Trust Issues Revisited

Monday, 08 February 2010 17:13 Written by Bob Flack

Last week's post sparked several comments and some exchange between responders. I welcome the interaction so long as the iron is sharpening iron and not just creating sparks. I do need to update my series on the Manhattan Declaration. I've had some excellent exchanges with several people. Each perspective has been helpful for my thinking. I am not going to rush to sign the declaration but will continue to listen and ponder as long as the discussion continues in a constructive way.

Response on Trust

In this post I return to the issue of trust that I raised last week and will attempt to respond to some of the comments but I hope to also extend the discussion. When I wrote, “God is completely trustworthy and insists that we as his creatures be like Him” I intended that as a call to trustworthiness on our part. God’s law is in large degree a picture of what He is like and so demands of his creatures. (I’ll have to think a lot more about God trusting us before I comment on that point.)

God does not lie (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2) and so is completely trustworthy to do what he says he will do. His commands to us reflect the same commitment to trustworthiness. In Isaiah’s day God’s people did not follow Him (his example/commands) and the proof included their lying words (Isaiah 59:12-13). Psalm 15 declares the standards for living in God’s house. The list includes not speaking the truth (Psalm 15:2) but also swearing to one’s own hurt (Psalm 15:4) which means keeping one’s word even at great cost or sacrifice.

The Relationship between Integrity and Honesty

This seems an appropriate point to write what I have said before from the pulpit and which bears on this whole subject. Honesty refers to my making my words conform to reality. It has a past focus. I tell the truth about what has happened. Integrity refers to my making reality conform to my words. It has a future focus. I must extend and expend myself to ensure that what I say will happen actually comes into reality. Together honesty and integrity comprise trustworthiness.

Trust Erosion

Last Friday I heard a radio report about home foreclosures which we know are on the rise. When asked about the moral stigma attached to defaulting on a home loan, a lawyer recalled her days in law school when she was taught that contracts are purely economic in nature. She concluded that reneging on a contract was a purely economic and not a moral decision. The reported shortly ended his report with the observation that just as with divorce which used to carry with it a substantial moral stigma (but no longer), so now defaulting on a mortgage may increasingly becoming more and more accepted, bringing unknown and potentially dangerous economic consequences.

How revealing, for a variety of reasons. First, we live in a world where what is legal is by definition what is moral. We are bound by no law higher than the one we decide on for ourselves. Second, economics are moral. They cannot be two separate categories. Third, whenever we give our word there is a moral dimension involved. A commitment binds us for the future. I know this is a very broad brush and there are fine points of contract law that will bear on individual cases. But apparently there was a day when we did not have the plethora of contracts because a person’s word, sealed with a handshake, was binding. Now it seems that even when we make a contract we’re not interested in abiding by its stipulations.

I’ll add a fourth observation. The reporter intimated that the economic consequences of rampant default could be really bad unlike the benign effects of our de-stigmatizing divorce. Our worship of wealth has grown so intense that it blinds us to the significant costs that we pay everyday for the divorce culture that we have created over the past few decades.

Trusting Sinners

My comments highlight the trust problem that faces our society and which infects the church, Christian families, and other institutions. When the tag line for an identity protection service is “It’s OK to trust again” and it clicks with consumers, we have a problem.

I mentioned that I would address the issue of trusting other sinners. I’ll enter into that discussion and pick it up again in a later post. The reality is that God knows that no one is perfectly trustworthy and yet He commands us to submit to imperfect authority. We trust people everyday that have at some point broken trust with someone perhaps even with us.

I conclude with two comments. First, this reality forces us to strengthen our ultimate trust in God himself. We trust others knowing that we might get hurt. So we do so knowing that God can take care of us even when we get burned by another human being. He expects us to be discerning. We are not to practice naiveté in the name of faith. But we never place trust in anyone the same way we trust God. We look to him to protect us.

Second, we too are untrustworthy. I need authorities in my life because I break my word. I submit to others because I don’t trust my judgment to be an infallible standard. This is one reason why I believe in plurality of elder leadership in the local church. Every elder is a sinner, so we don’t trust anyone elder’s judgment when making decisions and leading the church. Stay tuned.