Nothing in life holds greater importance than trust—a truth reflected even in the stability of a nation’s money. Legal tender functions only because people collectively believe in its value; the moment trust evaporates, the exchange rate collapses, and the currency becomes worthless. But trust is a currency that applies far more profoundly to human relationships than to any material possession. Without it, marriages flounder, communities grow unstable, and the very fabric of society frays. Trust, not mere appearances, forms the foundation of our collective life.
A person is only as dependable as the trust they earn. Yet, sadly, many marital unions are built not on trust but on calculation—wealth and advantage take precedence, even when the odds plainly warn against such a choice. We must learn to examine the qualities of trust before settling for any arrangement that demands our faith.
Trust carries an unquestioning confidence in what we presume to understand. Passengers board buses trusting that the driver is sober and the vehicle mechanically sound. This trust, however, rarely rests on evidence; people climb aboard without certainty, exposing a universal human naivety. All human problems, at root, spring from the struggle between truth and falsehood. A treasure, as precious as trust, cannot be founded on guesswork.
Consider how often loving parents place their trust in strangers and reap bitter consequences. Young girls, in particular, suffer abuse because unqualified trust is handed to cunning men in positions of responsibility. Trust, therefore, cannot and must not be granted freely to mortal beings. It calls for precautions grounded in godly principles.
One need only observe the many cases of religious leaders who commit heinous crimes—rape, manipulation—against their congregants, precisely because those congregants gave unqualified trust. They assumed that a title or religious office rendered a person blameless. Desperate to protect their misguided commitment, naïve believers even hesitate to involve law enforcement. So deep is trust’s power to hypnotize. The same dynamic plays out in marital heartbreaks: unqualified trust in fallible humans leads to devastation.
The starting point is recognizing who—or what—deserves our trust. No human, regardless of role or relationship, should be trusted unconditionally, whether parent, husband, or wife. Trust begins with a person’s own desire to be trustworthy, for unless you are trustworthy yourself, you cannot safely confer trust on others. Here the golden rule applies perfectly: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). To avoid being duped, you must first grasp the principle of truth, and avoid duping others.
The tragic condition of trusting church ministers blindly and being violated is a case in point. Innocent congregants hand over their trust without due diligence, unaware of the immense currency they are casually giving away. In doing so, they break the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). This command places a person in control of their spiritual environment.
Everything said by a would-be recipient of trust must be measured against truth. Those who hold no other gods before the Supreme God cannot be duped; deceivers find them impossible to mislead. Godliness, in fact, influences others to become trustworthy. The safest shield against deception is applying the First Commandment. Yet, nurtured in a fallen world, ordinary people routinely struggle to avoid deceit. That is why, among all humanity, Jesus is the only individual fully worthy of trust.
Many place their trust in accumulated material wealth, as if they could live forever. Jesus warned against storing treasures in the banks of this world, knowing how vulnerable they are. The wealthy die, just as the poor also do. Some live comfortable but unpredictable lives, yet no easy formula guarantees a trouble-free existence. The value of trust, however, can never be minimized, as without trust, everyone is vulnerable.
Trust obtained in godliness is as pure as something that carries no mixture of good and evil; therefore we must be selectively cautious about where we place our trust. Just as godliness bears no shadow of doubt, trust cannot be built on uncertainty. While absolute goodness or absolute evil cannot be found in any human being, we must aim for the maximum good. Choices can be made by weighing probabilities and selecting what benefits the majority.
Many denounce ancestral spirits in favor of Christianity, yet Christianity itself has brought instances of unrestrained deception. Still, it carries the only enduring hope for humanity. Without truly understanding it, people live under foul deceptions because they lack certainty. The beginning of avoiding deception is, again, the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Trust becomes possible when we know what constitutes goodness compared to evil. Godliness is the stable reference point of goodness. Evil poses no problem as long as we recognize it for what it is—just as one can strive toward righteousness when one knows what righteousness entails. Without the capacity to evaluate data, it is impossible to settle on goodness. Righteousness consists of conferring survival on the majority; evil consists of conferring survival on a minority at the expense of the majority. This is the only provable method for accessing genuine trust among human beings. There is no other way to guarantee a trustworthy commitment.
The principle of serving others is the singular virtue that leads toward godliness. Importantly, what benefits the majority is not merely what is popular. The majority may favor non-survival choices over pro-survival ones, which must be discerned through careful evaluation. Benefit to the majority must be based on what promotes survival, not what undermines it. This is why Jesus said the way is narrow, not broad (Matthew 7:13–14). He may not have been liked by many, but his aim was to save the majority, not the minority.
A truly converted person seeks the welfare of the many over the few. God gave us a mind to reason and evaluate. The safest trust is placed in those who, at their own expense, focus on benefiting the majority. This attitude must guide the choice of a marital partner: any potential spouse inclined toward self-centeredness should be considered dangerous.
As head of the household, a husband must understand that leadership means influencing others toward goodness. True responsibility refuses to blame others for difficult conditions. A good husband takes the lead in protecting his wife and children at all times. The value of influencing another toward godliness is beyond compare—this, in fact, is what Christianity embodies. For married couples, Peter captured it perfectly:
“Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment… Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:1–4)
Here, the wife takes full responsibility. She does not blame her husband for being ungodly; instead, her conduct influences him until he is won over. The principle is like light and darkness: light dispels darkness, not the other way around. Though the husband is head of the family, the spirit takes precedence—and if Christ dwells in the wife, she becomes the agent of her husband’s transformation. The subject of trust is anchored in God.
A godly wife influences an ungodly husband. There is no conflict with the order of leadership when we understand that a true leader lays down privileges for those under his care. Jesus exemplified this: though Lord, He chose to die for sinful humanity and washed His disciples’ dirty feet. Likewise, Abraham gave his nephew Lot the first choice of land (Genesis 13:5–11). By worldly standards, Abraham should have chosen first; Lot would not have objected. But the world’s standard is precisely what Jesus came to correct: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:25–28).
The question of trust begins with God. It is impossible to discuss trust without putting God ahead of everything. The First Commandment is fundamental: “You shall have no other gods before me.” The object of one’s trust is what one truly worships. Before aligning with anything that requires trust, God must come first. All deception—marital, governmental, religious—starts with the failure to put God ahead of everything. Those who choose partners without seeking the advantage of the majority inevitably suffer in those unions. God’s laws define the standards of life, whether we find them enjoyable or not.
Every human problem originates from a failure to recognize godliness, which is exactly why Jesus came to reveal it. People rejected His way because it does not advantage the self over the majority—a principle that collides with worldliness. Self-centeredness is the essence of wickedness; godliness produces trustworthiness. Those who interact with a godly person may eventually be drawn to that same behavior, becoming trustworthy through the power of influence. In this way, trust flows outward as the most important social commodity, emanating from a person connected to God.
One cannot be trustworthy without that connection, for trust is a divine attribute. People can trust scientific discoveries without acknowledging God, but science, in truth, augments godly trust by projecting what remains unseen. Close observation shows that nothing carries truth without God’s involvement. Scientists receive their wisdom from God, even if they may not be aware of His existence. A scientist who uncovers workable theories yet fails to acknowledge God may be inwardly confused; he should be helped to understand that a superior being is the source of both his life and his insight.
The scientist himself is clear evidence of God’s reality. Nothing else in this world merits our ultimate trust except the God who exists spiritually. Everything hangs in the balance between trust and its absence. Without trust, one is completely unbalanced. Yet trusting anything other than God is unreasonable and can be dangerous. Trust is synonymous with faith, for faith cannot exist without trust grounded in the understanding that God is the source of all things. To stand securely on trust, we must recognize that truth precedes everything.
When Jesus walked the earth, He took instruction from no one. Unlike Him, however, we remain susceptible to deception so long as ignorance persists. To avoid being deceived, we must evaluate information before accepting it. The basis for evaluation is whether the information yields benefits for the majority, as opposed to the minority. Whether in survival or relationships, trust is fundamental. All human problems flow from a deficiency of trust among humans. Where does one place one’s trust in a sinful world? Life becomes smooth only when we deal with people who are trusted to handle matters of survival rightly.
To obtain trust, one must first be trustworthy. If you are confused about godliness, start by appreciating that you were created in God’s image—and so were others. It is deeply unwise to dismiss any person without evaluating what they say. God may be using them, even if they appear steeped in sin. Every human, regardless of background, deserves a proper hearing before their information is rejected. God might be providing constructive truth through them.
This understanding makes the instruction to treat others as we wish to be treated all the more vital. Still, it does not mean trusting without evaluating the information given. The principle remains: highlight the benefits that encompass the majority. Those who offer information can themselves be helped to see errors in their thinking. Of course, this does not guarantee that a person’s message will be accepted; otherwise Jesus would not have been rejected.
Consider sharp examples of wickedness: a corporate manager draws a salary that could sustain thousands of employees, yet terminates their livelihoods for some expedient reason. Rather than consider the welfare of the unfortunate workforce, the wicked manager survives at their expense. The direct contradiction of such behavior is Jesus, who chose to die on the cross to save all humanity. With Jesus as the standard, goodness and wickedness become easy to evaluate. A good manager focuses on the welfare of the workforce before entertaining personal gain.
The subject of trust can be understood by those willing to evaluate information according to whether it grants benefits to the majority rather than the minority. Another telling example of wickedness is the promise of self-serving benefits tied to paying tithes, without any real concern for others. Certain Christian charlatans dangle presumptuous blessings, insinuating that God favors the individual tithe-giver above everyone else. But Jesus made the standard unmistakably clear:
“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” (Matthew 20:25–28 NIV)
No other instruction provides the datum of trust as perfectly as this Scripture. It is based on altruism, not self-centeredness. When we seek objective information on the question of trust, it is completely summarized here. Armed with this, it becomes impossible to be deceived by charlatans. In this life, blessed are those who bless more people more than they are blessed.
Trust is the most valuable social currency, rooted in God and expressed through service to the many. It demands that we put God first, evaluate all claims by their fruit for the majority, and become trustworthy ourselves. Only then can we navigate a world dense with deception and build relationships, communities, and lives that stand.
Andrew Masuku is the author of Dimensions of a New Civilisation, laying down standards for uplifting Zimbabwe from the current state of economic depression into a model for other nations worldwide. A decaying tree provides an opportunity for a blossoming sprout. Written from a Christian perspective, the book is a product of inspiration, relieving those who have witnessed the strings of unworkable solutions, leading to the current economic and social decay. Most Zimbabweans should find the book to be a long-awaited providential oasis of hope, in a simple conversational tone.
The Print copy is now available at Amazon.com for $13.99
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