Monday 12 May 2014

In God? We trust?


 "All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen". Ralph Waldo Emerson

It occurred to me today, that every action we undertake, requires us to have a tremendous trust in others. When I get on the bus,  I trust the driver with my life. I trust him to be sane, sober and competent. By the fact of living in my house, I trust the builders to have been - again, sane, sober and competent. Same goes for buying food - God knows where it's been and what's been on it! Maybe rat poison? I trust the shop owners to sell me quality stuff, and the school teachers not to teach my kids utter gobbledygook,  and the doctors to have been taking notes in medical school, and not smoking weed or drawing anatomically correct illustrations of their girlfriends' breasts. I trust the soldiers to stay awake and stop the terrorists, and for the bank to keep my money safe ( suppose I had any). I trust the water company and the Electric company, the municipality and the newspapers I read. Or do I not?
Furthermore - I trust people I call my friends not to gossip behind my back, and I trust nearly everybody not to have evil intentions, or I'd need  a weapon to carry with.
In other words - living in this world requires us to have a certain amount of trust. Actually, quite a huge amount of it. Or - call it turning  a blind eye to the possibility of other people having not such benign intentions. It requires of us to be ever so slightly naive. The degree of it, of course, we are free to determine. Of course, if I don't check anything, that makes me closer to a fool than to a saint.
I am bothered by those people who say they trust no one. Be it religiously (check and re-check everything, till you and your family have all developed various types of OCD), or safety (people who go back to check if the door is locked, and carry a pepper spray and a fire extinguisher wherever they go), and especially those who go on and on about the evil of the ones in positions of power. 
Suppose that's so. You suspect everyone of doing their duty in a lousy manner. What does that say about you? Besides the fact that you're a control freak. You still live in a house, pay your bills,  and buy food, and go to doctors and send your kids to school. You have no choice. It seems to me that trust is a survival and sanity imperative, and inability to trust, essentially, is called paranoia and is included in the list of mental conditions.
So, we have a continuum - with paranoia on one end, and utter simplicity on the other.
I choose to place myself closer to utter simplicity than my mental capacity allows for. Quite intentionally, I chose to believe that everybody, except for convicted criminals, has good intentions. Why? Quite simple. I want to live my life in peace.  I chose to wear pink glasses, and see only the good. Chose to be a little bit naive. "It's better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious" - B.C. Forbes. I made this quote into my life motto about 20 years ago and never regretted it. Of course, time and again, I'd encounter people who shocked me with the brutality of betrayal, big and small... And then I'd carry on trusting humans again. And at the same time I'd wonder, how do you trust God? I know there are good book explanations, but they never spoke to me. After all, every bad thing that ever happened in this world, could be attributed to Him, since He is in control here. And I think today I found an answer.
By the very fact of expecting our life to run smoothly, we trust Him. We have an expectation here - just as we expect the water company to keep on providing us with water, we expect (not hope, or beg, or pray) -we expect Him to take care of us. We expect to cross the road safely - and not the opposite. We expect NOT to get sick, and NOT  to be struck by lightning. By the fact of us having positive expectations, we prove to ourselves that life is good. And even more than that - by trusting other humans to do us good and no evil, we ultimately trust Him. Yes, it goes well with my theory of everyone being a believer, really. So, in God we trust. Everybody. Regardless of observance level. Amen. And don't forget to lock the door.

When I get logical, and I don't trust my instincts - that's when I get in trouble.
Angelina Jolie

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_trust.html#Q7aBxapSDt4QP







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