Building the Case for Divine Trust

What does it take to put your trust in someone else?

Clinging to human beings or human-generated power, we’ve established, kind of contradicts the concept of trusting in God. But let’s analyze a little more closely why human power is not reliable, and why Godly power is, and see how understanding trust more closely can benefit our spiritual lives (and our business lives as well).

The first thing to establish is that when we speak of “faith” or “belief” in God, we don’t mean believing that God exists. Sometimes people use the word faith in this way, and yet the notion that we have to work on believing that God exists contradicts much of the ethos of Judaism.

Why? Well, let’s say a great and powerful leader miraculously rescued you and your people from servitude and then provided you with all your needs in a barren desert. During this time, though operating in somewhat mysterious ways, he also communicated with you directly. He then wishes to enter into a covenant with you, wherein you accept upon yourself certain obligations in exchange for his everlasting commitment to you along with a piece of land he plans to bequeath to you.

So…let’s pause there for a minute. This great king or miracle worker addresses the people, intending to lay out the basic expectations of the covenant.

“The first thing you must do is believe that I exist,” he says.

Um…what???

The people are likely to turn to one another in confusion and say, “Was that even a question? I mean…we are listening to you, right? We can actually hear you talking. We’ve been witnessing your intervention in our lives for the past several months. How could any of that be…if there were a question of your existing?”

In other words, in Jewish tradition, belief in God’s existence goes without saying. We don’t question it. We don’t need commandments to believe in it. We experienced it firsthand. We just don’t doubt it.

So where does faith come in? It comes in at a much more practical level – at the level of trust, of our actual willingness to rely on God and His Providence to guide and provide for us in our lives.

And relying on God is something that does not go without saying.

Why? Because to rely on God, we have to know certain things about Him. After all, we could be aware of an extremely powerful human leader or individual and still not feel able to rely on this person in any meaningful way to help us in our lives. I suspect, in fact, that we would have trouble relying on almost all human leaders in any meaningful way…

But sometimes, we do feel able, to whatever extent possible, to rely on other people. People we rely on possess certain qualities, which we might deem to be God-like qualities, that inspire us to place our trust in them.

And though no human being will ever possess these qualities to the degree that God Himself can, it can be helpful to articulate what they are and to see, with clarity, God’s surpassing reliability in the face of man’s and what forms the basis of our trust in Him.

So what are these key qualities (which incidentally, are good for every businessperson to know and cultivate in his relationships with his clients)?

Since this post is long enough…we’ll save that for next time!

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