Trust Is Expensive, And We're All Going Broke

Re-establishing the foundation for societal trust.

One of the most impactful things I’ve ever heard about money came from (steel yourselves) a pastor.

He was talking about the logic of money, and turned to one of my absolute favorite subjects to illustrate his point: etymology.

“The word currency has its own history—it’s derived from the Latin, “currere” for, to flow, or to run—like a current of water or electricity. But what’s flowing in a market economy when we use currency?

Pastor C.R. Wiley

People use currency every day without a theory that would help them understand how a piece of paper that costs less than a cent to produce comes to be worth many times that—sometimes hundreds of thousands of times. And then, in some instances, they suddenly lose faith in a currency, and it is worthless…Ultimately trust is the real currency.”

Wiley’s point seemed as staggeringly true as underappreciated. When was the last time you heard a presentation about trust being the bedrock upon which every lasting society has been built?

We live in a world that, more than ever, prioritizes the seen, the touchable, the quantifiable, and the definable. At the same time, the cost of trying to compensate for the loss of societal trust continues to rise with each passing day. Just ask San Franciscans.

Not them.

That’s them.

If you want to operate a store in San Francisco, you now have to factor in the cost of glass cases to protect your merchandise. You factor in a much higher loss percentage from the most brazen thieves’ willingness to shatter those cases. Business owners also have to factor in the risk to their lives to continue showing up every day. This is not normal, and San Francisco isn’t alone. This phenomenon is becoming commonplace in cities all over the country.

Further, we are one day away from one of the most polarized elections of our lifetime, where a meaningful percentage of supporters on each of the two main sides are convinced that the other candidate would have them declared enemies of the state, have their children subjected to unthinkable treatment, and the most extreme representatives imprisoned if not killed.

That’s the cost of disappearing trust.

For as hopeless as this situation can feel, the tide might be starting to change. If it’s true that you don’t know what you have till it’s gone, then we might not be far from what we in the South might call, “bein’ learned a thanger two.” It sure would be great to expedite the process, though. But where do we go to learn about trust? Who are the trust experts, the wizened sages to illuminate the unseen ties that used to bind us?

I’ve never heard of a trust expert. Maybe there’s a synonym for trust that might yield more fruit.

Hey Grok.

I’m starting to see a pattern here. Maybe a pastor isn’t the strangest person to raise this issue.

But trust isn’t just like faith. Trust is faith.

How do you know that your husband or wife isn’t cheating on you? Unless you hire a full time private investigator, monitor their devices, and spent every waking moment with them, you have to trust something that you can’t see. You have to walk by faith, trusting that they won’t betray the trust and break the covenant you made with one another.

Like trust, the recognized value of faith is also at an all-time low. There are likely more avowed atheists today than at any other point in human history. There are also fewer explicitly religious figures in influential positions than at any other point in US history. Regardless of why, the fact remains that it’s true. We have self-selected away from a world where faith is as valuable as it used to be. Or rather, where it is perceived to be as valuable as it once was. The fact that a truth is ignored for a period of time doesn’t make it false. African slaves were every bit as human as their British and American slaveholders, regardless of what they tried to assert to justify their actions.

If only there were a way to peek behind the curtain of that old world before our modern distrust-rial revolution. Some record of what it looked, felt, and sounded like.

Something like a book.

There’s a story in the first half of the Bible about Israel’s youngest king. Josiah took the throne at eight on the heels of a disastrous time in Israel. His grandfather, Manasseh, was one of the most wicked and violent kings in Israel’s history, and Josiah’s father, Amon, had been assassinated.

This should have been enough to signal that Josiah was destined for greatness.

Among their other duties, kings of Israel were required to read and write out a copy of the law during their reign to ensure they were being directed by God’s revealed will and not their whims.

Imagine requiring each President to write a copy of the Constitution. That was the idea. Starting wars or getting handsy with interns is harder if your mind is otherwise occupied.

But things devolved so far that by the time Josiah took the throne, there weren’t any copies of the Law around. Twenty years into his reign, Josiah ordered some repairs to be done to the temple, which had been damaged and neglected for some time. During that reconstruction process, one of the priests discovered a long-lost copy of the Law.

Josiah began reading, and it blew his mind. A period of religious, social, and even economic revival in the land followed. The people remembered who they were and found a freedom that had long eluded them. Everything they needed had been sitting there the whole time, covered in dust in a run-down temple.

So there’s a precedent for the type of situation we find ourselves in and a precedent for a certain book providing wisdom and insight to navigate droughts of trust. But Josiah lived several thousand years ago. One could be forgiven for thinking that the book that so transformed Israel had been lost to history. But it turns out that the final chapters of that book had yet to be written, and the completed book would go on to turn the world upside down and shape the world and the lives of billions of people over the last two thousand years.

That includes up to the present day. We have the book. 

It’s a big one. It talks about faith. A lot. It turns out that the book’s Author values faith much more highly than we do today. But your skepticism is palpable. It’s radiating so intensely that it broke the space-time continuum, and I can feel it as I sit here watching our 52nd president, Snoop Dog, being sworn in on a stack of rolling papers.

Judge for yourself.

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire,” - 1 Peter 1:6-7

Faith is more precious than gold? Gold doesn’t hit with the same force it once did, with most people associating its value in terms of rings, watches, chains, and ad breaks during conservative podcasts and radio shows. Yet gold is still the second most traded commodity in the world by volume (behind only crude oil) and has a market cap today of $10 trillion dollars. Interestingly, like faith and trust, gold is beginning to get its groove back as well.

Faith is integral to pleasing God?

Why?

Because all relationships are premised upon trust, including relationships with God.

Part of the reason we don’t value trust and faith like we once did is that some of the most popular guideposts for learning about faith are…actual signs. Behold the corny catechesis emanating from Etsy and Hobby Lobby.

These signs convey that faith is a cute, commercial thing. These vague, mass-market appeals treat faith like a container that can be loaded with whatever meaning consumers attribute to it. They want to sell as many signs as possible, and such vaguery allows them to do it.

They also treat faith as an end rather than a means to an end.

What is faith, then?

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
- Hebrews 11:1

Near the end of his life, 17th-century Christian minister Richard Baxter had a friend who attempted to comfort him by reminding him of all the people who had been served through his pastoral preaching and professional pen wrangling (writing).

Baxter’s response?

“I was but a pen in God’s hand, and what praise is due to a pen?”

Faith is like a pen.

Pens are teleological; they are created with a specific purpose or end in mind. They’re mediums of human expression; and are valuable insofar as they’re wielded to craft novels, hostage demands, love letters, and last-minute essays. Faith works the same way; it was designed and exists to be used in pursuit of specific ends. What are those ends? What are the love letters and hostage notes that faith exists to mediate?

It’s like the scene where Indiana Jones steps into the void.

The bridge is there, but he can’t see it. The only way to bridge that knowledge gap is to take a step. He had to believe to see.

Where does faith come from? How does one accumulate this currency? 

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” - Romans 10:17

In the case of Indy, he had a book too, which you can see him clutching at the beginning of the clip. Someone had preserved information about how and where to find the treasure he sought, but there was no shortcut to discover whether or not the journal was right, and whether or not the words guarded within actually led to life.

But who is this Christ? Why is his word so important?

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…”
- Colossians 1:15-18

He’s the author of the book. Faith has a centralized Issuer who benevolently governs both the entire cosmos and your life, and Who is working to reconcile humanity and restore their trust toward God toward each other.

But that faith isn’t a permanent feature. 

It is a temporary means to know and be known by him. Faith will eventually be cashed in for sight.

So follow me here:

If trust is the real currency, and it comes through hearing and heeding Christ’s word, and we are at all-time lows in listening both to the word of Christ and to each other, should we be surprised when we find barren trust coffers?

Trust is expensive.

What could earn the trust of every man, woman, and child on earth? Who has that kind of capital? Who is sufficient for these things?

Go back to the letter to the Colossians.

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
- Colossians 1:19-20

Would a death do it? Specifically the death of their Creator, motivated by a specific love of people made in His Father’s image?

What if we devoted as much time to listening to God and those around us as we do to thinking about and expressing ourselves? If His death could bring such life, what might our living sacrifices and daily deaths bring? Could it also be followed by more resurrections, not just of individuals or families, but towns, cities, and nations as well?