Trust on endangered species list, but a life of suspicion not worth living

The giant panda, the snow leopard, the albatross, the crowned solitary eagle. All are on the endangered species list. I'd like to suggest a couple of others, unconventional as they may be.

Full-service gas stations, for instance. Once a staple of roadway driving, pay-at-the-pump, do-it-yourself outlets are now the accepted norm. The other day, while in northwestern Pennsylvania, I happened across a small full-service establishment -- which, astonishingly, also boasted the lowest prices in town. A cash-only business, a sign nevertheless proclaimed that customers could charge their purchases with prior approval. Understand what "charge" means in this case. You don't charge gas there on a credit card (not accepted) but with a handshake. The tacit acknowledgment of the business is that nearly all customers are local and can be relied upon to make good on unpaid gas buys the next time they drive past. I wonder how frequently the proprietor has been stiffed by driveoffs who never return. Apparently not enough to discontinue the practice.

It's a matter of trust. Trust in other people, this proprietor and a few others aside, is endangered -- although clearly not extinct. I've found this living in Cape Girardeau. One day I purchased doughnuts and realized the bakery did not accept debit cards, which is all I had on me at the time. "That's all right," the clerk said. "Just take care of it sometime today." Offered that grace, the bill was paid before noon. (It should be pointed out that the bakery today is no longer in business.)

You decide to trust, it seems to me, because a determination is made (perhaps with knowledge, perhaps only with instinct) that most people share the same basic moral compass as yourself. We assume most people will always honor certain boundaries. We assume people won't kill us, won't steal from us, won't abuse our children.

I'm of two minds about trust. I trust that most people will do the best they can most of the time, according to their own code. I also trust that we don't all share the same moral compass. Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to stealing at least $50 billion from his clients. It is the largest investor fraud in American history carried out by a single individual. Madoff admits to wiping out the finances of thousands of people yet wants a judge to let him out on bond so he may live in his luxury Manhattan apartment before trial. That's a person whose compass points in a different direction than most people's.

The chief executive of AIG claims to have had no choice but to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in retention bonuses to employees. This, after the insurance giant received $170 billion in taxpayer funds to stay afloat. In effect, Edward Liddy has declared that public outcry be damned. A contract is a contract. That man has a compass that simply is broken.

Trust in others is often endangered by the experience of living, but we cannot allow it to become extinct. Jesus, who it is safe to say received the proverbial shaft from Pilate, the Sanhedrin and his own disciples, trusted in his last breathing moments. He was still willing to trust -- putting his mother's welfare in the hands of the so-called "beloved disciple" (John 19:26-27), someone who had effectively abandoned Jesus in his final hours, as all the disciples did.

Life teaches us many reasons to be suspicious of others, to pull our horns back, to distrust. Yes, trust is often an endangered species. But if trust goes away entirely, we depart from the example of Jesus. A life of total suspicion is not a life worth living.

Jeff Long is pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau.