Lance was a 32-year-old architect. He was clinically depressed, and, thankfully, he went to a therapist for guidance and help. Lance was always sad. He had frequent bouts of crying, complete loss of interest in things he had previously enjoyed, loss of appetite, weight loss, and difficulty falling asleep.
His depression was triggered when his wife of just eight months left him for another man. Lance was angry and bitter. He was obsessed with his wife's betrayal, and he shared stories of other broken relationships. He was convinced no woman could ever be trusted! All Lance could talk about was betrayal and how women could not be trusted. At one point, he finally began to talk about his childhood.
One childhood experience stood out:
When Lance was six years old, his father had taken him to the banks of the Schuykill River in Philadelphia to watch an Ivy League rowing regatta. It was a beautiful springtime day, an exciting event. Toward the end of the afternoon, Lance's father lifted him up onto a stone wall and told him he had an important lesson to teach him. Lance was thrilled. His father stepped back from the wall and instructed Lance to close his eyes and jump into his waiting arms. Lance did as he was told, but as he took his boyish leap of faith his father moved away, and Lance crashed onto the rocky pathway below. His face was bruised, his wrist sprained, his bare knees scraped. He was too stunned to cry. His father looked down at him, "Let that be a lesson, son," he intoned, "you can never trust anyone in life." (Taken from The Myth of More, Joseph R. Novello, M.D.)
"Let that be a lesson, son. You can never trust anyone in life." And this coming from his father, one of Lance's closest role models and a haven for security.
"You can never trust anyone in life."
When I first read this true story, as I read of Lance's father's declaration to his six-year-old son, my heart ached. I had a visceral reaction. From a six-year-old boy to a 32-year old adult, Lance's understanding of life was still the same. No one is trustworthy.
Never trust anyone!
And sure enough he had experiences that proved his and his father's philosophy of life! And what a lonely and futile life it is when you have no trust, you trust no one!
How is your trust level? I believe Lance's story is aberrant, not the norm. At least I hope it is not the way children learn about trust.
Does trust come to you easily or not? If not, why? Can you recall early childhood incidents, events that perhaps have shaped your view of intimacy and trust? Keep in mind-your personal autobiography guides and informs your view of the world, the world you live in. To a large degree, your understanding of God is predicated on your personal experiences. Your way of approaching human relationships is tied up with your early experiences as a child.
And your trust or lack of trust impacts on yourself, others, and the way you see God and the world that we live in.
Did you know that Americans' trust in people has declined? In 1975 it was at 50%--nothing to brag about--but in 1994 it declined to only 40%.
Trust has declined in the workplace.
69% say managers are inconsistent in what they say and do.
64% say they lie or tell half-truths.
29% say they are close-minded.
14% say they break promises.
13% say they betray confidences.
Is it the case that Lance's father was correct? "You can never trust anyone."
But we need, we thrive on trust. It is a necessary part of what it means to be human. How deficient each of us is when we find ourselves unable to trust.
No doubt there are those people not worthy of trust. Of course, there are those who betray, lie, cheat, harm, and the litany goes on and on and on. But for all the broken trust, trust remains. It remains a healthful, healing, honorable gift-for all of us.
We live in difficult times. Many fear for the safety of their children-in the neighborhood, at home, at school. Violence is ubiquitous. School violence is now just down the road. We are fearful for our children. We warn them about the dangers around them and rightly so. But perhaps we need to consider other ways to inform them about the dangers of strangers.
A recent study has found that college students whose parents taught them not to trust strangers during childhood had a greater fear of intimacy as young adults. Again, a good response by parents to protect their children--but what about that loss of trust?
Psychologist Erikson has found that children who fail to develop a basic sense of trust will view the world as hostile and people as undependable in later life. Recall Lance. The very first year of life is of great importance in acquiring trust. Adolescents who do not trust are more likely to feel insecure, lonely, and unloved.
Perhaps in protecting our children we alert them to recognize bad behaviors in others. In teaching our children about strangers, we must also reassure them that basically people are good-with a Calvinist eye always open, of course.
Your degree of trust has been a long time in forming. Its origins are of early experiences whether you are 99 or 9.
How we need to trust and to be trustworthy.
As Jesus is delivering his Sermon on the Mount, he talks about fathers and sons-very different fathers from Lance's dad. Jesus inquires, "Dads, is there any one of you who, when your son asks for some bread, you would give him a stone instead? If your son asks for a fish, would you give him a snake?"
Jesus is using mocking substitutes to make his point. There was a striking resemblance between the flat cakes of bread and the Palestinian stones and between eel-like fish and snakes.
Would you treat your son in this way? Would you betray his trust? And, of course, the implied answer is, "No! Never!"
Now Matthew is a bit hard on us, calling us evil. Basically, he is comparing our fatherly human actions to God's actions, and for him there was no comparison.
Certainly, human fathers and mothers can be trusted. Their sons and daughters learn-hopefully-to trust their parents. If you can trust your not-perfect parents, then by all means you can trust your heavenly parent.
Trust is primal!
If you are having trouble believing in a trustworthy God, perhaps you need to look back to your childhood and begin to unpack the mistrust that has been accumulating all these years.
To trust in God is to trust in life! To trust in God is to see that trust is available through other human beings.
Tragically, some fathers and mothers perversely feed their children's souls stones and snakes, and these children grow into adults filled with mistrust and fear. Thank God that paradigm is not the norm! We imperfect fathers and mothers know what our children need and we supply their needs-physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
If you were given a stone or a snake sometime in your life by someone you should have been able to trust and have been barely surviving on such small doses of trust, begin a new journey toward trust. You may not have fallen to the ground, bruised and bleeding like Lance, but emotionally the scars are there.
Begin today the journey of discovery. Consider there are those fathers, mothers, who have been trustworthy. They indeed exist! Consider, if they can be trusted, why not the God of the universe? Could Mom and Dad outpace the one who began it all?
Trust! Trust in God who is Trustworthy!
Life will begin to open up before your eyes as you take the chance. Reach out your hands for sustenance and find your arms not full of stones or snakes but full of love and hope!
No more stones! No more snakes! Only trust!
Let us pray.
Our God of trust, we frail human beings too often find ourselves filled with mistrust. We have been given stones and snakes instead of what we have needed. Our trust level is at a low ebb. God, our parent, reveal to us that trust is possible and that we need to trust. Amen.