In [?] I Trust

Trust is a very important part of our lives, both as Church and as individuals. But what does it mean to trust, to be trustworthy? The final prayer in the Divine Mercy chaplet is “Jesus, I trust in you.” Trust, therefore, demands to be explored.

The interesting thing about trust is that it’s both a verb and a noun – an action and a thing – and that it is both of these at the same time, as well as being a description.

To trust is to have certainty that a person, in some respect, will act or behave in a certain way. It is certainty that the person is who you think they are, and that they will be that person. When someone tells a secret to someone else, they are trusting that person to do certain things in response, they are trusting that their secret will be received in a way that respects its integrity and dignity. ‘I trust you to understand,’ ‘I trust you to know that the secret is important to me,’ ‘I trust you to feel a certain way about it, a way that encompasses its nature,’ ‘I trust you to accept the secret as a knowledge that belongs to you though not an experience that belongs to you, to take it into account and not pretend that you never heard it, but also not to try and make it your own.’ These expectancy constructs are all based on trust as a certainty about another person. There can be trust, in the active sense, regardless of whether or not that certainty is well-founded: it is an action performed by only one person, the one who has decided to trust and reveal.

This kind of trust is also a noun, a state of being or affairs. When the trust is not betrayed – when the other person accepts that trust – something exists between you, a relationship based on mutual respect for the bond that trust creates. I think that relationship is important for both people, the one who is accepting the responsibility as well as the one who is reaching out to them in trust, when the person reaching out has also taken responsibility for themselves.

Genuine trust, I believe, always carries that kind of self-responsibility, because it acknowledges that in that decision is a risk that can be borne only by the person taking it. I choose to trust you, and in so doing I acknowledge myself to be the kind of person who does trust you, who believes in you, and who accepts that what I reveal belongs to me, is my own, and is my own to share or to conceal. Real trust is the greatest form of self-responsibility that there can be, as is the real acceptance of that trust by someone to whom the secret does not belong, but who chooses to be trust-worthy in the sharing of it.

Trust, of course, does not only have to do with secrets; trust can also be a form of dependence. ‘I trust you to catch me when I fall,’ to take an example from the clichéd trust-building exercises used in marriage counseling and group formation classes. ‘I trust you not to walk me off a cliff if you’ve volunteered to substitute for my guide dog today.’ ‘I trust you to help me in the way that you can, the appropriate way, and no other.’ ‘Jesus, I trust in you that you will love me and, at the final end, make everything right.’

Where would we be, as people and as Church, without this dependence on one another? Surely not a living metaphysical and real entity; surely not human; surely not truthful. Because we all depend on others in a myriad of ways, as we are supposed to. I don’t think this is unhealthy. I think that denying this essential part of our human lives constitutes a dangerous and destructive falsehood that denies the nature of what we are: that we are created to trust and depend, to be trustworthy and dependable. On whom can I depend but God? The best answer, I would hope, is ‘other people.’

Trust also always involves a vulnerability on the part of the person who trusts. They have, after all, given a great deal of power to another person in the hope that that person will not abuse that power, will not choose to violate that vulnerability. Which brings up what may just be the most important thing about trust: trust is hope. There is no trust without hope – it just isn’t possible. It is a choosing to believe in goodness, in kindness, in the humanity that God has created us to be. It is a hope in love, in one’s own and another’s strength. It is a hope in another person. Where could there be healing without hope? Without love, dependence, trust? These things are all woven together in a life that looks forward to and expects the resurrection, in a life that sees the promise of that resurrection here among us. Now is the kingdom, now is the day.

It makes me sad that disclosure of and healing from one’s secrets can be related to an interaction with another person that is devoid of mutual responsibility, expectation, investment and hope, rather turned in on itself where the act of speech, and not the relationship it inevitably demands, is grasped as the sole means of healing and self-responsibility. You might as well be talking into your web-cam. I personally would not want to think another person opened up their life to me as if I were a mirror to be used only for their own need to speak. I would feel devalued as a person, I would feel like I am being used, because in that action my own humanity, my own ability to be responsible with another person’s trust, is being devalued and denied. Trust is intimacy. Without intimacy there is no hope, no love. Without trust, life is not possible.

I sometimes think that this necessary intimacy is precisely what we have denied our priests (using ‘we’ for the moment to refer to the institutional Roman Catholic Church). We confess to them as if they were some sort of forgiveness-dispensing machine: just put in your quarter and receive healing. But is that really such a great idea, to forget that they are a person and not just standing in the place of Christ? Maybe that forgetting causes more harm than we know. Our priests are not allowed to marry. Our priests are expected to keep up one-way relationships with their parishioners where their own needs are suppressed, or at least never expressed, because of course a priest should not need anyone in his church or contribute something of himself to an intimacy between them. Our priests live alone. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right, that we should limit or deny a priest this necessary element of vitality and humanity. It just seems like that kind of trust, that one-way expectation, does not account for who they are, and it’s a sacrifice that no one should have to make. It must be a heavy burden, that trust, knowing that you can never trust that person in turn – not really, because the expectation is that you will not attempt to do so. It makes me sad that anyone should have to live like that, especially our priests who represent Christ on earth, the epitome of that perfect love, hope and trust.

Now, this is not to say that unhealthy relationships cannot develop around the sharing of secrets or dependence or hope. Hope can be unrealistic, reflecting a denial of reality and an attempt to make another person carry to heavy a burden for you. It can be a way of shifting your self-responsibility onto another person and expecting them to fix things for you. It can be a gateway to inappropriate intimacy. An attempt to control another person. An attempt to avoid risk, ironically, by assuming that risk is eliminated by a relationship with another person. But that isn’t trust: that’s co-dependency. And the interesting thing about co-dependency is that in order for it to actually occur as a noun and as a verb, more than one person has to be involved in it. If your would-be co-dependent does not respond by allowing that relationship to unfold, you’re not actually co-dependent: you’re being stupid maybe, cowardly, afraid, manipulative and selfish, uncaring of another, but you are not co-dependent. All that there is is a false trust that mistakes hope for reality, certainty for the absolute, and dependence for unlimited and unbounded care.

That is not trust. But nor is it to be entirely condemned, either. We are, after all, human, fallible, weak, desperate and needy. There’s no sense in denying it, and trying to do so probably just creates the kind of psychological damage that makes people like Martin Luther despair of God because they themselves are not perfect, but flawed.

The fundamental difference between trust and co-dependence, I think, is something like that in trust the thing in question (secret, dependence, or whatever) is implicitly acknowledged, and that trust happens perhaps because of it but does not become it. Once the thing becomes imbedded in a relationship and forgotten, becomes a dynamic, becomes the intimacy…the secret becomes the relationship, rather than the relationship being alongside, within and around the thing, which remains always itself, for what it is. A mutual choice by two persons, belonging to one and entrusted to another, the responsibility of one person and not the responsibility and burden of the relationship.

That’s all I have to say about that. (which actually turned out to be quite a lot).

Oh, and therefore, I don’t think that it’s some sort of unhealthy trust if you feel hurt when it’s betrayed. After all, what person does not feel hurt by the ending of a relationship, by finding out that that relationship no longer exists, by hitting your head on the floor when you are not caught, be seeing that the thing you have hoped for has not come to pass? Hurt is healthy, because it reflects the true value of all these things, and so a sense of loss and pain when trust is broken can only be human, healthy and authentic as well.