I was biking to work a week ago, and on the way I drove by a sign on a church that said "Trust in the LORD." Having another hour to go before I reached my destination, I began thinking about that phrase. It seemed ambiguous at best, and incomplete at worst. Let me illustrate what I mean with an imaginary conversation.
Imagine if I said to you, "Depend on Rogers." You're first question would be:
"Depend on Rogers for what?"
"Let me clarify." I might respond. "Rogers is a Canadian tele-communicataions company."
"OK, so I depend on them for phone services. If I am lost in the forest, I'll just be able to use my cell phone to get help, right?"
"No, you can't just make up anything related to telephone service and depend on them for that."
"But you said, 'Depend on Rogers', you didn't give any restrictions on what I could depend on them for."
"There are implicit restrictions. Obviously, you can only depend on them for what they promise. You can't put words in their mouth. They promise to have the fewest drop calls of any Canadian Provider. They don't promise coverage for every spot in Canada. When I say 'Depend on Rogers', I mean that they are trustworthy. When they promise something you can depend on them to fulfill it."
So if you want to figure out whether or not you can depend on Rogers, you need to investigate whether or not it is true that they have the fewest dropped calls. Did they keep their promises? If you don't know what the promises are, there is no way for you to 'trust Rogers' because you don't know what to trust them for!
Now, imagine if we apply this to a conversation we might have with a pastor of that church with the sign:
"Trust in the LORD"
"Trust in the LORD for what?"
"Let me clarify, the LORD is God. God is so powerful He can do anything!"
"So, if I don't want my spouse to die of cancer, I can trust God that won't happen. Nothing is too hard for God, right?"
"No, there are implicit restrictions. Obviously, you can only depend on God for what He promises. You can't put words in His mouth. When I say 'Trust in the LORD', I mean that He is trustworthy. When He promises something you can depend on Him to fulfill it."
So if you want to know whether or not you can trust God, you need to know what He promises and then you can investigate whether or not it is true. The problem with just saying "Trust the LORD" is that you leave people floundering as to what to trust God for.
Now, if you're a God-fearing person of a major world religion you are probably not trying to decide whether or not God is trustworthy. That's a fundamental tenet of your worldview. However, you probably are very interested in what you can trust God for. And that's the burning question on everyone's mind: "What *exactly* has God promised?"
There are two major directions to go with this question.
First, you can believe something like this: "God will give me anything I want as long as I believe it from the bottom of my heart." This an unfalsifiable position. If I "trust God" for something and He let's me down, I can simply chalk it up to a lack of faith. Another unfalsifiable position is: "God will do what's best, but remember He's the only one who knows what's best." So no matter what happens, even if it's the worst tragedy, I can still believe God did what's best, I just don't have the knowledge to know it. It's an unfalsifiable position.
The ironic thing with this situation is that you don't end up depending on God for anything. There is no situation where I can 'rely' or 'depend' on the promise, because I never know whether "I've believed with all my heart" or whether "This is God's will" or anything else. There is no sense in which I trust God for anything. I simply watch the events to see what happens.
Second, you can believe in some premise, like "God promises to heal me of any disease if I ask." I can then look at the world and see if this is true. "Is there ever a case where God has not healed someone who has asked for healing?" And herein lies the rub. If you actually believe that God has made this promise, then you can consult data from the real world to see whether or not it is true. However, should you find an example where your belief doesn't hold (for example, you see real God-fearing believers of all faiths die from disease) then you either believe God isn't trustworthy OR that he never promised that.
So if you would like to trust God, then you must believe that there are falsifiable promises that God has made. But my question is, what falsifiable promises do you believe in? Can you say that without exception they have always held true in your experience? And remember, you must not just consider examples in our rich countries in North America, you must also consider all the events happening to people throughout the world (e.g. Sudan, Cambodia, Rwanda,etc).
So the final question, which is not meant to be rhetorical, but simply exploratory, is: Which are the promises we can trust God for when you exort us to "Trust in the LORD?"
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4 comments:
Your comments are astute and well-taken.
But I have a question:
Is "trusting in" in someone or something always reducible to something as denotative as "believing in the verifiable promises of that someone or something"?
Thanks so much for your comment! You've asked a fair and important question.
To answer this question, I would first come up with some examples of when I would use the phrase 'Trust in ...'. For example:
* 'Trust in my wife',
* 'Trust in my car',
* 'Trust in my company'
* 'Trust in my pastor'
In every example that I can think of, if I was told one of these phrases, I would need more information.
'I should trust in my wife? Ok. Can I trust her to get me a pay increase in my job?'
Of course I shouldn't trust her for that! But then what should I trust her for. The problem with the phrase 'Trust in the LORD' is that it is incomplete. It needs expanding, and its neither evident or obvious what it means.
Now you might rightly ask, 'Yes I can see that I need to identify what I mean by 'trust in the LORD', but can't we trust him for an unverifiable promise?'
In one sense the answer to this question is yes. I might 'trust in the LORD to do what he thinks is best' even though I'll never know what he thinks he best.
But the point is that I am not relying on him to do anything specific. I have no idea exactly what it is he will do. In other words, if I apply for a job and I 'trust in the LORD to do what's best' then can I sell my house and start looking at the new location? Can I ignore my finances because I know I'll be getting a new job? No, I can't.
However, when there is a verifiable promise, there is a concrete decision on which I can trust him for. If my friend says 'Kent, don't worry I'll get you a job interview' then, if he is trustworthy, I know that I can expect an interview. I know exactly what I can expect. I can even make decisions based on that. I can takes some time and brush up on my interview skills.
This is the importance of a verifiable promise.
There are a couple of more minor issues, like if i use the phrase 'I trust in my car' surely you can't be trusting in a verifiable promise it made. And in fact, you're right. But you are trusting in promises made about the car (by the manufacturer,the salesmen or someone else). And in fact, I can't think of anything MORE that you mean by 'trusting in the car' than can be captured in promises made by others about the car.
But I'll leave those aside, because I'm not sure that those issues are actually what you had in mind.
I guess my question wasn't challenging the details of your definition, but rather it's applicability in all situations.
When I say to a friend or loved one, "trust me," I'm not sure I always mean, "trust in this particular promise I have made to you." I may certainly mean that in any given circumstance, but couldn't it, at other times, mean something more general and figurative, like "don't worry" or "I've got things under control so you don't need to worry"?
This would be something closer to what I think Jesus meant at the beginning of John 14.
Good point. However, I am talking about how Christians use the word in general (as exemplified on the church sign).
But even supposing that Jesus meant "Don't worry", once again you come the same sequence of questions. Don't worry about what? The answer may come "don't worry about anything". But does that mean that you won't go bankrupt, starve to death, or have your spouse raped, or simply that even if those things are going to happen you shouldn't worry. It can't mean that those things won't happen, because all those have happened to many, many Christians.
If you simply mean "don't worry" in the sense "cease from a negative emotion" then that only solidifies the point I was making. That the comment bears with it nothing that is of value that you can rely on or depend on. You can't depend on the fact that you will not starve to death - unless of course there is uncontroverable promise that has been borne out in the experience of all believers. And that is my call: for people to identify if there is anything in particular about which we can rely on him or trust him for (aside from eschatolatogical or spiritula promises). My suspision is that there is only this later kind of promise. And that does not mean a hit against Christianity, just a reality that we ought to own up to.
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