May 19, 2008
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These days it is trust or bust
From the Pulpit Do you remember in elementary school when your teacher would leave the classroom? Whenever Mrs. Guthrie, my 4th grade teacher, left the room she gave the instructions, “Stay in your seats. No talking. No misbehaving.” Sometimes Mrs. Guthrie appointed a student she trusted, and empowered that kid with the ultimate weapon: taking names. If the student wrote your name you lost recess. We students knew the kid authorized to take names was no better than the rest of us, but the name taker did have something the rest of us did not have, Mrs. Guthrie's trust.
Trust issues loom large these days. Whenever you fill your gasoline tank
don't you get a tiny feeling you're being gouged by high gasoline prices,
and that you can't really trust big oil companies? Consider the flip side.
We hear about people driving away from gas pumps without paying. The stores
can't trust their customers. Newspapers reported recently how a well-known professional baseball player carried on an affair with a adolescent country music singer back in his younger days, and while he was married. Infidelitycheck.org reports that one-third of divorce litigation is the result of online affairs. How many couples do you know who broke up because a spouse shattered trust? A Birmingham TV station advertises their news reports as “the most trusted in Alabama.” This marketing strategy recognizes how much people value trust nowadays. Presently Americans are engaged in presidential politics. We have polls showing how much voters trust a particular candidate. Are you aware that last year 851,000 Americans filed for bankruptcy? Alabama ranked third nationally. Can't people be trusted to pay their bills? Careerbuilder.com just tallied the top five lies that are told at work. Are employees not trustworthy? We read of priests who abused their trust by violating the personhood of young parishioners. Computer users know you can't fully trust all e-mail that arrives in your box. Some of it might contain a virus. That people be trustworthy has always mattered, but trust is especially important now for two reasons. One, we live in a global economy that makes us rely more and more on total strangers. (When I changed my long distance carrier recently, I transacted my business with a customer service representative in the Philippines.) Two, we live in a culture of networking. We network with people for jobs. We network on the computer. We network with organizations. We network by email and text messaging. The shift toward networking places more emphasis on the need for trusting relationships. A lot of people mistakenly believe they deserve to be trusted without putting forth the efforts that build trust. We shouldn't automatically expect to be trusted by everybody. Trust is easy to break, and hard to build. Trustworthiness might just be the most important character issue in American life. Nothing undermines relationships more quickly than broken trust. So how do we become trustworthy people? Make a commitment to honesty and telling the truth. Keep promises and commitments. These steps build integrity into our lives. If we are caught lying or deceiving people, they will consider us untrustworthy. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Have you ever been in a situation where someone put pressure on you, and you couldn't think of a graceful way to say no, so you ended up saying yes? Later you went back on your word. More honest communication prevents false assumptions and the misunderstandings that undermine trust. Do the right thing, even when it isn't easy. Don't you admire people who courageously stand by their convictions? Stand up people typically are trusted people.
The writer of Proverbs said, “A trustworthy person refreshes the spirit of
others” (25:13). Just as rain on a hot day brings cool relief, so a
trustworthy individual energizes and strengthens his or her personal
relationships. |