To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
(George MacDonald)
 

 “Trust but verify” was the pithy phrase often used by former US President Ronald Reagan in response to Soviet leaders during the “Cold War.”  Ironically, his words mirrored a well known Russian proverb that was frequently used by the ruthless founder and director of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky. 

One of the mementos I have from my earliest contacts with the Soviet prison system in the late eighties is a portrait of Dzerzhinsky etched on a block of wood by a political prisoner who had been held in the KGB’s infamous Lubyanka prison.  It was given to me by a journalist who knew the prisoner and told me his story ...

“Nobody trusted me,” the prisoner said. “They (the officers and guards) didn’t even trust each other.”  So in a milieu of suspicion and fear he used the milieu of mistrust to his advantage by carving the portrait of the man who was most feared by prisoners and guards alike.  While the guards didn’t trust the prisoner, they did not trust each other and were afraid to test or verify his claim that Dzerzhinsky himself had commissioned the portrait.  By this the prisoners was spared torture and execution.  

 “You can’t trust nobody,” prisoners often tell me. “I’ve gotta look out for myself, because nobody else will.”  In a world of trust betrayed and trust misplaced it is little wonder that the phrase “trust me” is not entirely believable and begs to be tested. 

When the public trust is betrayed by politicians, bankers, and even religious leaders we learn to hold back our trust.  Even in our personal relationships and so-called friendships we become ever more careful about what we share and with whom for fear of trust being broken.  A vow or promise seems to have little enduring value and can only be counted on for the time being - until circumstances or feelings change.  Marriage vows of fidelity, “till death do us part,” succumb to fatal attractions and distractions.  Patriotism, which stands proudly for loyalty to one’s country becomes a commodity, abused as much by those who sell out their allegiance as by the state spying and snooping on communication between its own citizens.  Who can you trust?

“In God we Trust” declares the currency of the United States, but trust in both God and the dollar has fallen to record lows.  It is admittedly difficult to trust God, not only when people lose their jobs and pensions but when terrible decent hard-working people find their lives torn from their foundations by calamities and strife.  Even for people of faith, trust is put at risk when leaders who claim to know and speak for God betray the very moral values and spiritual truths which they’ve espoused as trustworthy.

“Just trust me,” I challenged a frightened young delinquent standing on the edge of a cliff during a rock climbing exercise designed to build confidence and trust.  “I am holding the rope, and I won’t let you fall” I continued.  “It’s not you,” he said in a quivering voice, “I can’t do it – what if the rope breaks, and I fall?” 

“Trust me, this rope won’t break, you’ve already watched the other guys doing it,” I replied, trying to allay his unfounded fears.  Yet he continued to refuse, his lack of confidence in me and the rope and in himself was not up to putting trust to the test.  I knew it would be difficult for him; everything he had experienced in his short life seemed marred by betrayal and disappointment – the product of an unwanted pregnancy, a neglected infant, and an unloved kid in a tragically broken and abusive home.  The streets seemed safer than his home but there he fared no better when would-be benefactors demanded sex in exchange for food and money.  In protective foster care he felt that he wasn’t really part of the family, he was just a project and so he didn’t come to trust them.  As a teenager he turned to drugs and petty thieving until nobody could trust him either.

There is little hope for a kid to stake his life on in a social climate where “you can’t trust no-one.”  What happens to individuals such as him happens to society.  “Prisons are actually a magnifying mirror of what is wrong in society,” observes British criminologist Baroness Vivien Stern.  In a “trust but verify” world where fear of risk and fear of trust pull tug of war, kids in trouble grow up to inhabit the prisons of the world.  But it is not just their problem, it is our problem too.  If individuals, families, communities, and nations cannot trust those closest to them - how on earth will they ever survive and thrive?  How will people ever learn to trust in a God who they cannot see? 

One of the difficult lessons I am still learning is to mean what I say and to do what I say.  Often it is so easy make impressions and suggestions of agreement without any intention to follow through.  We all want friends, close companions who can be totally trusted, who are dependable no matter what.  I’d like to be a friend like that – what you see is what you get; without duplicity or guile or hidden agendas; where my word is my bond; and as honest as the day is long.  It is difficult to live and to be such a person in a culture where trust is tried and found wanting – and where we actually find it difficult to fully trust others ourselves.  But what a difference it would make in our families, our workplaces, our communities and our nations if we were to live like that!

 
Jesus went on to make these comments:
“If you’re honest in small things,
you’ll be honest in big things;
If you’re a crook in small things,
you’ll be a crook in big things.
If you’re not honest in small jobs,
who will put you in charge of the store?
No worker can serve two bosses:
He’ll either hate the first and love the second
or adore the first and despise the second.
You can’t serve both God and the Bank.”
(Luke 16:10-13 MSG)