Trust or Idolatry?

We just saw the new “Avengers: Endgame” movie. In a trailer for the film (no spoilers here!), Tony Stark (Iron Man) asks Steve Rogers (Captain America), “Do you trust me?” However that plays out in the movie, it’s a key question in human relationships. Trust is fundamental to human flourishing and we simply cannot get along very well without it.

We trust each other in all sorts of ways. We trust the driver approaching on a cross street to stop at the stop sign. We trust a babysitter to be responsible for our children. We trust the barista not to spit in our coffee before he creates that foam heart on top.

Yet we also know that trust is often violated and is sometimes foolish. I, for one, have a vivid memory of the time a driver on a cross street did not stop at the stop sign, but plowed full tilt into side of my car. Thirty years later, I still take a second look at what is happening on cross streets to my right, not completely trusting other drivers anymore.

In our text for this Sunday, John 10:22-30, Jesus chides the Jewish religious establishment for their continued distrust, as they ask Him in verse 24, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” In verse 25, Jesus replies, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” In other words, they don’t trust Him.

Jesus goes on in the rest of verse 25 to offer a firm basis for trusting Him: the evidence of the “works” He does, which are both supernatural in their power and good in their compassion toward those who are fed, healed and even raised from the dead. In something like the trilemma often credited to C. S. Lewis, the Jewish authorities are being to asked to consider whether someone who does such thing can be considered trustworthy in what He says about Himself. Trust in Jesus can have foundation and is not foolish.

Trust turns foolish when it has no basis. When, without any reason or even contrary to experience, one simply trusts ordinary human authority, be it government, family, or even religious, that trust can become a kind of naive idolatry. Trust is especially idolatrous when it is expressed with a kind of fervor and commitment that really only belongs to God. That happens when an abused person constantly accepts apologies from and places unbreakable trust in an abuser, when citizens retain undying loyalty to a political authority that has proved itself deceptive, and when religious believers unquestioningly accept biblical interpretations or doctrines which fly in the face of basic morality or simple compassion or even the plain sense of the Scripture text.

In Jesus’ time, the religious authorities’ unwillingness to trust Him was their failure to recognize divine authority when it actually appeared to them. Instead, they substituted the idols of their own regulations and perceptions of how the Messiah might appear and act. This is what places them, in verse 26, outside of those who belong to Jesus, His sheep. Those who hear and trust Jesus and follow Him are those who recognize (by the character and works of Jesus) to be true what He says in verse 30, “The Father and I are one.” That is, He is deserving of trust because He has true divine authority.

Verses 28 and 29 show us the benefits of well-placed trust in Jesus, eternal life and security, “No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Trusting in Jesus is blessed beyond even the most well-founded trust in other human beings. May our trust, our faith, only increase.