Trust
Fall 2019
Trust: It’s precisely because it is ordinary and ubiquitous that it is profound. We scarcely realize how important a role it plays in our society and our relationships. Almost all our knowledge is based on trust.
Ask yourself this question: Where did your knowledge of history or literature come from? Did you dig up the artifacts yourself or personally visit the archaeological excavation? Did you read the original manuscripts of Shakespeare or the Gospel of Matthew? No, you didn’t. You’ve only read copies of copies of copies. Almost everything you know about the world, including the existence of Antarctica, is mediated through other people whom you trusted.
Even if we could experience everything firsthand, it wouldn’t obviate the need for trust. A vast body of evidence, from psychological studies to courtroom eyewitness testimonies, has shown that our senses aren’t always as reliable as they seem. Approximately 71% of all wrongful convictions in the United States have been due to mistaken eyewitness identification. Since the 1960s, social scientists have pointed out the problematic nature of eyewitness reliability. Among the most comprehensive reviews of this problem can be found in the 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences titled: “Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification.”
Furthermore, the more our experiences are filtered through digital screens, the more our perceptions become suspect. Take the example of “the dress,” which swept the internet in 2015. Over a period of several days, millions of social-media users debated whether a garment depicted in a photo was blue and black or white and gold. Scientific experiments later showed their perceptions were affected by ambient lighting and the quality of their display screens.
We often complain about living in a “post-fact” culture. As a society, the ease with which we dispense with facts underscores the importance of trust for the human mind. We are wired, it seems, not to be factual, but to be trusting—because, over the long course of time, facts have been hard to access and confirm. Trust has been necessary for survival. Evolutionary psychology tells us that perception is not in the business of truth—it’s in the business of useful adaptive behavior. It is far more efficient to function by trust and supplement with facts later.
Trust always involves undertaking a risk. It requires us to assume some degree of danger: of being deceived, of losing time or money or dignity. We try to minimize that risk by basing our trust on evidence, such as past experiences, probability, and empirical data. People who have already earned our trust can also be helpful guides. This is important in our faith as in every other part of our lives. At the same time, skepticism can sour into cynicism and pervasive doubt, and this is an untenable way to live. It is incompatible with any kind of true happiness; it leads to isolation and despair. Blind trust and cynicism are both attempts to escape from the responsibility, risk, and hard work required for trust.
By and large, modern industrialized societies tend toward the second mistake. Trust in institutions, from governments to nonprofits to universities, is at an all-time low. The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report recorded a 14-point decline in global trust compared to last year. Conspiracy theories are rampant. A vast share of the public mistrusts journalists and scientists. Lay people mistrust clergy. The clergy mistrust the people. Many people outside the Church think religion is a scam.
The consequences of this systemic mistrust are no small matter. On the most basic level, a lack of trust makes everything work more slowly and with greater difficulty. Business deals are more difficult and costly. Law enforcement is less effective and therefore more expensive. Mercy and forgiveness are more often withheld. And the likelihood of violence greatly increased. Misunderstandings are numerous. This lack of trust even eats away at our prosperity and wealth. I recall a recent conversation I had with the father of a boy in my son’s Scout troop. The father, an exporter-importer, was talking about the challenges posed by the ongoing tariff wars between the U.S. and China. “It’s much more expensive to do business with someone you haven’t established a trusting business relationship with,” he lamented. In the absence of trust, even if it is merely that the person or company hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate its reliability yet, various financial and risk-management instruments are needed to mitigate potential losses and to create financial mechanisms to hold the other party accountable. These instruments are costly and eat into the profits of any given transaction. But with mutual trust established, such instruments can be forgone and profits increased.
Money, for example, is a symbol of trust. It symbolizes the possibility of engaging in an honest transaction. And money only has as much value as people believe that it has. The value of money is not a fact. It is a belief. Our whole economic system is based on trust. When cheating becomes rampant, commerce doesn’t work, markets don’t work, and the legal system doesn’t work, because when people believe the game is rigged, they stop playing by the rules. Recent events such as the regime change in the Ukraine or the Arab Spring occurred (in part) because of, and in response to, massive systemic corruption. There is a strong link between the level of corruption and social instability, if only for the reason that corruption (the breaking of social trust) causes economic inefficiencies. This explains why less developed countries are far less resilient to corruption (and also more susceptible to it) given their smaller pool of resources. One 2005 study estimated that the global cost of bribery—not to mention all the other forms of corruption—is as high as $1.5 trillion per year (or 2% of global GDP).
The same goes for religious institutions. The erosion of trust in the Roman Catholic Church, due largely to the clergy sex-abuse scandals, has had devastating consequences: declining membership, nationwide closing of parishes, and depleted finances. Deep mistrust for social institutions and the isolation and violence which eventually emerge from that mistrust can collapse an entire society, or church. Trust is the life-blood of all human relationships from the simplest interpersonal ones to the most complex societies.
We don’t have a fact problem or a reason problem, but rather, we have a trust problem. It’s ruining our politics, our churches, our communities, and our families. Perhaps part of the cause for the opioid crisis and escalating suicide rates in our country is the breakdown of trust and the ensuing isolation and state of anxiety it creates. When we are alone, on edge, and never feel “at home” in a place and with a people we feel we can trust, we are fearful, anxious, and depressed.
Granted, some of our mistrust is understandable and even rational. Many of our institutions have failed us repeatedly of late. Yet, we cannot wait until every person or institution has attained the pinnacle of virtue or until every belief has amassed a perfect amount of evidence and passed all scrutiny before we extend our hand in trust. For no such day is ever likely to arrive, save that eternal day.
As Christians, the fragility of trust is something we must wrestle with in our spiritual lives and not merely in its societal breakdown. We are like Peter, beckoned to join Christ out on water, amidst the storm. When that trust breaks down and fear seizes us, we sink. The fact is that our whole present life is one lived in the midst of a storm. We are always in that precarious circumstance of needing to summon the courage to trust God and one another. But what other choice do we have? What life can be lived without trust?
Getting over our fear of trust can be an exercise in humility and self-awareness. It’s a matter of recognizing how limited our knowledge and control of the world actually are, and of acknowledging that we’re not as rational as we think. How can the Gospel help guide us in this endeavor? How can our Church be part of the solution? The essays contained in this edition of Jacob’s Well approach this problem from various perspectives, some very personal and others more global. This issue hopes to offer a small contribution to addressing this problem. Being honest about our broken trust and not being afraid to confront the weakness of our faith is the first step. Denying or ignoring it is a sure way to make things worse.
Featured Essays
Faith as Trust | Archbishop MICHAEL
Trust as Action | Jim Forest
Trust in the Church | Fr Joshua Frigerio
Restoring Trust in the Global Orthodox Communion | Dn Nicholas Denysenko
Our Scandalous Emperor-Saint | Fr Justin Patterson
The Working Out of God’s Love | Fr John Shimchick
Articles
The Myth of the Flat-Earth Myth | Noah Beck
Heresy and the Scriptural Canon | Jeanne Constantinou
Aragorn’s Archetype | Matthew Franklin Cooper
And Then You Came for Me | Matushka Lauren Huggins
The Manna, the Tablets, and the Rod | Fr Herman (Majkrzak)
Trusting the Pastoral Call | Jeremiah McKemy
An IOCC Conference | Josh Brad
Holy Land Pilgrimage | Daniel Rogozenski
Modern Psychology and Ancient Wisdom | Benjamin Keaster
The Cost of Lies | Fr Matthew Brown
After Holy Communion | Nick Skiles
Children’s Page
Diocesan Life
Toward an Immersive Church-School Experience | Susan Lukianov
Orthodoxy on Tap | Spyridoula Fotinis
Remembering Archbishop Basil (Rodzianko) | Fr Thomas Edwards
Letter from Coxsackie | Brian Hodges