HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION OR TRUST?

Living in a sinful, dishonest, and deceitful world makes us accustomed to approaching many things through the lens of suspicion.

Without suspicion, we fear becoming victims of deceit, bullying, or betrayal. A life that is too trusting tends to be seen as naive, inexperienced, or lacking in discernment.

Unconsciously, we often carry this hermeneutics of suspicion into our encounters with others—even with fellow believers. Understandably so, as we do live in a fallen world.

The beauty of the Gospel narrative is that it offers a countercultural hermeneutic against this suspicion: the hermeneutic of trust.

This hermeneutic of trust is not developed because something or someone is inherently trustworthy, but because of love. Love believes all things, says Paul.

This hermeneutic of trust indeed makes us vulnerable (just as loving makes us vulnerable). Trust is not always reciprocated. At times, we grow weary of trusting someone who proves to be unreliable—especially those who are complicated and inconsistent.

In Christ, we are invited to grow from this hermeneutic of suspicion into a hermeneutic of trust, because the perspective of grace should surpass the perspective of the fall. A hermeneutic of trust can only be expected from those who are maturing.

If we constantly dwell on human wickedness in the fall, we will inevitably keep operating with a hermeneutic of suspicion: every word, action, even sermons and teachings are first met with suspicion and picked apart to uncover hidden motives or biases that need exposing. Don’t you get exhausted living like that?

In contrast, in Christ we are invited to embody a redemptive hermeneutic—a hermeneutic of love, a hermeneutic of trust. We are often suspicious because we do not love enough.

One of the ways Satan works to destroy the unity of God’s people is by sowing seeds of suspicion. Eventually, those who suspect one another are fed with more and more negative thoughts (which may not even be true) about each other. The deeper we internalize suspicion, the more it leads to annoyance, contempt, even hatred.

Trusting is hard. We need God’s grace to trust those who are less than trustworthy. But wasn’t our Lord Himself denied and betrayed? Yet He did not stop trusting because He was drowned in trauma or crushed by disappointment. On the contrary, He continued to trust His disciples. And we see the impact of the power of God’s trust upon His disciples: one by one, they declared their faithfulness—even to the point of death. Why? Because they knew they were trusted by the One who is all-loving—not suspected.