“But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them.” (John 2:24, Peterson)
A few days ago, I came upon a provocative article in USA Today.
It was splashed across the front page: “Trust! Americans’…trust in CEOs, Big Business and HMOs is slipping away” (July 16, 2002; p. A1).
It is no wonder. The markets are “rattled,” the article reports. Corporate America is in “a shambles.” In a recent survey by USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, more than seven in 10 Americans say they distrust the CEOs of large corporations. “In the past nine months, the percentage of Americans who say they see Big Business as an actual threat to the nation’s future has nearly doubled, to 38%.”
But trust isn’t dead, either. “Americans are feverishly rejiggering whom and what they trust,” the article reports. In particular, Americans are coming to trust themselves more than usual. Two years ago, 35% of Americans said that “most people” could be trusted. Today, 41% report that they can trust in others.
Surely, it seems, this is a good thing. Without trust of some kind, societies become immobilized. The article quoted former New York mayor, Rudy Giulliani: “You can get through good times on your own. But you need a sense of trust when you’re going through difficult times.”
The bother, however, is that the common Americans we want so very much to trust are the same Americans that we find in the boardrooms. And it doesn’t matter how you rejigger it. They are us.
Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, addressed Congress the same day the article appeared. “It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past,” he explained. “It is that the avenues to express greed [have] grown so enormously” (reported in The New York Times, July 17, 2002; p. A1). The parade of evil-eyed CEOs that have clogged the newspapers in recent months are really not so very different from you and me. The scale of their scandal is quite extraordinary. But the greed itself is familiar territory. We will find it in our own hearts, if we have a careful look.
“Where can we place our trust?” queries USA Today.
Let us be frank. Trusting in ourselves is not the answer, for all of its civic value. Trusting in CEOs does not work well either. There is but One who is worthy of our trust. But that One is truly, powerfully, perfectly trustworthy. The stock market may disappoint you. But in this One you may happily invest your very life.
Maybe it’s time to rejigger. Maybe it’s time to place your trust in the only One who can bear it.
"The Way I See It", August 2002
© Copyright 2002 (World Mission Prayer League). All rights reserved.