Navigating Life in a Sea of Distrust
Oct. 28, 2024
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest(s): Dr. Renton Rathbun
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/28/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer: Hello and welcome to this Monday edition of Stand In the Gap Today as we start this last week of October. Hard to believe, isn’t it, but looking at what we’re going to discuss this week, looking back over the weekend things always big events seem like they occur over the weekend, but the biggest event I think over this weekend took place in the Middle East. You are probably all aware of it by now. Israel retaliated against Iran. Now here’s a summary as I would look at it. Really a fairly magnificent orchestration of targeted attacks. They did something that no one expected they could do. They took out radar and missile launching sites from Israel through Syria, through Iraq to Iran. The results include the fact that Israel now has an unrestricted airspace avenue put at that perspective from them to Iran making future attacks more productive and more costly to the enemies of Israel.
Sam Rohrer: In addition, they have proven to Iran that they can reach them without limitation, and they have proven to Russia that Russia’s air defense systems in Syria and Iran and Iraq as well are worthless, thereby embarrassing Russia and Iran. And I’ll share more on some of that later this week. However, today I’m going to have back with me Dr. Renton Rathbun, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Bob Jones University and a regular speaker for and a consultant to biblical worldview for BJU Press, who is the largest producer of Christian biblical worldview, K to 12 textbooks in the nation. Now, the topic I’ve felt led to focus on today is that of trust and the lack of trust. If there’s one thing more greatly lacking in our nation, our culture, and frankly around the world today, I think is a lack of trust nation to nation government to citizen politician to voter people to people. It is people can’t trust others and they don’t know how to live in a climate of distrust. We’re all a part of that. I do believe the problem is real and it is costly. The title I’ve chosen for today’s program is this navigating life in a sea of distrust. And what that I welcome to the program right now, Dr. Renton Rathbun. Renton, thanks for being back with me.
Renton Rathbun: Thank you for having me on the program
Sam Rohrer: Renton. There’s a lot to go over. Let me set this up just a little bit more if I try to think this thing through. When it comes to the matter of trust, everybody’s got their own definition, but to me it’s kind of like the sun. You can tell when it’s shining and you can tell when it’s not in life. We either trust other people or we don’t. And for many of course we operate on the assumption that we can trust them until they violate our trust. So we grant to other people an opportunity to succeed. But in all cases, trust is very easy to fall. Now in this case, I think in many verses of scripture that speak of the subject like Psalm 20 verse seven, it says, some trust in chariot, some trust in horses, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God.
Sam Rohrer: And when I look at that Renton, and I think a couple things, trust is a choice. Trust can be well-placed or it can be dangerously placed. Trust can have a humanly visible object, horses and chariots when it comes to matters of safety, which always fail or it can be in that which we can’t see, the Lord who never fails, trust can be earned, it can be lost. My point is that trust is important and in our day we’re in a place where people in positions of authority and the institutions of authority have so violated the necessary ingredients for a culture of trust that we have a deep culture of distrust. Okay, now with that being said, to get us started, would you give us your thoughts on what you think about the importance of understanding trust and this topic today and define what trust is and perhaps its relationship to some other ingredients that find their way into trust.
Renton Rathbun: The topic of trust actually is way more important than we even think. I think sometimes we think of trust as a part of our daily lives that comes and visits us once in a while. But really it’s even deeper than that. We have to remember that our own salvation in Christ is based on faith and faith alone. And if you look closely at what faith is deep in the constructs of what faith is a beating heart and that beating heart is trust. So to define trust, we need to turn to our scriptures and we have to remember how our scriptures work. Scripture typically gives us a baseline of reality, some kind of truth that is true no matter what from that baseline of reality or that baseline of truth, we are to infer those principles to the world we live in. So this happens in Ephesians five when it talks about Christ and his relationship to the church.
Renton Rathbun: And we’re supposed to infer from that our relationship in our marriages. And so without a truth baseline from scripture, any concept is going to become arbitrary to us. So we’ve got to hold onto that, especially as Christians, understanding that we do have a baseline and our baseline for trust, I believe is found in Proverbs three five. Proverbs three five reads this way, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understandings. And then it goes on to say in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your past straight and don’t be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord. And so when we look at that, what we see from that is the trust in the Lord, trusting in the Lord with all our heart is actually the baseline of truth. And in doing that, the way we do that is by leaning on his understanding, not our understanding.
Renton Rathbun: And so if that’s the baseline, then I guess one way we could infer that into the world we live in is trust is leaning on another’s understanding and finding wisdom in someone else’s eyes. And so when we’re able to do that kind of work where we’re able to in another person be able to lean on their understanding as opposed to our own understanding that activity is what we call trust. Now there’s feelings that come with that that sometimes allow us to do that or feelings that keep us from doing that. There are past experiences that make us believe we can do that and past experiences that make us believe we can’t do that. But in the end, trust is leaning on someone else’s understanding as opposed to our own or maybe to reinforce our own. But that kind of thing requires a lot of work and the verse that you quoted in fact about chariots trusting in chariots, but we trust in the Lord, the word trust there in the Lord is actually a Hebrew word for remembering the Lord. So Lord really does give us reasons to believe and trust him, not just a blind trust.
Sam Rohrer: Excellent Renton. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you’re thinking with us and stay with us as we go through the program because think about it, is it possible really for us to live without trust? We’re just wired to trust in something and trust is valuable, is it not? And when it’s lost, boy do we feel it. So when we come back, we’ll continue in our discussion of navigating life in a sea of distrust, the kind of culture in which we are living today distrust. Well if you’re just joining us, our theme today is this, navigating life in a sea of distrust. And my special guest is Dr. Renton Rathbun. He’s director of the center for Biblical Worldview at Bob Jones University and who’s a regular speaker for biblical worldview instruction for BJU press. And so we’re trying to handle this issue of trust.
Sam Rohrer: It’s real, sometimes hard to define. We try to do that last segment and we’ll further expand upon it. And this one here, I want to look at this, what’s the danger of eroded trust? Think about that. Regardless of where in society one lives, all of you listening to me right now would be in various different areas. It could be business or family or church or government, it could be in all of those areas, all those jurisdictions. But the importance of trust is essential for any degree of success almost regardless of how you define that. Yet the opposite is also true. Where there is eroded trust, there is great danger. Now one common secular definition of trust is this. It is the glue of society right now that came from an article, a Forbes article, a business magazine, Forbes article from 2021. Let me just read just a piece from that article.
Sam Rohrer: It says this trust is hard to define, but we know when it’s lost and when that happens, we withdraw our energy and our level of engagement, we go on an internal strike, not wanting to be sympathetic to the person who we feel broke our trust. The dynamics of trust are delicate, delicate in important relationships and the loss of trust can be costly not only psychologically but also financially and in terms of work and livelihood. Then they go on by saying trust is an ongoing exchange between people and it is not static. It can be gained or it can be lost. I thought that was fairly insightful. It’s a secular perspective, but Renton, here’s the question. Why is the presence of trust between people in any aspect of society, as I just talked about there, it’s all levels, but why is it so important in essential for successful living regardless of how one may define success? In other words, using this Forbes definition, why is trust recognized as the glue of society?
Renton Rathbun: Satan is cunning in eroding the trust in a society. He does not have to erase the term trust. All he has to do is redefine it. And I believe that trust is an important glue of society because you can see how it erodes. So trust in a society like we live in today tends to no longer be defined in terms of being able to lean on someone else’s understanding and wisdom. It’s soon, and this is an important point, so listen carefully, trust has become about supporting someone else who can advance my own understanding. So no longer do I put my, if I can say faith or I can put in any word there, but no longer do I lean on someone else’s understanding, I support someone so that my own understanding can be advanced. In other words, trust becomes a question of self benefit while I continue to lean on my own understanding without the glue of trust in society, everyone does what is right in their own eyes without a baseline of truth.
Renton Rathbun: What is right becomes personal. It’s no longer communal and agreed upon by many, but it becomes my personal right and eventually what is right becomes arbitrary. In a society like that we will never lean on another person’s understanding or seek the wisdom from another person. What we do is we do what’s right in our own eyes so that we can advance what we already think is right and then we pretend to trust so that someone else can then help my understanding prevail. In the end, what I’m saying is we lose love for our neighbor because we cannot trust them. And what we think trust is really is just manipulation, normalized
Sam Rohrer: That I think is brilliant. Renton, I’m thinking as you described that it’s very much like your friend and our Dr. George Barna that we have on regular all his research that would talk about where the mindset of the American people are and frankly those around the world is that the defining of truth which you talked about in the last segment ends up being about how I feel, what I believe it to be. And therefore what you are saying is that when that becomes the basis for trust, there’s always going to be a problem with it.
Renton Rathbun: That’s right, that’s right. Just,
Sam Rohrer: Yeah. So I’m sorry. So comment on that further and then take it into this. So if that’s the case, let’s talk about consequences because whether it’s person to person or within a marriage or within a church or citizen to government, which we’re right in the middle of that as we see elections coming up, but those are institutions of authority as created by God, give some examples of consequences within those institutions, things that occur that become dangerous. Those Forbes would say a problem when trust is eroded.
Renton Rathbun: And so when we keep thinking in these terms that Satan has worked in our society about trust, that we tend to use this term not as something we think about how another person is someone I can lean on, but rather how another person affirms what I already believe. It becomes a benefit gaining act instead of a sacrificial act to submit to someone else’s understanding. I mean, think about how that’s so twisted. Scripture talks about trust being me, submitting to someone else’s understanding. Satan has turned trust into how can I benefit from someone else by them pushing what I already think my own understanding. And when that happens, the whole society is affected in the home. You have men to satisfy their laziness, manipulate their wives so that the man doesn’t have to lead anymore. What he does is he already has an understanding of who he wants to be in that relationship.
Renton Rathbun: And so the manipulation begins to reaffirm in the wife’s mind that she needs to lead and not him the wife, to calm her incessant fears because of this manipulates her husband so that she might maintain control of the household even when the man decides to finally try to lead at some point in civil government, it becomes a giant manipulation arm of powerful people who want to use the beliefs of others to benefit themselves. So they actually look to see what everyone’s convictions are and then use those convictions as a way to get them into power and to do what they want. Truth becomes a luxury and is no longer a condition for my convictions in the church. This happens, the church can become a despot of insecure men that are using each other to promote their own agendas because without trust all you really have is loyalty without love.
Renton Rathbun: And soon people are seeking to please the men in charge who are trying to push their agendas in order to seek their approval so that they can move up in the ranks as well. But the loyalty is a loveless one. It is designed only for approval and achievement in the end, trust demands truth and love. Without love, even if your agenda is good or has some kind of good outcome you want, you’re still left with a loveless loyalty. It is the combination of love and loyalty that adds up to trust, love must be the access point to lean on another person’s understanding. And if we don’t have this kind of baseline, whether it be our churches, our homes or the civil government, everything becomes a game. It becomes a game of manipulation. How do I maintain the lifestyle I want? I have to get my wife to think this way or I have to get my husband to think this way.
Renton Rathbun: The government, how do I see the government? Do I see them as an arm that is really trying to protect my concerns or can I see through all that in my church? Am I seeking loyalty because I am insecure and I want to have control? Or am I really practicing love for my brother or sister in Christ by really trusting them or leaning on their understanding even if it’s kind of scary to me because I don’t have the control that I want? Those are the things where this kind of thinking really does seep into our everyday lives.
Sam Rohrer: Renton, and we’re going to move into the next segment here, but you made connection multiple times. We will build it out a little bit more. We will like to, and that is that trust is either related to selfless service on one hand or greedy, selfish gain. You connected those a number of times. Maybe we can build that out just a little bit further that gets right down to the base desire of our own hearts, ladies and gentlemen, doesn’t it? Just think about that. But we’ll move into the next segment. Talk about trust and leaders and trustworthy leadership. Well, thus far on the program, my guest, Dr. Renton Rathbun and myself, we are approaching this matter of trust and the title is Navigating Life in a Sea of Distrust. Clearly we know that we’re living in a culture where there’s very little trust and we could say that over the last few years that that amount of trust plummeted and we’re not going to get into all of that, but we’ve defined it a little bit and in the last segment talked about it in a general sense talking about when there is no trust or when there is broken trust, the consequences are very wide and broad and it permeates every relationship, individual, individual within a home, within a church citizen to government.
Sam Rohrer: And it produces a lot of negative things. Alright, now moving into a slightly different area, but talking about trust and leaders and leadership. Now when it comes to desiring trust, I don’t know about you, but I have yet to find anyone who does not understand the value of trust. Doesn’t it seem like everybody wants to get our trust? Every position of leadership seems to me to strategize how to go about gaining your trust. In my trust, every employer, banker, they need your trust. Every politician promise you all kinds of things. Try to get your trust. Religious leaders, every doctor, alright? If you don’t believe your doctor, you’re not going to go to your doctor, right? So teachers, parents, husbands or wife, you get the idea In our time of elections right now, you realize how many millions of dollars are being spent by the two parties in their campaigns and what are they trying to gain your trust.
Sam Rohrer: They want your vote, right? They’re trying to gain your trust. For instance, listen to this quote, figure out who said this and I’ll tell you quote to say that we have arrived at a pivotal moment for trust building globally. One that social entrepreneurs, private sector leaders and government officials must rally to support. May sound like a squishy call to arms, but it’s not. Here’s why rebuilding trust needs to be at the top of the agenda for us all. Doesn’t that sound good? It is good, it’s true. But do you know who said that? These are the words from the World Economic Forum Group. These are the guys who actually measure trust. They actually, I’ve seen the chart, they’ve actually taken and laid out the countries of the world in terms of trust versus GDP per capita by nation. It’s amazing. But this is the same entity of world leaders who reject flat out moral truth.
Sam Rohrer: The Bible, God as creator, certainly judge, and reminds me also of the serpent in the garden of Eden who knew the value of trust and he lied to Eve to gain her trust. And then the Adam, so everybody wants trust, but for what reason Renton, in segment one and two, we made the connection with trust and truth. Now could you go back and build that out now a little bit in regard to those in authority in regard to how they must choose, what type of trust they attempt to create? Do they create it through lies like the devil or the world economic forum guys? Or how can they produce trust in a way that actually results in trust?
Renton Rathbun: I was looking at the Pew Center that they created this survey that surveyed people between the ages of 18 and 29 and the topic was trust and distrust in America. And what they found was people between the ages of 18 and 29 all agreed to about 46% that they trusted elected officials at 46%, which is a pretty high number when you’re thinking about the maturity differences between 18 and 29, 50 4% trusted business leaders. And you can see why with people respecting money so much nowadays, and a lot of these business leaders like Elon Musk and others who are household names now, but what I found most interesting was 72%, which is a huge number. 72% of people between the ages 18 and 29 all agree that they trust their college professors. And that tells you something about how America has steered the way even our children grow up to believe what trust is.
Renton Rathbun: These are mostly people who have been surveyed through people who have gone to public colleges and universities. And so almost this idea of truth being the cornerstone of trust has become so foreign to our thinking and now has been how I feel has become the cornerstone of whether I can trust you or not. Do you relate to my feelings? Do you relate to my experience? If you relate to my experience, I can trust you. And then in that relation, which is typically the lie that my experiences and emotions are the arbiters of all truth becomes, this lie becomes the cornerstone of trust. And so you can see how things have degraded so much, but when you look at scripture, you see in Hebrews 13:17, it tells us to obey our leaders and submit to them speaking of leaders in the church for they are keeping watch over your souls.
Renton Rathbun: And so there’s that sense of submission to your leaders in the church, but then it says in James three, one, let not many of you become teachers speaking of the church, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. So on one side, particularly speaking of the church, you have leadership that the congregation is expected to submit to. On the other side you see this judgment that is more strict for the leaders of the church, and so you have this dichotomy where we live in a world where if the leadership does not relate to my personal feelings or experiences, I cannot trust you enough or submit to you. And then at the same time, this pressure put on the leaders of the church that if you don’t lead well, you will incur a stricter judgment from the Lord. You would think in this world you would have church leaders that are desperate to seek truth, even if it means that seeking this truth and trusting in the Lord first they would take on the problems that come with that in our church because the problems here on earth don’t compare to having a stricter judgment from the Lord.
Renton Rathbun: But instead what we see are leaders of the church that are okay with some lying as long as it incurs more people’s trust. And so you see more and more pastors submitting to L-G-B-T-Q ideology, you see more pastors calling sin a form of victimhood that these people are broken and they’re victims of sin and only God can bring them back from this, from their victimhood. And they’re no longer calling sin, sin. They’re no longer calling these what is good, good and what is evil, evil, but rather they are trying to connect with someone’s experience so that they might gain their trust. And it is a trust based on a lie.
Sam Rohrer: Renton, as I’m hearing you, again, it takes it back to Ephesians three, five and six, you talked about trust in the Lord to me that says the object of my trust, trust in the Lord make him the object, not my own understanding. That’s what you’re describing. Let’s talk about this as we conclude and then we will talk about how to repair trust in the last segment. But it seems to me that if we have trust in anything, anyone other than God and his word, it will fail. So we’re talking really the object of our trust being God and his word, absolute truth versus anything other than God and truth are we not?
Renton Rathbun: That’s exactly right. So it says, and this is something in our strict understanding of reality, of Proverbs three, five, it says in all your ways acknowledge him, acknowledge the Lord who is the way, the truth and the life. And in all your ways you are acknowledging the Lord, he makes your path straight. In other words, you are able to understand what Proverbs two six tells us, which is through the Lord, you receive your wisdom from his mouth, you receive your knowledge and understanding and that becomes hugely important because as leaders you are expected not just to revere truth, but you are to love it. And you are to love truth because God is giving you the wisdom to do so and who you put your trust in and what you expect trust to be all comes from that one idea that in all your ways you are acknowledging the Lord. And without that you are not trustworthy.
Sam Rohrer: Ladies and gentlemen, doesn’t it bring us right back? We can’t get away from it. Jesus Christ and what we view him to be, I am. He says the way, the truth and the life, nobody comes to the Father trust except through him. You can’t get away from it. When we come back, we’ll talk about restoring lost trust. Well, Renton, as we go into our final segment now talking about trust and you’ve been intertwining it, you’re listening, trust and truth, they sound very similar. You cannot separate them. We’ve talking about that. But when trust is broken, and we are in a time when there’s very little trust in relationships that are not broken, which we’ve been talking about why that is when we approach input sanctioning or confirming of information as rent, and you were saying in this agent which we live driven by feelings rather than absolute truth, we try to get others to sanction what we’re thinking, our own understanding rather than God’s understanding.
Sam Rohrer: And so whenever that happens, okay, we’re going to end up in a failed or a distrust relationship now because though we’re in a circumstance where things are broken, as we conclude for this program right now, I’d like to get your recommendations from scripture on practically how to restore even as the Forbes quote and others that I quoted recognize that trust can be gained, trust can be lost, but trust lost is very difficult to actually restore. However, right? Let’s go back to scripture. If person’s in authority, I think there’s two areas. The person who has experienced failed trust, who’s been disappointed, and then the person who’s in authority, like we talked about in the last segment, who have an opportunity to build or to tear down trust. Let’s go here. If a person’s in authority, be it government or business or home or church or relationship with just two people where trust has been broken, what must the person in a position of leadership or authority do if they truly want trust to be rebuilt?
Renton Rathbun: Yeah. So as we’re thinking as Christians, we have to first think if I’m in a position of authority, I first want to know what are the biblical principles that uphold the authority that I’m in? In other words, when I broke that trust, does scripture say I am now disqualified from this authority? Or does scripture demand I remain in this authority, but there’s a process I must follow. So sometimes trust is lost based on miscommunication. Sometimes trust is lost because of sin. So the one in authority must see what is demanded of him in lieu of whether it be miscommunication or it be sin, then he has to follow the process. So if it’s a pastor, the scripture is very clear about a process that must be followed through the elders and confessing the sin publicly and that kind of thing. Sometimes it could even lead to disqualification, but they follow the process.
Renton Rathbun: As a husband, you are head of your home whether you like it or not. And so when you’ve broken trust, you have to follow the process of repentance and demonstrate that you have either sinned or there is miscommunication that needs to be fixed. But either way, there is an adjustment of someone’s view of love. Typically they have to decide, okay, in my relation to this person, if I’m miscommunicating with this group or this person, what is it about love that I need to remember in order to communicate better or to care about my communication? If I’ve sinned against these people, what is it that I rejected love for these people or this person for room for my sin? So how do I create a process where that doesn’t happen again? Once that process begins to be followed, the person has to go back to scripture and say, what do I put my confidence in to lead again? If I haven’t disqualified myself, I need to stay in authority. Then what upholds my authority biblically that I can have confidence in so I can begin leading again, otherwise my leadership becomes weak. It becomes this self-conscious, unsure thing. And with that it could lead right to sin again. So I have to hold to the process and I have to hold to what upholds my authority in the first place.
Sam Rohrer: So you are describing, just like we’ve talked about, trust is earned. A dictator can demand obedience, but you cannot demand trust, can you? I mean you are describing trust as something that is earned by following what God says, selfless service as sacrificial. Those kinds of things are what can regain lost trust. But there’s no shortcut to regaining trust, is there?
Renton Rathbun: No, there’s no shortcut. And what’s even more amazing, the only person that gets to demand trust in the universe is God. But even God throughout, if you read throughout the Old Testament, he always tells his people, do you remember that I am the one that brought you out of Egypt and saved you from the Egyptians and gave you your land? Don’t you remember? And he even has them build altars so that the children can say, what’s that altar for? Well, let’s remember the works of the Lord. Remember the works of the Lord. And the one person that can just demand trust if he wants to, because he has authority to do it, still gives us reasons to remember his goodness so that we might trust him.
Sam Rohrer: So there is a choice back to what we’ve talked about, to trust is a choice and the object of our trust truth, God is the only one that can produce a trust that will not fail. So in the last couple of minutes, you talked about those in a position of authority. What about the person who’s just the average person who is under authority? What should be their role? What is their part to play in restoring a climate of trust
Renton Rathbun: As one under authority? You can make an appeal on the basis of the ultimate authority God. So in other words, the one under authority is not a lifeless rug that’s allowed to be stepped upon, but there are biblical standards to appeal to there’s, there’s a process of appeal. And in that process of appeal, the one under authority can call upon the employer, the government, the institution, the person, and say, there is a standard that has been agreed upon in the first place that I’m calling you back to under the name of God. Now, there are two outcomes when the authority responds. So the authority might respond with a non-compliance. In other words, the authority might say, Nope, I’m not going to repent. I’m going to keep moving this way. When the authority doubles down on their position instead of repenting from breaking trust, the one under authority has to be prepared to sacrifice for their convictions. Whether it’s church discipline, our voting practices might mean quitting our job. Whatever it is, we have to follow through with our convictions. But number two, the other thing is when the authority does, when we win the appeal and the authority repents and says, I have done wrong, we have to remember to be gracious and to not hold it against them for the rest of their lives, but to be able to reestablish their authority in our minds.
Sam Rohrer: Renton Rathbun, thank you so much for today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re at the end of the program. I hope and trust that this has been helpful. I know it’s practical because we’re all dealing with it. I’m dealing with it. We’re all walking through this. Go back and listen to this program again. I encourage you to do that. Stand on the gap radio.com and get a transcript of it as well right there to read it, follow through, look at it again, and consider this matter of trust. We all play a part in both creating distrust or creating a restorative culture of trust.
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