You can trust everyone. Never question, never ask if something is true. This approach leads to paying a used-car salesman too much for a thin skim of fresh paint and Amour-All or blindly following the current cultural trends.
This way is easy, for it requires little but a mind that is unwilling or unable to look beyond the superficial. A mind that abandons responsibility and puts the burden on someone else. There is no need to search out things when the fact checkers and trusty judges of truth are hard at work giving everyone a consistent narrative upon which to base their lives.
Or you can distrust everyone. Never accept the plain meaning of what someone says, always suspect ulterior motives. Eventually you decide the only person who can be trusted is yourself, for the only mind you can fully know is your own.
This way is also easy, for all it requires is a mind that defaults to a suspicious and untrusting view of people. There is no need to understand those you disagree with or to consider the possibility that you may be the one who is wrong. To you it is clear—those who disagree with your view are wrong and those who agree with you are right.
What is the right amount of distrust? When you are told something, when should you believe it? When should you reject it? How can you know what is true?
The Truth is Not Always Obvious
The Information Age has made it difficult to know who or what we can trust. Competing narratives and interpretations wash away certainty and leave behind a tangled mess of ideas. The electronic flood of information, news, gossip, and opinions overwhelms our ability to separate truth from falsehood or valid scientific conclusions from pure conjecture.
Before the internet, you would go to trusted sources like Merriam Webster’s Dictionary or Encyclopedia Britannica to look up a fact needed to settle a friendly debate. You could then show someone that fact, and he had little choice but to accept the authority of your sources. Now, in this post-truth age, there are no universally accepted sources. The internet stokes debate by serving up unending articles and videos supporting varying conclusions on any controversial topic you can imagine. News organizations now seem more interested in smearing the opposing political party than in uncovering truth. How can you know what is truth and what is fiction?
We like our truth to be tidy–clearly defined and easy to understand. After eight to twelve years of schooling, we might think that discovering truth is like going to a bookshelf to find lists of facts and figures. Unfortunately, the world is not like that. There is much that can only be found by grappling with messy data, ambiguities, and competing interpretations. On closer inspection, many facts can quickly gain caveats and complexities. For example, the “simple” fact that the boiling point of water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit is only true at a specific air pressure. Change the pressure, and the fact changes along with it. This uncertainty unmoors us when the clearly black and white world in which we have spent much of our lives suddenly seems mostly gray.
By necessity, we view the roiling landscape of ideas and counter-narratives from a single perspective, that of our own. We like to think that in this complicated world we perceptively divide truth from fiction. From this viewpoint we can look down on the deluded masses and shake our heads at their simplicity. “If only they could see the truth, then they would understand why we’re right and they are wrong.”
When “the truth” appears obvious to us, it is easy to believe that anyone who doesn’t think the same as us must be either deluded or deceptive. However, what if other people believe what they do, not because they are stupid or deceitful, but because they decided to trust different people than we did?
The Danger of Distrust
Even though we like to think we are rugged individuals who can search out truth for ourselves, at times we must all depend on others to help us determine what is true. The question is, who do you decide to listen to? Your neighbor? Your pastor? That conservative talk show host? Or maybe Derek, your second cousin once removed? Whoever you decide to trust will shape your view of reality.
Trusting others is dangerous. Even the most well-meaning individuals can travel down false paths, leading their followers to the same destruction. To make it even more difficult, our selfish hearts can deceive us and cause us to trust those who confirm what we already believe or what we want to be true.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
If we cannot trust other flawed humans or even our own heart, then who can be trusted? Perhaps it is best to trust no one?
Trusting others is dangerous, but a distrusting spirit can be even more so. Rejection of authorities and traditional sources of information often leads, not to truth, but to accepting other authorities and sources that have their own set of flaws and errors.
Some distrust is understandable. Distrusting authorities, especially government authorities, is part of our cultural DNA. From childhood on up we have been told stories from the Martyr’s Mirror and warned that someday this will happen again. Somehow we need to balance a healthy skepticism for governmental authorities with the respect for them called for in Romans 13.
Distrust can poison our relationships. A cynical and distrustful attitude often assumes the worst intentions of people rather than the best. These attitudes lead to less love and understanding for those we are called to love–our neighbors, our enemies, and our brothers and sisters in the church.
Trust the Things Above
Where can we go from here? Should we trust? Should we distrust? Maybe somewhere in between? The key is to place your trust, not on the people and institutions of this world, but on the things from above. To survive in a world where it is hard or even impossible to know who to trust, we must hold to the things we know are true.
We might not know if the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season was caused by climate change or natural climate cycles, but we do know we are called to love our neighbors by helping those impacted by natural disasters. We aren’t sure if GMOs are a blessing from science or an invention that destroys ecosystems and pads the pockets of Big Ag, but we do know that we are to feed the poor and give to those who have nothing.
Respect and show love to everyone, no matter how deluded we think they are or how repugnant their political views. We want people who disagree with us to assume we have good intentions, so we should do the same for others (Matt 7:12). Seek to understand, not to win.
Default to trust and assume the best intentions while still keeping our eyes open for deception and untruth (Matt 10:16-18). It might be that people will use this trust to take advantage of us. If so, then what of it? Christ told us we should turn the other cheek and give more if someone takes from us.
Develop humility about what you think you know. You are no doubt correct in some areas, but you are certainly wrong in some others. Be willing to consider that you may be wrong, and that someone with whom you disagree could be right.
Be cautious of information from sources who profess to follow Christ but that clearly don’t. In these cases it becomes much harder to separate truth from untruth.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1 (NKJV)
The spirit of Satan, and hence the spirit of this world, is of pride, hatred, dissension, and distrust. “Yea, hath God said?” The spirit of Christ during His time on earth was of love–love for God and love for others. It does not matter how right we are about the latest issue, if we do not love others, we are wrong (1 Cor 13:1-3).