Breach of Trust - Part 2

Link to Part 1

Some time ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding a Chinese businessman who had spent time working in the United States.  This man had an interesting observation about the success of American business.  He said America succeeds economically because, in general, we can trust each other in a way that was completely missing in China.  In China, he stated, you could not trust what anyone told you.  You just understood that others would take advantage of you if they got the chance.  He didn't see that in the United States.  He observed that at least in the business world, there was a general assumption of truthfulness and honesty.  He concluded that this is what makes American business work.

I find that interesting.  It wasn't our laws or our ingenuity that make our businesses work.  It wasn't our technology or our work ethic.  It wasn't our universities, our natural resources, or our intelligence.  He concluded it was our honesty in business that made our economy work.  He further concluded that it was our generally Christian worldview that provided the expectation of general honesty.  This Chinese man was so impacted by what he saw that he became a Christian himself.  He concluded that Christianity was the answer China needed for its own society, and he took his new faith with him when he repatriated.

While I believe this Chinese man accurately assessed why America has been so economically productive historically, I don’t believe he grasped the decay in trust that has grown in the U.S.  in recent decades.  Things are definitely changing.   In his book, Coming Apart, Charles Murray addresses the topic of societal trust and community, drawing upon the work of Francis Fukuyama in Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity.  He charts the rapid decline in perceived trustworthiness, fairness and helpfulness across all of American society, and particularly among working class whites.  Though I am oversimplifying his conclusions, he seems to be saying he believes the increasing ethnic diversity in the United States has had a significant negative impact on trust.  His belief seems to be that as more and more distinct groups are formed, it becomes very easy to view other groups with suspicion leading to a breakdown in trust.

While there is no doubt that Charles Murray's statistical measures of the effects are accurate, I think he has missed the point on the causes of the breakdown of societal trust.  I don't believe the problem is ethnic nor cultural diversity.  I believe as our society has focused more and more on the individual and less on the collective good, our societal trust has been replaced with self-interest independent of our ethnic or community groups.   Left to our own devices, which we increasingly are as we abandon faith at alarming rates, we are all self-focused and unconcerned about others.  Human nature tends to view others through the lens of ourselves:  if we are self-serving, we assume others are too, and we act accordingly when dealing with them.  If I know that I intend to take every advantage of someone else, I assume they will take advantage of me.  When I've been taken advantage of, my natural state is to return that selfishness in kind.  I believe what we are seeing in society is the complete unraveling of what historically has been a strong societal trust as we pursue individual self-promotion.

Why have we moved from an elevation of community to a focus on self?  There are many reasons, but I believe some are much stronger than others.  I believe as we move beyond post-modernism, we are as a society beginning to embrace a belief that there is really no such thing as truth.  As secularism and atheism is on the rise, we see a loss of belief in anything transcendent - certainly a loss of belief in an absolute, right from wrong, truth-giving God.  If there is no God, there is no real right, no wrong - no standard of behavior.  If there's no standard and selfishness is the norm, why would you trust someone else?  Why not watch out for yourself and take advantage of others if it benefits you?  Who is there to answer to?

As John Adams stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  He understood that you cannot legislate your way to honesty and trust.  Virtue has to be embedded in the character of the people.  So what do we do?  I think the burden lies with those of us who claim to know God.  We must lead by following in the teachings of Jesus Christ and put his words into practice.  We need to take the high road and show grace to others.  We need to expect the best from them, give the benefit of a doubt, and not retaliate when we are wronged.  We must overlook offenses and forgive actions against us. We need to be scrupulously truthful in every word.  We need to be honest in every business deal or transaction.  We need to be generous.  As Christ taught us, we need to treat others the way we would want to be treated.

Perhaps if our lives begin to match what we say we believe, the throngs of people who are living without concern for God will be more interested in knowing him too.  I'm confident of one thing:  if we continue on our current course, things are not going to get better.  In fact, I believe that if Christians don't lead the way in honesty, forgiveness and grace, American society has a very poor outlook indeed.  Jesus encouraged us to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to others and to forgive them when they wronged us (Matthew 5:38-48).  The apostle Paul taught that when Christians demanded their personal "rights" from their brothers, they were defeated already (1 Cor 6:7).  It's time for Christians to put these commands into practice.

The hard part is that we aren't able to put these virtues into practice apart from God working through us.  The real answer, as Jesus taught us, is to ask God to give us this kind of love for our fellow man, this kind of honesty and this kind of truthfulness.  Experience, history and Scripture have taught us we can't get there on our own.  Only God can change a heart.  It's high time we asked God to change our hearts.  As much as our society mocks "Trusting Jesus", we are witnessing the inevitable results of not doing so.  Now is the time for followers of Christ to put our actions where we claim our faith is.  If we can learn to trust God, we may just also begin to rebuild trust with each other.  Do you agree?

Link to Part 1