A Trustworthy Stranger

I did it again. I did, for the second time, an abysmally foolish thing that I have known, since childhood, that a person should never do. I even blogged about it when I did it the first time, and in that blog post, I wrote, in all caps, that a person should never do what I had done. And tonight, I did it again. I got into a car with a stranger.

The difference is that, this time, he wasn't really a stranger. True, I didn't recognise him, and I probably won't recognise him later when I see him again. At the time I accepted a ride from him, I didn't know his name. But I still sort of knew him. At least, I knew enough about him that I knew that I could trust him.

He was a friend of a friend, or rather, a friend of a handful of people whom I knew to be intelligent people with whom I could trust my life. If they trusted him, I knew I could trust him, even though I knew very little else about him.

This has gotten me to think about trust and how it can be extended, particularly as it applies to the Gospel. I trust God. I trust God's judgement. I am confident that I can trust those whom He trusts.

Admittedly, there are occasions when His trust is betrayed, and, given how He could have seen that coming, I'm going to have to figure out why he would still put the soon-to-be betrayer in a position of trust, knowing that that trust would be betrayed.

But even when His trust seems to have been misplaced, I know that I can trust Him and His eternal plan for our well-being and happiness. Maybe there's a good reason He lets that happen, just like there's a good reason He lets bad things happen to good people. There was an exceptionally good reason Jesus let Judas betray Him, so I don't count Judas' betrayal act as a bad mark against my trust in Jesus' judgement. I put a similar quality of faith in God, who sometimes allows trust to be placed in the hands of those who would betray that trust.

Thankfully, such betrayals are rare. In fact, they're rare enough that I would say that anyone whom God trusts is probably far more trustworthy than a random person off the street, just as my friends' friends are more trustworthy than a random stranger, even if I don't know my friends' friends myself.

I trust my friends' judgement, just as I trust God's, and I trust them enough that I am willing to trust those whom they are willing to trust, even if I know nothing else about my trusted friends' trusted friends.