You and me in the final two, ok?

One of the premises we have built Threads around is authenticity. So, in order to make sure I’m staying authentic, I am going to reveal something about myself: I love “Survivor.” I’ve pretty much watched every episode of every season since the beginning. I remember seeing Richard wearing that blurry circle for most of the first season. I remember Rupert and his tie-dye shirts, Johnny Fairplay and his “dying” grandmother charade. I guess for me there is something about the whole thing of balancing manipulation and trust with people that I like. The whole game is spent making alliances and then breaking them. I just want to see one group stick with each other no matter how tempting the other options look. And after watching this past season I want to see some guys who can withstand the schemes of women. The ladies literally toyed with and then destroyed the guys. Seeing poor little Eric buy into their plan was just painful. They dangled the apple, and he bit. I guess some things simply never change!

I say all this for a reason, I promise. The game of “Survivor” is built around trust, but in a wicked, twisted sense of the word. In order to survive, you have to trust some people, but you have to always be looking for better options and evaluating what options your “friends” are thinking about. In truth, I guess this is why the show is fun to watch, but it is a poor example to follow in real life.

Trust is the cornerstone of any relationship we have. Without trust we would find ourselves playing “Survivor” every day of our lives. Think about it for a minute. Which relationship do you have that is not built on trust? We lay ourselves out there and make ourselves vulnerable, and trust that we will not be hurt. We trust friends with information, and we trust them not to use it to hurt us. We trust people to be who they say they are and do what they say they are going to do. When they don’t do those things, someone gets hurt. That’s why trust is such a difficult topic. You have to have it, but it leaves you dangerously vulnerable.

Think about this for a moment. When you read Bible studies or commentaries, you have to trust that the author knows Jesus and was accurately writing truth about Jesus. When you hear a sermon, you have to trust that the preacher spent time with Jesus and didn’t rip a sermon off the Internet. When you go to the doctor, you have to trust he knows what he is talking about. The list could go on, but the point is every day we have to trust people. The flipside that impacted me the most this week is that other people have to trust you and me. My daughter has to trust me to do what is best for her. My wife has to trust me on a thousand different levels. You have to trust on some level. When it gets boiled down to something that specific, it’s quite heavy. Literally, everything we do is built on trust, and unfortunately there is only one source we can completely trust, and that obviously is Christ. But we must never let that prevent us from being as trustworthy as possible, or prevent us from trusting other people. Sure failures will come, as I did by not writing last week, but that’s where forgiveness comes in to play, and that is the best segue I’ve ever had because that’s the lesson for next week.