Make Trust, Not War

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Hoorah. I probably owe everyone a blog post on “love,” because that’s what is expected, but I looked love up in my dictionary—which defined it as “an intense feeling of deep affection,” at which point I decided I was underqualified for the task.

So I would like to talk about trust instead. Trust is intimately related to love, because it is harder to love people if you don’t trust them. This is why people write breakup songs and/or jump off of bridges, because a deep trust they had in someone else was shattered so completely it took their own foundations with it in the blast. I refer these people to Epictetus: “Exercise yourself, therefore, in what you are able to do.”

            This certainly applies to romantic relationships—you can at least try to prevent yourself from becoming so invested that you will write poorly-worded breakup music if the relationship fails—but it also has broader applications in society.

            I live in a day and age where serious discussions of disarming the American people are commonplace. Usually these discussions are couched in terms of who should be able to access what types of firearms. Often, the argument made is something like this: “Bob doesn’t need an assault rifle because they are good at killing people, and that’s not Bob’s job!”

            I’d like to examine that and rephrase it in the language of trust: “I don’t want Bob to have an assault rifle because I don’t trust Bob with it!”

            That’s actually not unreasonable. I don’t trust Bob either, simply because I think most humans are flawed. Bob’s not a felon—in fact, he loaned me his lawnmower—but I’m convinced that human nature tends towards evil. Even if I do trust Bob, there are a lot of other people just like him that I don’t know that might be worse than he is. Because I’m going to a liberal arts college, I consult Epictetus to solve my dilemma.

            “If you seek to avoid sickness, or death, or poverty, you will be miserable.” Well, gosh. My neighbor, Bob, has an assault rifle, and because I don’t want to die, I’m going to be miserable?

Because I like his romantic advice, I’m not going to give up on Epictetus so quickly. He is right—if Bob and his assault rifle don’t kill me, I’ll die some other way—for instance, I’ll be attacked by RNA-injecting viruses and explode. I can’t be paranoid about death. But I don’t think that Epictetus is going to go so far as to advise that I ignore clear threats to my life—like Bob. (Or RNA-injecting viruses, for that matter.) So I’m going to go back to Epictetus’ prime principle: “Exercise yourself, therefore, in what you are able to do.”

So, there are a couple of things I can do here. One of them is to lobby my polis to ban assault rifles. “I don’t trust people with assault rifles,” I could say. “In fact, I think that people like Bob here should have their assault rifles taken away from him.”

I’m pretty sure, however, that Epictetus would be displeased by my actions. “The essence of good lies in what is in our power,” he says. By asking my polis to confiscate my neighbor’s assault rifle, I’m delegating that power to other men of the polis, not taking action myself. Secondly, in an exercise of what Epictetus would term “sophism,” I’ve just made a really hypocritical request. Let me read it again, with the understood premises: “In fact, I think that people like Bob here should have their assault rifles taken away from him by people with assault rifles.” Epictetus would find this so foolish he would laugh, if he wasn’t a Stoic philosopher. Apparently I don’t actually distrust people with assault rifles—I just distrust Bob, and people like him. For some reason, I trust other people that are somehow different from Bob with assault rifles. I’m not really sure why, and neither is Epictetus.

Fine. So I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll go buy my own rifle—it’s bigger than Bob’s, with a flashlight—and I’ll stockpile ammunition. I’ll spend days watching Bob through my blinds, waiting to see if he gets more weapons. I will constantly be prepared.

But on this front, I’ve failed again. Now not only am I living in fear—something which would probably exasperate Epictetus if he wasn’t a Stoic—my distrust of my neighbor has reached the point where I am preparing to fight an all-out war with him when previously we had been on good terms.

Hopefully, patient reader, you’ve forgiven my brief whimsy. Bob isn’t real, of course, but he represents our friends, neighbors, and countrymen. And yet, this trap is a real one. On one hand, my distrust of my countrymen reached the point where I am preparing to kill them. On the other hand, my distrust reached the level where I am unwilling to allow them to defend themselves.

This is a serious condition. A society composed of individuals that distrust each other so deeply they are prepared to frivolously jeopardize each other’s lives by commission or omission is no longer a society. It is Hobbes’ state of nature: a state of individuals, all fearing nothing more than violent death. No trust, no love, no society. For a society to survive, we must be able to trust one another.

But, it is also undeniable that even in the best of societies, there are individuals who act “contrary to the law of nature.” Sometimes, our trust in our fellow man is unfounded.

But there is someone else we can trust: ourselves. When the time comes that our trust in other men has failed, we must be willing to trust ourselves to do the right thing. Some people don’t trust themselves enough to protect themselves, and they live in constant fear of a violent death, trusting instead in the strength of other men.

But what kind of a life is it, to live constantly mistrusting oneself? To forever wish another to have control, to incessantly trust in men you’ve never met to protect you and tell you what to do? Perhaps it natural for men without God to live in this state, but even those who claim to place their faith above often seem to forget what that really means.

As fallen humans, a certain amount of self-doubt is good; it serves as an internal check on our individual power. But as Christians, to wish others to assume responsibility that should be ours is to mistrust God. For if God is our strength, then whom shall we fear? If God promised us His Comforter, and we believe His promise, then how dare we shirk our responsibilities? For God, of course, is the only one who can never fail us; He will never let us down, even when we disappoint ourselves. And if we believe that He lives in us, we would never ask fallen men to bear our burdens, but instead shoulder them ourselves, confident in His promise to sustain us.

That’s not to say, by the way, that I endorse forming a dictatorship of Spirit-filled Christians. Rather, it is an admonition to those—including myself—who would rather defer the tasks God has given them to someone else. Even Epictetus agrees with me on this.

“Remember,” he says “that you are an actor in a play of such a kind as the playwright chooses: short, if he wants it short, long if he wants it long. If he wants you to play the part of a beggar, play even this part well; and so also for the parts of a disabled person, an administrator, or a private individual. For this is your business, to play well the part you are given; but choosing it belongs to another.”

Spiritual aspects aside, I deeply fear a society that so mistrusts itself that it is unwilling to allow its members to be responsible men. I have specifically discussed this issue through the lens of gun control, but I believe strongly that what I have discussed applies in all areas of society, from the government to our private relationships. So do me a favor, and from time to time, ask yourself these questions:

1.                    Can my fellow-citizens and I do this? Don’t I trust myself and my fellow men enough to accomplish this task?

2.                    Am I helping or hurting what should be the relationship of trust between citizens, or am I instead sending my fellow men the message that I don’t trust them with what they have been given?