From the Editor by Presbyter Matthew Brown
T
rust: It’s precisely because it is ordinary and ubiquitous that it is profound. We scarcely realize how important a role it plays in our society and our relationships. Almost all our knowledge is based on trust. Ask yourself this question: Where did your knowledge of history or literature come from? Did you dig up the artifacts yourself or personally visit the archaeological excavation? Did you read the original manuscripts of Shakespeare or the Gospel of Matthew? No, you didn’t. You’ve only read copies of copies of copies. Almost everything you know about the world, including the existence of Antarctica, is mediated through other people whom you trusted. Even if we could experience everything firsthand, it wouldn’t obviate the need for trust. A vast body of evidence, from psychological studies to courtroom eyewitness testimonies, has shown that our senses aren’t always as reliable as they seem. Approximately 71% of all wrongful convictions in the United States have involved mistaken eyewitness identification. Since the 1960s, social scientists have pointed out the problematic nature of eyewitness reliability. Among the most comprehensive reviews of this problem can be found in the 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences titled: “Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification.” Furthermore, the more our experiences are filtered through digital screens, the more our perceptions become suspect. Take the example of “the dress,” which swept the internet in 2015. Over a period of several days, millions of social-media users debated whether a garment depicted in a photo was blue and black or white and gold. Scientific experiments later showed their perceptions were affected by ambient
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lighting and the quality of their display screens. We often complain about living in a “post-fact” culture. As a society, the ease with which we dispense with facts underscores the importance of trust for the human mind. We are wired, it seems, not to be factual, but to be trusting—because, over the long course of time, facts have been hard to access and confirm. Trust has been necessary for survival. Evolutionary psychology tells us that perception is not in the business of truth—it’s in the business of useful adaptive behavior. It is far more efficient to function by trust and supplement with facts later. Trust always involves undertaking a risk. It requires us to assume some degree of danger: of being deceived, of losing time or money or dignity. We try to minimize that risk by basing our trust on evidence, such as past experiences, probability, and empirical data. People who have already earned our trust can also be helpful guides. This is important in our faith as in every other part of our lives. At the same time, skepticism can sour into cynicism and pervasive doubt, and this is an untenable way to live. It is incompatible with any kind of true happiness; it leads to isolation and despair. Blind trust and cynicism are both attempts to escape from the responsibility, risk, and hard work required for trust. By and large, modern industrialized societies tend toward the second mistake. Trust in institutions, from governments to nonprofits to universities, is at an alltime low. The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report recorded a 14-point decline in global trust compared to last year. Conspiracy theories are rampant. Millions mistrust journalists and scientists. Lay people mistrust clergy. The clergy mistrust the people. Many people outside the Church think religion is a scam.
