Institutional Trust & The Church
A recent article by David Brooks at The Atlantic entitled, “America Is Having a Moral Convulsion” has bounced around the internet for the last week or so and landed on my laptop this past Saturday afternoon. The subtitle reads, “Levels of trust in this country—in our institutions, in our politics, and in one another—are in precipitous decline. And when social trust collapses, nations fail. Can we get it back before it’s too late?” Brooks is no political prophet for pointing out the obvious; At this point, everyone on either side of the aisle would agree they distrust our nation’s social institutions albeit for different reasons. It was the deeper dive into areas below the political surface as to why Americans are feeling more social distrust than ever that struck me in this piece. The very personal and societal reasons for social distrust that are shared between us no matter who’s campaign sign is in your front yard. Brooks’ humanization of our social anxieties made me feel human compassion for all those who are alone and reminded me of the blessing of the church. Can social trust be regained in American government? I don’t know, but as I unpack the problems Brooks exposes I hope to offer a better solution to bet on. If institutions fall along with my trust in them, there is an eternal institution that is here to stay and helps bear the burdens those former glories never fully could.
Points of Distrust
Brooks defines social trust this way:
“Social trust is a measure of the moral quality of a society—of whether the people and institutions in it are trustworthy, whether they keep their promises and work for the common good…… When people in a society lose faith or trust in their institutions and in each other, the nation collapses.”-(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
Financial Insecurity
Again, besides the obvious political analysis that could be made which Brooks does elsewhere in the article, he offers more fundamental points of pressure that result in a generation full of social distrust. First, he says we live in a time of financial insecurity:
“By the time the Baby Boomers hit a median age of 35, their generation owned 21 percent of the nation’s wealth. As of last year, Millennials—who will hit an average age of 35 in three years—owned just 3.2 percent of the nation’s wealth.”-(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
Other reasons for financial insecurity are given as well, and obviously, COVID-19 adds a lot more to economic anxiety. For some, the institutions of government were supposed to make sure these kinds of disparities did not develop. For others, strong faith in the American dream and the flow of the free market should sort such things out. Either way, republicans and democrats are lining up at the unemployment office due to the nonpartisan Coronavirus. The ideas and organizations tasked with creating financial safety are not living up to what they were cracked up to be.
But there is one institution that can and should be trustworthy no matter what goes on outside of its control: the Church. It certainly has been for me and has a heritage of doing so in even less opportune times. The initial church responded to the preaching of the gospel and the filling of the Holy Spirit this way:
“And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”-(Acts 2:44-47)
Does this mean or translate to universal income and some sort of utopia of equity? No. It doesn’t have the organization or the influence to have that kind of power. This activity by the church is a net of safety for the humble band of believers inside the community. It is the security of knowing that a man’s family will still eat when he loses his job until he is back on his feet. It is the open home of an older couple who puts up those who are in between houses. It’s the support of a small army of church members for a working single mom. It’s the little things that build a house of shelter brick by brick for all who are heavy laden with financial insecurity.
I could never go homeless. I cannot imagine the possibility of not having a meal to eat or a bed to sleep in. Why? Because of the church’s care for me. This doesn’t solve a sinking 401K or competitive wages, but my basic needs will be met. That feeling of security produces a sense of responsibility to be a part of taking that stress away from others in my church as well. Thank God for an institution that cares for its members no matter the circumstances. I can trust these people.
Emotional Insecurity
“Americans today experience more instability than at any period in recent memory—fewer children growing up in married two-parent households, more single-parent households, more depression, and higher suicide rates.” -(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
Many in this generation start their adult life already burnt by the most fundamental institution: the family. What was supposed to be a whole turned into two broken parts. Social distrust in institutions stems partly from the inability to believe things can heal and properly function again. For some, there is no framework of “trust” to refer back to. Washington D.C. fights and fusses like mom and dad did. The hope of reconciliation in America seems to be as dead as our parents ever getting back together.
Where is there healing to be found in the idea of family, of trust, of wholeness? The church. The body of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is the garden where family can flourish again. Christ’s blood works as a balm bringing what was once broken down and separated back together:
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”-(Ephesians 2:13-22)
Our distinctions, our conflicts, and even our hostilities towards one another are dissolved. This radical reconciliation lays the topsoil to forge a new family structure. What many amongst us never had in the natural now becomes possible in the supernatural. Spiritual fathers and mothers are planted in the lives of young members. Spiritual brothers and sisters are locked arm in arm to bear each other’s burdens. A family unit is created speaking life into each other in ways many never knew was possible.
The power of an older man or older woman investing in and speaking life into a younger man or woman in the context of the church community is more powerful than the full force of any government institution. It reweaves the fabric of the family structure back into a trustworthy place for those who were burned by it. I believe this is the slow path the church must take in regaining such a trustless generation. For those who never had a family and are suffering because of it, why not try an institution that doesn’t promise reconciliation in the future but rather starts with reconciliation as its past foundation?
Identity Insecurity
“People today live in what the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called liquid modernity. All the traits that were once assigned to you by your community, you must now determine on your own: your identity, your morality, your gender, your vocation, your purpose, and the place of your belonging. Self-creation becomes a major anxiety-inducing act of young adulthood.”-(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
The extreme liberty to redefine every box becomes a suffocating task. It is easy to see how social trust in our fundamental institutions disintegrates in a generation that was taught to distrust all of our fundamental categories. If it is up to me to create myself in my own idealized image, my calling, purpose, gender, system of ethics, and whatever else my inner North Star supposedly leads me to recalculate, then why would I put confidence in an institution’s promise to create norms? Norms are bad. Unique is good. We have been groomed to be mercenaries in a marketplace of radical individualism. The quest to be the most idiosyncratic sails us onto a lonely island.
What the church offers through the gospel of Jesus Christ is an identity that you don’t have to self-create and one that cannot be taken from you. The work of Christ in the atonement for sins and his resurrection from the dead provides the way to become a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), but not just any new creation; it is a new creation “in Christ.” The enslaving question of “who are you?” is no longer a constant ringtone in your own heart reminding you to reshape yourself every two years. The question actually becomes “who are you in Christ?” You don’t have to come up with that answer. The scriptures testify that those in Christ are redeemed, justified, sanctified, made new, etc. The church becomes a place where a body of believers calls one another to that eternal identity in Christ week after week in the midst of the constant chameleoning of our image the world is calling us to.
Social Insecurity
“In the age of social media our “sociometers”—the antennae we use to measure how other people are seeing us—are up and on high alert all the time. Am I liked? Am I affirmed? Why do I feel invisible? We see ourselves in how we think others see us. Their snarkiness turns into my self-doubt, their criticism into my shame, their obliviousness into my humiliation. Danger is ever present. “For many people, it is impossible to think without simultaneously thinking about what other people would think about what you’re thinking,” the educator Fredrik deBoer has written. “This is exhausting and deeply unsatisfying. As long as your self-conception is tied up in your perception of other people’s conception of you, you will never be free to occupy a personality with confidence; you’re always at the mercy of the next person’s dim opinion of you and your whole deal.”-(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
The ability to reveal ourselves honestly in all our sins and struggles is an impossible task in today’s world. We are chained to the pursuit of a perfectly curated profile. Every picture taken, every caption typed out, is intended to impress onlookers. It is the disingenuousness of appearing at all times genuine. The “authentic” portrayal of ourselves online is anything but true. We distrust what others would think if they knew our real lives which are 99% unworthy of Instagram moments. So, together we continue to paint our digital dolls and pretend they are us while grappling with the reality of our hidden selves only in the prison of our own minds.
In a serious change of direction, the church insists on a much different rhythm of social interaction. What God requires is a lifestyle of repentance and faith within the context of the body of Christ. Christians are not to present curated images of themselves that conceal their warts, instead they are to present their true selves, even their worst selves to God and each other in order to expose their darkness to the light. James 5:16 says, “...confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” The honest admittance of our sins and unwanted parts is a step toward healing. It is a step toward trusting God that He will forgive and heal our darkest pieces.
Distrust in the idea of others knowing our real selves can be shattered by the opening of our hearts to a church community. There is a freedom that blows over you when the mask finally comes off. I mean when the mask really comes off. Not in a one hour a week counseling session that is disconnected from the whole sphere of your world. No, I mean when you began to live and breathe amongst the people of God bearing your unimpressive self. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; In the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner.” Social distrust can be regained in the fellowship of saints who dare to be sinners amongst one another. The church offers a place where you can be known instead of being impressive. While politicians and influencers paint cartoonish pictures of themselves for the American people, the church offers itself with wounds exposed for those seeking a more honest way forward.
A Final Plea
In his concluding remarks, Brooks paints a grim picture for the near future of American trust:
“If you think we’re going back to the America that used to be—with a single cohesive mainstream culture; with an agile, trusted central government; with a few mainstream media voices that police a coherent national conversation; with an interconnected, respected leadership class; with a set of dominant moral values based on mainline Protestantism or some other single ethic—then you’re not being realistic. I see no scenario in which we return to being the nation we were in 1965, with a cohesive national ethos, a clear national establishment, trusted central institutions, and a pop-culture landscape in which people overwhelmingly watch the same shows and talk about the same things. We’re too beaten up for that.”-(America is Having a Moral Convulsion)
I wish he was wrong, but sadly it seems spot on. The options are to jump into the valley on either side and tell ourselves one side of the cultural aisle will feed us truth and make things better. Another is to fall into the cave of cynical despair resulting in debilitating distrust similar to what Brooks has outlined. Many complain of the loss of a pastime, yet the Bible says this is unwise: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). All of these choices are bound to disappoint us.
Instead, why not look to the city on a hill? For those in the church, instead of getting caught in the disillusionment of institutional promises, place your bets on God’s established community. All of these festering reasons for social distrust should not fog our eyes to the blessings God has given us in the fellowship of the saints. Our hope cannot be in empires of sand. The nation is an experiment; The church is forever. We have an institution built to last and built to trust in. Not because of the sufficiency of the members, but because of the sufficiency of its Maker. For those outside of the church, If you are wrung out of trust in American institutions, the church could be a place of hope. Come and see the people of God being built into a new structure. One that the world cannot replicate.