If trust has become an endangered species, how can we turn the tide towards restoration? It almost seems that the word trust has disappeared from our vocabulary. How often do you use or think the word trust in your daily experience? But perhaps more than disappearing from our language, trust is becoming more and more rare in our daily lives. Trust is seen so rarely these days that you can almost think of it as an endangered species. Let’s start with: Who Do You Trust
Who Do You Trust?
We’ve come to the point of asking the same question that The Joker asked in the original Batman movie. “And now folks, it’s time for Who Do You Trust.
For more than 20 years, the Edelman Trust Barometer has independently surveyed trust and credibility. They call trust “the ultimate currency” when it comes to relationships. You can well imagine their findings.
- The world is ensnared in a vicious cycle of distrust, fueled by a growing lack of faith in media and government.
- Failure of leadership makes distrust the default assumption in all areas of life.
- While government and media are primarily responsible when it comes to distrust, all stakeholders are accountable.
- Social media leads the pack in the distrust category, falling further and further behind.
You can see trust shrinking in all areas of life: at work, in our families, with our friends, at church. We distrust leaders and their motives at every level of life, from the local PTA up to the highest levels of our national government.
Listen to how Edelman defines trust:
Trust is the foundation of all deep and meaningful personal relationships. It is what makes you feel safe being vulnerable to another, allows relationships to endure through difficult times, and gives you the confidence to bet your future on someone. Without trust, there is no intimacy and very little long-term potential for a relationship to grow and deepen.
Who Do You Trust in Small Groups
- Trust is the foundation – trust is not one of many things that make up a foundation. No, trust is THE one and only foundation. Period. Without trust, deep and meaningful personal relationships are flat impossible. There is NO substitute.
- Trust makes you feel safe – you can have all the data in the world, even have apps repeating safe messages. But without trust, there will be no vulnerability, there will be no transparency, there will be no accountability.
- Trust allows relationships – without trust, you cannot get through the tough times. This lack of trust certainly helps explain why so many people have struggled mightily during the pandemic.
- Trust gives confidence – no one opens-up, becomes vulnerable, without trust. Trust is the glue that allows people to commit, giving their time, money, talents, lives to something bigger than themselves.
- Trust makes intimacy possible – the deepest hurts, the most sensitive parts of life, remain shutoff, buried, unreachable without trust. We are only willing to open-up and uncover ourselves with people we trust.
- Trust nourishes growth – we are all stuck in our ruts of life without trust. Trust is the good soil where relationships grow. Trust feeds an openness and optimism towards God, life, and others.
