Rebuilding Trust: Something’s Broken

Gallup just came out with their poll for 2009 of most trusted professions. Nurses top the list again, followed by pharmacists, high school teachers, medical doctors, policemen, clergy, and . . .who cares after that. I just wanted to say clergy. That was pretty much the top tier. The middle tier includes journalists, contractors, and real estate agents. The bottom tier has the usual suspects – lawyers, congressmen, used car salesmen, and below that, telemarketers and lobbyists.

Keep in mind, this poll is the results of a phone survey asking for people’s opinions and perceptions. This doesn’t mean that car salesmen or telemarketers are untrustworthy. And it doesn’t mean that all nurses or pharmacists are highly ethical. But the poll does say a lot about our perceived level of trust in different professions. Do you know which profession took the biggest hit in trust from last year to this year? Bankers. The events of the last year or two continue to have ramifications.

Who do you trust? I asked this question on Christmas Eve because it’s an important one. Trust begins and ends with God. The question is not just, “Do we believe in God?” but, “Do we trust in God?” Trust is stronger than belief. Because our understanding of belief is often no more than “give mental assent to.” Our idea of belief is watered down from what the Bible says believing is. It’s probably more helpful to us if we talk about trust. Trust is really what the Lord is asking of us.

But as we also mentioned, trust gets broken in this broken-down world. You don’t have to look to a national villain like Bernie Madoff or Eliot Spitzer – we can find broken trust in our own lives. What do we do when someone breaks trust?

Last week we mentioned how Jacob, son of Isaac, went to his kinsman Laban’s country and there saw Laban’s daughter Rachel and instantly fell in love. Rachel was the most beautiful woman Jacob had ever seen. Jacob told himself that he was going to marry this girl. And indeed he did. But it didn’t happen the way he planned. Laban manipulated young Jacob, mostly because he could. Jacob was so full of raging desire that he would do anything. We have a saying for someone who has fallen in love: “he worships the ground she walks on.” How destructive this can be when it is literally true. Jacob was looking to Rachel to be his Savior. So Laban tricked him into working seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, and then Laban tricked him into marrying Rachel’s older sister, Leah, first.

Don’t pity Jacob too much. Remember who he was and what he had done. Jacob had himself tricked his brother and father out of the family inheritance. Jacob had lied and tricked his way to get advantage. Sometimes we read the Bible very simplistically. We look for the Bible heroes and we declare them utterly good or utterly bad. But our Bible heroes do some bad things sometimes, like lie, cheat, steal, kill, commit adultery. We shouldn’t consider that these things are now good because Bible people did them. We should understand the Bible tells the story because it happened. And then the Bible shows us how God will redeem and bless, not the sin, but the sinners. Jacob and his family had some problems that would continue to fester in the next generation.

The best thing that could have happened to young Jacob was for his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, to say Stop – you lied and cheated. We don’t do things that way. We are a family. Let’s try this again. But they didn’t say that because Rebekah had been complicit in the trickery.

Are there lies and wrong behavior that we tolerate in our own families? The effect of lies swept under the rug is to chip away at the foundation of trust that families and relationships absolutely need. Weakened trust in relationships is like a weakened immune system in the body – we become more susceptible to all kinds of sickness.

Frederick Buechner is known as a great writer who happens to be a Christian. Buechner’s faith comes through his writing, especially when he talks about his own life. And it is also clear that his faith has been hard won. Buechner’s father was an alcoholic who committed suicide. Immediately after his father’s death, his mother whisked him out of state to start somewhere else. They didn’t even stay for the funeral. What’s more, Buechner’s mother didn’t talk about his father and wouldn’t allow him to do so either. Buechner soon realized that his father was not the only one in the family who had problems. He looks back on what he couldn’t have understood as a child, that covering up problems only makes them worse.

“We not only have secrets,” Buechner writes, “we are our secrets.”

Every family and relationship has problems and areas to work on. And it would be a big mistake to think that you can fix people like you can fix a car. That is the way of legalism. And it is deadly.

I get tired realizing that the “work” of spiritual growth in myself and in my family never ends. The need to grow doesn’t end with the year. It doesn’t take a holiday. We must be persistent especially with the poor attitudes and behaviors that seem rooted in us.

One mother decreed to her family that she was no longer writing thank you notes on their behalf. They could write their own. The immediate impact of this was that grandmother didn’t receive thank you notes for the generous checks she had written to her grandchildren. The next year, things were different

“The children came over in person to thank me,” grandma enthusiastically told a friend. “How wonderful!” the friend replied. “What brought on that change?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” grandma responded. “This year I didn’t sign their checks.”

Naming the problem and refusing to enable the problem can have remarkable results. But our problems are rarely solved this easily.



Look at what Jacob did to his new family. He has two wives but not enough wisdom and love for even one. Leah, especially, suffered for this. She was used to being ignored by people as they fawned over her beautiful sister Rachel. But that couldn’t have lessened the sting as her father bartered to get her thrown in the deal of Jacob and Rachel’s marriage. Leah was the girl nobody wanted.

“Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.” Genesis 29.30

Leah had a hole in her heart as big as the one Jacob had. And just as Jacob idolized the beautiful Rachel, and pinned all his hopes on her, Leah began to do the same with Jacob. She made her life trying to get her husband to love her. Listen to what is surely one of the most plaintive passages in the Bible.

“When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben; for she said, “Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.”

Leah kept on bearing children, having sons, each time thinking that this time, Jacob will love me instead of Rachel. But Jacob never does. Leah experiences a lesson we all must learn in life, and that is that this life is bound to disappoint. Leah was made with a heart to love and be loved, but life broke trust with Leah. It happened with her father. And it happened with her husband. The men in her life kept letting her down. Few could blame her if she ended up bitter and angry at her lot.

But Leah chose a different way. She learned something. She is the only person in this story to show spiritual growth. When she had her fourth son her attitude was different.

She said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” No more praise for Jacob. No more pleading and longing for his love. This time Leah will look to the God of her hope who is personal and gracious. She gave her heart finally to the Lord. And in so doing she got her life back. God not only changed Leah but did something very significant for her. She may have had an intuition that God had done something special with the gift of this child. The writer of Genesis knew it. This child was Judah and in Genesis 49 we are told that through Judah the true King and Messiah will someday come. God had come to the girl nobody wanted, the unloved, and made her the ancestral mother of Jesus.

As Timothy Keller writes, “Salvation came into the world, not through beautiful Rachel, but through the unwanted one, the unloved one.” God loved Leah. He is saying I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.


When trust has been broken, can it be rebuilt again? God says yes.
When we realize that something is broken in us then we are ready to take the first steps with him.