As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“Americans who say most people can be trusted are twice as likely to say the federal government can be trusted most of the time (22% vs. 11%). However, there is no consensus on whether declines in institutional trust lead to declines in social trust, or vice versa.” - Pew
“ ‘But I don’t want my children to think I don’t trust them.’ …Some parents trust their teenagers in situations I wouldn’t trust myself in. You can trust your fourteen-year-old to his level of maturity and life skills. But that doesn’t mean you would trust him to fly the space shuttle or have a smart phone with unrestricted internet access.” - Randy Alcorn
“Today, 37% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have a lot of or some trust in the information that comes from social media sites. This is nearly on par with the 40% of Republicans who express this level of trust in national news organizations.” - Pew
“Trust in political and civic institutions highest for local and state governments, lowest for media and Congress” - Gallup
A few years back, in an editorial for the Kokomo Tribune, in a series about “social connectedness,” I mentioned what I call the “anonymous lifestyle.” Now I would like to use that concept as a jumping board for another issue: the “control obsession.”
There is a dynamic that each of us must learn by experience that has the power to transform our understanding of the Christian life. I call it the principle of the open hand.
I have tried to determine who first enunciated this concept. Apparently, it traces to Martin Luther, who stated: “I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”
“The country’s perception of clergy hit a new low in recent Gallup polling, with fewer than a third of Americans rating clergy as highly honest and ethical.” - CToday
“Americans’ ratings of nearly all 23 professions measured in Gallup’s 2023 Honesty and Ethics poll are lower than they have been in recent years… Nurses remain the most trusted profession, with 78% of U.S. adults currently believing nurses have high honesty and ethical standards.” - Gallup
“Thirty-two percent of respondents expressed a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the Church and organized religion…. Twenty-six percent of Americans held a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the public schools” - CPost
There are basically two ways to ride a roller coaster. The first is to resist the ride. You can press your feet against the floorboard and arch your back. You can grip the handle bar so hard your knuckles turn white. You can tense your jaw, tighten your abdominal muscles, and scream bloody murder as you descend the precipitous drops and are flung around the death-defying turns.
Somewhere in my rather limited experience of roller coasters, I discovered a second approach. You can actually relax on a roller coaster. Really! You can loosen your grip on the bar, relax your jaw, legs and abdominal muscles. In fact, you can take a roller coaster ride in the same physical condition and mental state of a couch potato.
Obviously, your physical state will have no influence on the roller coaster. No matter how tense or relaxed you may be, the roller coaster will not alter its route one inch or adjust its speed one iota. Either way, you will be delivered to the platform on time and in one piece. You cannot control the ride, you can only control the rider.
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