Put Your Trust In No Man.
Here’s your challenge. Find that phrase in scripture.
Need a hand? Well here’s something close to it.
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. (Psalm 146:3)
Good. So we’re sorted, right? It’s clear – do not trust people. Simple right?
Errr … actually yes. Well if you follow certain people’s take on things then it really is as simple as that. Don’t trust people.
I see it, I know it, I’ve experienced it. We will be in the same room, as brethren and saints, singing the song Bind Us Together, holding hands and swaying from side to side. It looks so good and you’re allowed to have lovely, warm feelings. Two minutes after the song is sung, barriers are raised, polite smiles are sufficient cover for the way in which we’ll remain at arms length from each other. Pleasantries are exchanged, we might even chat and gossip about trivia and the superficial issues of life. Sometimes it will go into some of the heart issues of life, maybe from time to time it will be unavoidable and will garner and sympathy of others. Sometimes.
Usually though, in the culture in which I was raised, the watchword was not to put your trust in anyone. Keep it guarded. Why? Well because you never know with people. Or more accurately you do know with people. You know they can be relied onto let you down. You do know that people will stab you in the back if you let them have a chance. You know some people, most people just cannot be trusted.
You know that because it has happened. Let’s face it, remember the childhood deal. If you burnt your hand in the fire, that experience taught you not to put your hand in the fire. As you grow up and you begin to engage with people, there are those innocent days of childhood where you could make friends, have fights and make up again. In the identity crisis years, though, things became a bit more fragile and you began to feel a bit more vulnerable. Hurts begin to get deeper and you develop coping mechanisms to avoid getting hurt that deep again. So by the time someone suggests you should not trust anyone, it makes sense. (Although ironically, you’ve trusted someone who told you not to trust anyone – how can you trust them?)
The problem, however, is that trust is implicit in family love. Again consider childhood. Your relations with the parents or responsible adults helped shape your approach to others. Yet there was an intrinsic trust. The source of nurture, of sustenance, is that responsible adult and we at least build a dependability, a trust in them. Likewise with your siblings, although there may be skirmishes and disagreements, the family connection can bring with it a trust that often goes through a number of testing times.
As that can be the case in family relations, it’s interesting to wonder what happens to make it so different in God’s family?
Why do we use a scripture that warns us against looking for people to be our saviours as a ban on trusting people as a whole? Why are we seeking to justify the walls we put up around us and that prevents the true intimacy that is to take place among God’s family?
Surely we know that Jesus loved His disciples, even when they let Him down, even when they deserted Him, even when they betrayed and denied Him. That love came with trust. He trusted them with the message. He trusted Peter to feed the sheep. He trusted His followers to make disciples as they went along.
Closer still, the very heart of successful marriage is about trust. This mutual test allows there to be integrity and strength with the couple that again withstands the hardships and challenges of two people learning what it is to be one. A marriage without trust can at best appear a marriage of convenience, and at worst is a dangerous and toxic state of affairs that doesn’t just threaten the two people in it.
If trust is then such a vital ingredient in a marriage, and is an implicit ingredient in balanced and harmonious families, why is it something so ignored in the church family? Why do we play at fellowship, but withdraw when the commitment to true intimacy and real love, leaves us requiring to trust each other?
Not only those questions, but what can we do to acknowledge the block that it has on deep relationships and overcome that barrier?
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 