Trust and Truth

How do you go at putting yourself in the hands of others?

So much of what our culture teaches us is that we need to be self reliant, independent.

The opposite of that can look like weak dependance.

The bible talks about the need to trust each other… But its not a weak, wishy washy kind of thing.

Sometimes it feels that to trust someone I need to believe they wont hurt me or make mistakes. To do this I need to overlook all their flaws, or only trust someone whose flaws I can’t see.

It seems that the bible takes a different view.

Have a look at this:

1 Corinthians 13:6-8 (NIV)
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [7] It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. [8] Love never fails.

Often it seems the more I get to know people, the more of their flaws I see and so therefore the harder it is to trust them.

Our world tells us trust must be earned.

This passage indicates that you are not loving someone unless you are trusting them..

It looks like Paul is saying, trust is given, and given, and given. The text doesn’t say it continues to be given when it’s broken but I wonder if that is what Paul had in mind when he talks about perseverance.

This so goes against what we are taught that I bet there is part of you disagreeing with me even as you are reading this.

Why would Paul talk like this? I wonder whether it was because he knew he couldn’t earn trust, and neither could anyone else.

One of my favorite bits of the bible is where Paul says in Romans 7:15-19:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. [16] And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. [17] As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. [18] I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. [19] For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

Here the founder of the Christian church basically says he can’t do anything right. If Paul can’t get it right what chance do we think we have?

Have you noticed that it is the people we love the most that are the ones we hurt the most?

The truth is, the more you open yourself up to me, the more I will hurt you and the more I open up to you the more you will hurt me. Neither of us deserve to be trusted.

I think I am starting to see trust not as how safe I feel in your hands, but an active choice that knows it is stepping outside of safety.

For some strange reason, God places the profound responsibility for this planet in our hands. It’s utter madness.. but He does it.

Jesus trusted himself to us for 33 years and we tortured and killed him, and yet as he rose from the dead he chose to still trust us.

Trust is an act of Grace.