*Simple Faith

Two curly-haired children stood in front of their father as he knelt down to hug them. They were dressed in their best clothes: Jimmy in dark pants, white shirt, suspenders, and bowtie, and Jenny in a pink dress, white shoes, and ribbons in her golden hair. It was not every day that they went down to the train station to see their father off on a long trip.

Daddy was talking. "I'm going to be gone for a while—I don't know how long, but I'll be back before you know it. I have to take care of some business out of the country, and once that's done, I'm coming home to stay. So, mind your Momma and do your chores to help her out. You'll both probably be a foot taller when I get back, but I will be back, I promise."

He gave their mother a kiss and a long hug, and then he was gone. The train pulled out of the station, and they waved like mad as they watched it chug away. Soon, there was nothing else to see, so they sadly returned home, changed clothes, and went about their daily routine.

Days passed, then weeks, then months. Daddy's business overseas seemed to be taking longer than he had thought. Momma told them not to worry, that he would be back with them before they knew it. If they just kept themselves busy, the time would go faster, she said. So Jimmy and Jenny plunged into their school work, did all their chores, read long books, played with the neighbor kids, and grew like beansprouts.

Yet, Daddy still had not come home. As they often did, the children sat on the porch swing in the cool of the evening just before bedtime, watching the fireflies come out. Jenny suspected that Jimmy was down, and he proved it a few minutes later. "I don't think Daddy's coming back," he said. "If he was, he'd be here already. He's forgotten about us."

"That's not true!" said Jenny fiercely, almost shouting. "Daddy said he would come back, so he is coming back!"

Jimmy just shook his head, saying, "How do you know? You're just a little girl."

"So what if I'm a little girl!" she yelled. "Daddy promised! He'll be back soon, just you wait!"

They had similar arguments over the next weeks, Jimmy always doubting, Jenny always certain that their father would arrive home soon. She looked for him everywhere, expecting him to be walking up the drive when she peeked out the front window or be at the train station when they went into town. Jimmy mocked her for a silly goose, but she never wavered in her certainty that their Daddy would come back just as he had said.

Then, suddenly, he was home. They woke up one morning and stumbled out to the kitchen for breakfast, and Daddy was there, kneeling in front of them, giving them the biggest, longest hug that they had ever had! He told them how much he had missed them and how he had wanted to come home sooner, but things had just not worked out until the last few weeks. Then he had hurried back to be with them again for good.

Jenny shed tears of pure joy, refusing to let her father go, but Jimmy was bawling like a baby, choking out, "I'm sorry, Daddy! I'm sorry!"

"What do you mean?" Daddy asked, concerned. "There's nothing to be sorry about."

Wiping away tears, Jimmy said, "I didn't believe you were coming back. Jenny said you would, but it had been so long, and you weren't here, so I thought you would never come back to us."

"Well, here I am!" Daddy said. "Now you know you can trust my word."

*****

While this may be just a story about a little girl's simple faith, it captures the essence of the biblical concept of faith. Sometimes, we tend to make things a bit too theological and difficult, wanting to know all the facets and permutations of a doctrine, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of faith, it is trusting Him, taking God at His word and believing it. In its most basic form, faith can be expressed in the sentiment, "If God said it, that's good enough for me!"

We grapple with the definition that the author of Hebrews pens in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." We look in various Bible translations for one that will make it plain, something like "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see" (New English Translation). We delve into the Greek words for a clearer picture of the author's intent. We pore through commentaries for learned opinions about the verse—and we may still come away scratching our heads.

We know from verses like Hebrews 11:1 that faith is not simple in all its theological ramifications, but in its everyday use, it is not difficult. While He does not use the word "faith" on this occasion, it is what Jesus alludes to in Luke 11:28, "Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" His declaration is reminiscent of the times when people—usually Gentiles—came to Him for healing and simply believed that, in saying the sick person would be healed, all was well. That was the case when the centurion asked Him to heal his servant, and Jesus "marveled, and said to those who followed, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel'" (Matthew 8:10).

The apostle Paul, speaking of the faith of Abraham, calls him "the father of us all" (Romans 4:16). What marked the greatness of Abraham's faith? Paul answers for us in Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6: "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." The patriarch trusted God's promise that his descendants from the then-unborn Isaac would be as the number of stars in the heavens (Genesis 15:3-5). God's promise was good enough for him. It would happen just as God had said.

His faith in God's Word sustained him when, years later, God tested him: "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and . . . offer him . . . as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you" (Genesis 22:2). How could his offspring be as numerous as the stars if Isaac died before having children? So, when Isaac asked where the lamb for the offering was, Abraham answered in faith, "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering" (verses 7-8). He went so far as to bind his son and raise the knife, knowing, in faith, that God would intervene or perform a resurrection so that His promise would not be broken.

Such is the simple faith God desires us to display in the course of our daily lives. Paul teaches that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). Faith comes and grows when we hear God's Word and believe it, trusting God to do as He has said. So David writes in Psalm 37:5: "Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." That is a promise we can count on!

Whom Do We Trust?

This past week, Reader's Digest released a nationwide, 1,000+-respondent poll managed by a marketing research firm called The Wagner Group. The poll's purpose was to find out which people and ideals have most earned the confidence of Americans, thus the name, "Reader's Digest Trust Poll." This spawned a list of "The Most Trusted People in America," which contained some surprising results. The magazine's press release about the list explains how the polling worked:

Reader's Digest compiled a list of more than 200 American opinion shapers, leaders and headline makers from 15 highly influential professions and presented it to more than 1,000 Americans, a representative sample of adults living in the United States, asking them to rank each name on how trustworthy they thought each individual was. Trustworthiness was determined by integrity and character, exceptional talent, drive to personal excellence, internal moral compass, message, honesty and leadership.

In other words, the list of individuals from which respondents had to choose were pre-selected by the marketing research firm, pre-biasing the results, and the responses were, of course, entirely subjective and based on the public face of the shaper, leader, or headline-maker. That being the case, the individuals listed as "trusted" may not in fact be trustworthy at all but just appear to be so from what (little) the respondents know about them. In the end, then, the list itself is meaningless—more of a popularity poll—but it does give some insight into the American psyche.

Liz Vaccariello, Reader's Digest editor-in-chief and chief content officer, provided her assessment of the poll and list to ABC's "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts, who happens to be the list's most trusted woman on television:

The poll results were fascinating, fun and shocking. We trust because it feels good, but putting our faith in the wrong place often carries a high price. While the list showed what Americans think about those they see regularly in the news, on television and in movies, our poll also revealed that we put our trust in do-gooders, that tweets do not always equal trust, and that we trust people we know more than anyone famous.

As she indicates, the poll behind the list reveals that most people trust their doctors (77%), "spiritual advisors" (71%), and their children's teachers (66%) more than any public figure, but the difference is slight. Sixty-five percent of Americans find actor Tom Hanks—the highest-scoring public figure—to be trustworthy, followed closely in spots two through four by actors Sandra Bullock (63%), Denzel Washington (62%), and Meryl Streep (61%). Five actors in all made the top-ten (these four plus actress Julia Roberts), and ten more actors slotted in lower on the list. Unbelievably, these scores made movie acting the most highly trusted profession in the survey! Now we know why actors feel so free to spout their frequently extreme views on the issues of the day: A good majority of Americans trust them and their opinions.

That is just the influence of the big screen. While so-called legendary silver-screen actors fill the top slots, those who appear on television may just have even more sway due to the sheer number of TV personalities on the list. Television anchors, journalists, and talk-show personalities—such as the aforementioned Robin Roberts, as well as Ellen DeGeneres, Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, Rachael Ray, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Anderson Cooper, Oprah Winfrey, Christiane Amanpour, George Stephanopoulos, Scott Pelley, Kelly Ripa, Steve Harvey, Savannah Guthrie, Matt Lauer, and Shepard Smith—fill a disproportional number of spots.

This television dominance continues outside of the news category. Americans seem to love both TV doctors and TV judges, as the names of doctors Mehmet Oz, Sanjay Gupta, Travis Stork, Nancy Snyderman, Richard Besser, David Drew Pinsky (Dr. Drew), Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil), and Deepak Chopra and judges Judy Sheindlin and Joe Brown all rated highly. (In fairness, all nine Supreme Court justices also made the list, but most of them placed lower than the TV judges.)

Only one significant Christian minister finds a place on the list: Billy Graham at number 67. A Jewish rabbi, Arthur Schneier, who received the Presidential Citizens Medal, appears at number 48. Of conservative political types, only Condoleezza Rice (#68) and Steve Forbes (#97) made the list, but on the other end of the spectrum, Michelle Obama (#19), Madeleine Albright (#23), Jimmy Carter (#24), Colin Powell (#32), Hillary Clinton (#51), and Barack Obama (#65) did. A fair number of Nobel Prize winners, corporate executives, and sports figures round out the list.

These results suggest that Americans do not really know what trustworthiness is or how to identify it in a person's character. As the Reader's Digest editor noted, Americans "trust because it feels good" and "we put our trust in do-gooders." In other words, they place confidence in people who provide them emotional satisfaction and seem to have good intentions. Those whom they trust do not necessarily have to be honest, dependable, faithful, or responsible (all synonyms of "trustworthy"). In fact, Americans are willing to put their trust in people that they do not really know—except for what has been pre-packaged for them to see on their movie or television screens. In essence, they trust a manufactured image, a lie (consider Habakkuk 2:18 in this light).

The Bible contains a great deal about trust, although it does not always use the word. The New Testament uses "trust" infrequently, but it employs a broader, more important term quite often: "faith." Trust is a major facet of faith—along with belief, submission, agreement, hope, and others—and in this vein, trust means "to have faith in another because one is convinced of his reliability." Ultimately, we can trust God because He is the gold standard of reliability. Zephaniah 3:5 says of God and His righteousness and justice, "He never fails." His love never fails.

People, though, are a different story altogether: They let each other down with regularity in small things and large. In Micah 7:5, the prophet warns, "Do not trust in a friend; do not put your confidence in a companion; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom." If in these times of unbelief we should be wary of those closest to us (see Mark 13:12), how much more should we distrust the flickering image of someone on a screen?

Human beings are inherently untrustworthy due to being full of a grasping, self-centered nature that always seeks to put itself in the best light and in the best situation when the dust settles. We have a treacherous heart (Jeremiah 17:9), one that cannot be fully trusted. As the psalmist writes in Psalm 118:8, "It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man." He is the only One truly worthy of it.

RBV: Psalm 146:3

"Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help."

—Psalm 146:3

The psalmist's advice in this verse is an oft-repeated notion throughout Scripture. Psalm 118:8-9 reads, "It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes." Jeremiah 17:5 puts it even more bluntly, "Thus says the LORD: 'Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD.'" 

This is the essential understanding of this verse: Human beings, compared to God, are fundamentally untrustworthy. While people must be trusted from time to time in everyday life, in the most important matters, however, we cannot afford to lean on the broken crutch of human aid. Ultimately, we are bound to be disappointed because people—even the most well-intentioned—will fail us.

There are several reasons for this. First, people are weak; even the most powerful of men are limited in what they can do. Unlike God, they do not have sovereign control over people, nations, nature, or time. Their limitations make them inconsistent, unable to help when it is needed most.

Second, men are mortal. Several of the other scriptures that warn us not to put our trust other human beings mention that people are here today and gone tomorrow. For instance, Psalm 62:9 tells us, "Surely men of low degree are a vapor, men of high degree are a lie; if they are weighed on the scales,
they are altogether lighter than vapor." And of course, the verse after our subject verse reads, "His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish" (Psalm 146:4). Because men live and die so quickly, they  lack both the wisdom and the perspective to be trusted on the "big questions" of life. Only God has the eternal knowledge and experience to give us right help and answers we need.

Finally, human beings are unreliable. They blow hot and cold, as it were. They have self-interests that sometimes align with our own and at other times do not. Princes—leaders—especially, do not have our best interests in mind, as they have, not only personal desires, but also political goals to pursue. God, however, though the greatest Leader in the universe, always does what is best for us. Moreover, He is always faithful to what He has promised (I Corinthians 1:9), so if we go to Him and ask Him for help that He has pledged to us, He will give it.

This verse gives us good advice. We would do well to heed it.