Step 3, Trust:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved,” (Ephesians 2:4-5).
At this point in my life, a mere forty years living, I know I can’t trust myself with any part of my life. My lusts are simple and profoundly damaging. I love the dissipation of liquor. I love the vanity of smoke. I love the victory over strange women. All those things lead to death, lonely and agonizing. I’m exaggerating, of course, when I say I love them. They are the lusts of my flesh, and I don’t pretend to think them special or unique. They are, simply, distilled. I don’t concern myself much with the vanity of them, or the trappings, though they are traps themselves. But even traps have trappings. I don’t care for the clothes or cars that entice women. I’ve enough words for that. I don’t care for the top shelf; I’ve enough intestinal fortitude for the bottom. I don’t care much for the show of cigars; I enjoy the inhale. And in my leisure, in the way I conceive of leisure, I go straight for the vein. I know the dosage and I know the groove. I don’t waste time or money on desire, and over the years I’ve grown surgical regarding the appeasement of my lusts, which only serves to make them the more deadly.
I know how to drink just enough to be able to put myself to bed and avoid the blackness of oblivion. For the most part, I’ve learned to keep the phone out of my hands, and when I don’t, I’ve learned how to proofread cross-eyed, to keep at bay the nagging condemnation of the next morning’s amnesia. I’ve learned how to slow the drags and lighten the burden on my lungs. I watch my blood oxygen levels. I google the pill codes for side effects and synergistic reactions with alcohol. I’ve trained myself to edge. And because I don’t waste time on lesser pleasures, I most certainly can’t continue to enjoy these. Knowing my history of intake, it’s only by the grace of God I’m still living.
If not myself, then, who can I trust all of my life to? We’ve already established that I can’t call my father. I love my dad, though, who has been present with me for thirty years now (Wow. I didn’t realize he and my mother had been married that long until I counted it up). I have great honor and respect for him, and I love him, but I have come to see him as more for my mother than for myself. I was an adult by the time we got on the same page with each other. I accept responsibility for my part in that. I was a rebellious, smart-ass, know-it-all. I know it took massive patience and restraint just to suffer living in the same space with me. But not him, either.
A life coach, maybe? My pastor? A discipler? A friend? A conference? A life group? A cult? I’ve had all of those things. They work, for a while, and then the luster of novelty wears off, and I’m left with the same tarnished souls of imperfect people, whom I judge for being unable not to be a disappointment to me. It’s infuriatingly unfair to them and, yet, I can’t help it. I need a perfect example. My pride can suffer no less. I will always seek out a flaw, a thread to pull on. I will always distrust the duplicity of men and troll their stage personas until they break character and reveal themselves, truly, along with their naked desires and pursuits. I cannot trust them otherwise, lest they be naked. And the more unwilling they are to strip, the less I trust them.
What about You? Should I trust you? Should I surrender my will and consent to be your slave? Certainly, there is great education in yielding, even to a froward master. Read that again, it says “froward” not forward, because you are certainly as backwards as I am. So no, I will not trust you either, however much you say you love me. Eventually, you will use me, too. And when you see that I will submit to your use, you will add the “ab” to it. And once I suffer the abuse, you will let out the whole of your contempt upon me like water, your love having been hidden behind a wall of guilt and shame that you do not deserve my surrender, and in your soul’s ridicule of my foolishness you will seek to teach me a lesson. This is how power corrupts. We all know that we are wretched and abysmally depraved sinners; but we are not at all keen to admit it to ourselves and others. We’ve got job interviews to win, and likes to convert into subscribers into cash.
Therefore, I am left to God, by grace, through faith in His son, Jesus, my elder brother and the firstborn of all creation. The savior of my soul. He is the only one worthy to guide my life. He is the only one I can trust. And why is that? Or rather, how is that? Because of His example. Because He, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” He alone was and is a perfect man, capable of all things. He who had done things no man had ever done, causing men blind from birth to see, and recalling the spirit into bodies it had departed from, raising the dead. He who spoke like never a man ever spoke and could not be gainsaid. He who rejected all of the kingdoms of the world being given to Him, to be faithful to His Father, Our Father. He who, alone deserving all allegiance and loyalty and honor and praise from His own, yielded to the arrogance of their infamy and suffered to be brutally mocked and tortured by the very ones He lived to serve. Him alone, I can trust. And I will. And I do.
Even if He slays me, yet will I trust in Him, because being slain by Him is far sweeter than the disgrace of my own eventually guaranteed suicide.
theblackdostoyevsky 
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