is a real sense in which trust is what makes much of life work.
How can anyone make a purchase, leave a parked car, eat in a restaurant, make a plane trip, or even cough if we cannot trust people to be basically civil and decent? Yet we live in a time of fading trust.
Let me approach the topic of trust by first considering individuals and society. For individuals, character (or integrity) is the central individual value. That’s the personal side. The social side is marked by our deep longing to live in right relationships within families and, then, in neighborhoods, with friends, co-workers, and others. On the relational side, love is important, but for keeping all these relationships in order, we need justice. That was brief, but my point is that character is essential for individuals, as is justice for society. I must be able to trust other drivers’ character and trust that justice will correct any lapses.
Any healthy society will allow individuals to thrive in public without much thought, provided there is trust. We imagine that this will be easy, happy, and natural, but we are also bitterly aware that it is not. Between individual character and relational justice lies a gap. A third value is needed to bring harmony. I’ll call that value a bridge because it connects isolated individuals with a distant and (for too many groups) hostile society. The bridge is trust. When it works, we trust our parents and family. We trust our neighbors and co-workers. We trust our teachers and schools. We trust our governments–near and far.
There are three ways for things to go wrong. First is bad character. The second is injustice. The third is the betrayal of trust. We live in a world that is becoming so focused on society and justice that the character of individuals and the bridge of trust are neglected and even opposed as irrelevant.
The loss of trust has been the invisible sacrifice of the past 60 years. We cannot trust our politicians. We no longer trust our schools or churches….or even our families. We occasionally find enemies where we had formerly had friends.
Trust begins with our parents, yet many cannot trust fathers to stay or provide. Others can barely trust mothers to carry pregnancies to birth. How can we live with good character as individuals or with justice in society when the bridge of trust has been compromised at almost, it seems, every possible point?
Fear of losing our sustained post-WW2 prosperity has made us insular, trusting our own gut, our own money, our own opinions. We have our own few friends, but we meet in public lest we overcommit. We refuse marriage or job commitments. We fear being further betrayed.
Nations cannot trust each other; international relationships are often characterized by injustice. How can we even begin to explain the invasion of Ukraine? Nations are isolated as if hiding behind the barriers of language and culture. It’s easy to dismiss the value of people from other cultures. If we do not value ‘them,’ neither will we even consider trust; we ignore or use them. That has been the tragic history of the warring world since time began.
Building the Bridge of Trust. This lack of trust is well explained in scripture, where violating that trust is called by the odd word ‘trespass.’ God wants us to trust him and give priority to no other gods. He wants us to trust our parents and even honor them. Neighbors want to be able to trust that their silverware, lawnmowers, or spouses will not be stolen. People in society want to be able to trust that the truth will be reliably told in court and in daily life.
We would prefer to trust each other rather than live in fear that someone will take something that we cherish. Some may laugh at the 10 Commandments (that I just summarized), but keeping them is much more than a worthy moral foundation; it builds the bridge of trust between individuals and provides a basis of justice in all relationships. As we prioritize those ten rules, we learn to live in a way that is trustworthy.
I’ve just scratched the surface of the trust topic. More in later Perspectives.