Bigvai Volcy said, "Trust nobody and no one will ever betray you."
Can you imagine living your life like that? Never trusting a single soul? For fear of being betrayed? Let down?
Frank Crane said, "You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."
I wonder today, why is it we cannot trust people? So often I've found that folks do not take what a person says and believe it to be what they really mean. There was a time in history when a man's word was his contract. A handshake was a valid agreement one could take to the bank.
Perhaps our world has become so untrustworthy is why we are suspicious of others. Perhaps it is because we've been burned before. We don't trust the government because of corruption. We don't trust law enforcement because of a few rogue cops. We don't trust companies because of embezzlement in Enron. We don't trust politicians because they promise what they cannot deliver. The list is actually endless. There are people we entrust our lives to every day. Pharmacists. Doctors. Bankers. Other drivers. We are actually forced to trust others or we'll live in perpetual fear.
Cardinal de Retz gives another explanation for distrust: "A man who doesn't trust himself can never truly trust anyone else." Perhaps that is why we cannot trust others. We cannot trust ourselves. We know our weaknesses. We know how vulnerable we are. We know what we are prone to do and how we are prone to think. And so when we meet someone, we put them in the same pod in which we live and grow. And we base our trust in them on the trust we know is true in ourselves. Another reason to become men and women of integrity, honesty and transparency. Woe is me. selahV
[copyrighted, SelahV Today, 2008] Don't forget to visit dailyIMPACT by SelahV for my devotional thought for today.
