Fr. Thomas D. Williams, LC, is Vatican Analyst for CBS News and teaches theology and ethics at Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome. He is author of, most recently, Can God Be Trusted? Finding Faith in Troubled Times. National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez recently talked to him about trust.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: You ask “Can God Be Trusted?” Obviously you’re going to say yes. Why should anyone trust you and your answer?
FR. THOMAS D. WILLIAMS: I do believe that God can be trusted and he has always been trustworthy in my life. Still, I’m not trying to convince readers that I am right in trusting God. I simply wish to invite them to give God a chance, and in some cases, a second or even third chance. Trust involves risk and the acceptance of vulnerability, and this isn’t easy. I would hope that this book gives people the encouragement they may be waiting for to embrace that risk.
LOPEZ: Who is your audience?
FR. WILLIAMS: I am writing for those who don’t trust God but are willing to give it a shot. I am writing for those who wonder how religious people can possibly trust God, and would like to know why we do so.
I am also writing for believers who feel a need to grow in trust but don’t know how. Most of us believers recognize that even though we trust God, we have a long way to go. Often our trust is little more than lip service, and who we really trust is ourselves and our abilities. I invite readers to be honest with themselves and to take their trust to the next level.
LOPEZ: What is the next level?
FR. WILLIAMS: For most of us, it means trusting God not as a last resort, when our back is to the wall and all our other securities have fallen through, but as a first recourse, when we still have other options. But trusting God doesn’t imply sitting back idly waiting for God to “do something.” It means working hard, but knowing in the end that the final results depend on him. It also means rejecting anxiety and being peaceful in spite of life’s traumas.
LOPEZ: How is trust “in a sense” a virtue?
FR. WILLIAMS: A virtue is just a good habit that makes it easier to make good choices. Trust becomes virtuous when it becomes second nature, when we start trusting spontaneously and “habitually.” Sometimes we have to force ourselves to trust, and it requires real effort. The more we do this, the more natural and virtuous it becomes.
LOPEZ: On the other hand, you note that distrust is almost considered a virtue in our culture. How did we get there and how unhealthy is it?
FR. WILLIAMS: In our Western culture, and especially in America, we worship “self-made” men and women, who made it on their own against all odds. This is the stuff of our literature and our movies. We love to see the little guy who works his way up from janitor to CEO, or the mother who worked three jobs to put her kids through college with no help from anyone else. This is praiseworthy, as far as it goes, and underscores our healthy appreciation for hard work, personal responsibility, and perseverance.
On the flip side, however, it can also make us independent to a fault. We can see dependence on others as an expression of weakness, and trust in others as an expression of naïveté. In order not to get burned, we learn to rely on ourselves alone, and we begin to see distrust as a virtue to be pursued. This mentality easily carries over into our spiritual lives as well, and we can come to see God as little more than a safety net, rather than a Father and Friend who accompanies us every step of the way.
Trust requires humility, which is also not something our culture is comfortable with. How does one embrace humility and still keep one’s best interests in mind — professionally, personally . . . ?
Humility — like many virtues — is something we admire in others but often don’t practice ourselves. It’s hard to admit our dependence and our need. It’s hard to recognize how much we have received from God and others. We prefer to think we have earned everything we have, and that we don’t owe anything to anyone. This isn’t the case, however.
If humility is truth (as St. Teresa said) then it has nothing to do with putting ourselves down, belittling our qualities, or pretending we are less capable than we are. It simply means acknowledging how much we have received from God and our need for his mercy and his grace. This humility makes thankfulness possible, and makes trust a necessity.
LOPEZ: “To look to God simply as a solution to our problems — an effective means to achieve our goals — is to set ourselves up for major disappointment.” So how is one who trusts God supposed to know it’s working and worthwhile?
FR. WILLIAMS: The point is that God is not like Harry Potter’s magic wand. He isn’t just some supernatural force at our disposal to help us succeed. He is — as the Bible says — the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He’s not a tool in the service of something bigger than himself, but rather the biggest thing going. So to not have God in your life is much more serious than not availing yourself of a really helpful instrument. It means not knowing what your life is really about and where it is going.
I think that the key to understanding the value of our work and efforts is perspective. We need to step back and look at the bigger picture. Trusting here means pouring ourselves into our work, giving the best of ourselves, while at the same time knowing that He really has everything under control.
LOPEZ: When books like Can God be Trusted have to be written, trusting God looks awful hard. Why doesn’t God make it easier?
FR. WILLIAMS: I don’t know why God does many things the way he does, but I do believe that he does them for a reason. This is part of trust. It sometimes has to be enough to know that “he knows what he is doing,” even when his ways seem incomprehensible. I don’t think this is a cop-out or a descent into fideism. Many of us have enough proofs of God’s trustworthiness that we have no reason to doubt in moments of darkness.
LOPEZ: You compare trust to love, “since trust is at the core of what it means to love.” And you remind that “betrayal is not the only possible outcome.” But betrayal is what makes the news, isn’t it? Are there really happy endings nowadays? We tend not to see them.
FR. WILLIAMS: Trust and love both involve risk and vulnerability. They both mean opening up to another person and the very real possibility of being hurt. The many examples we see of betrayal make trusting all the harder. Betrayal leaves us confused, empty, and very alone.
Our society desperately needs examples of fidelity. We need to see that it is possible. And as you say, fidelity doesn’t make the front pages of the newspaper, so we need to look for it. I have known countless married couples, who, with their ups and downs, live genuinely faithful lives. I have known faithful priests, had faithful friends, witnessed faithful businesspeople, and benefited from numerous faithful colleagues through the years. Sure there are betrayals, and they sting. But we mustn’t forget the beautiful examples of faithfulness we have known.
LOPEZ: How is trust “somehow part of what makes us truly human”?
FR. WILLIAMS: Years ago I read a beautiful line from Pope John Paul II. He wrote that “belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person’s capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others” (Fides et ratio, 32). This really made me think, and I believe that he was right. We are not islands, destined to go through life with as little contact as possible with other people. We are created in the image of God, who is a God in relationship and who is love. If we choose not to trust, we forgo one of the deepest and most enriching human experiences of which we are capable. It is safer — to be sure — but it also poorer, sadder, and drearier.
LOPEZ: In this way is your book about more than religion? Or is religion everything?
FR. WILLIAMS: Trust is a topic that crosses over between true humanism and religious belief. In the book, I advocate trust both as an essential aspect of humanity and a central component to a fruitful relationship with God. Obviously I suggest that God is the only one deserving of absolute, boundless trust, but it also builds communion between human beings.
LOPEZ: So how does one start to trust God?
FR. WILLIAMS: A bird learning to fly needs to fall out of the nest. Sometimes the only way to learn something is by doing it. Trust is a choice — it doesn’t just happen to us. We need to decide to trust. And that means leaning more and more on God. It means (as St. Ignatius used to say) working as if everything depended on us, but praying as if everything depended on God. “Doing things God’s way” is one of the best gymnasiums of trust. Instead of forcing God to do things our way, we can choose to do things his way, confident that he will bring good out of our efforts.
LOPEZ: How much can He be trusted as Congress seems poised to compel American taxpayers to support abortion?
FR. WILLIAMS: Again, trust doesn’t exempt us from responsibility. It implies it. But even when we are killing ourselves in the political or social arena, we need to remind ourselves that the best politics will never save us and the worst politics will never destroy us.
Trust doesn’t mean that bad, even terrible things won’t happen. It means that somehow God will pull us through even the worst catastrophes.
LOPEZ: How much can God be trusted when there are so many sinners among those who represent Him?
FR. WILLIAMS: All of us wish that God’s representatives would all be models of virtue and goodness, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. This is the true meaning of scandal — when one person’s bad actions lead others to doubt God’s goodness or to become cynical. Yet despite the evident failings of his people and ministers, God continues to guide us. Fortunately it has been happening for a long time, so we can get some comfort from that. Looking at the patriarchs, King David, the prophets, and even Jesus’s hand-picked disciples, we discover an awful lot of human weakness and sin, and despite this, God continues to achieve his plan for humanity.
And my own belief as a Catholic is that while God never promised to keep his chosen ones sin-free, he does preserve the doctrine of his Church. We’ve had plenty of corrupt, sinful popes, yet somehow they didn’t manage to mess up the Church’s identity or essential teaching.
LOPEZ: On a deeply personal note: You’re a member of a religious order that is facing painful realities about its founder. Has your trust in God been challenged?
FR. WILLIAMS: Yes, this has been a very difficult time. It’s hard to describe how painful and unsettling it is when someone in whom you placed deep trust turns out to be something other than what you always thought. It really rocks your world, as if someone pulled the rug out from under your feet.
At the same time, for me personally it has been a chance to reaffirm my trust in God. My vocation was and is a call from God, and I am ultimately accountable to him. And though I cannot explain it, I also believe as firmly as ever that my religious order is a work of God — something that he willed and brought about despite the deep failings of our founder.
This realization also gives me hope, because I realize that God can also do good through me despite my sinfulness. If God depended on perfect people to accomplish his plans, he would find himself very much alone.
LOPEZ: How can people trust an order so riddled with obstacles?
FR. WILLIAMS: Your question reminds me of what so many non-Catholics ask me about the Church. With such a mottled history, how can someone still be a Catholic? But God’s grace shines through human weakness. My personal experience of the Legion of Christ has been eminently positive. My family and I have benefited from it, learned to love Christ and his Church, and honestly received only good. I can only share that experience with others.
LOPEZ: The success of “hope and change” last year does suggest a certain amount of trust out there, doesn’t it?
FR. WILLIAMS: Deep down, people want to trust. They want to believe. The key is, I think, to decide wisely in whom or in what we will place our trust. On one extreme we have cynical distrust and on the opposite extreme we have foolish and imprudent trust. The right measure is somewhere in the middle. People need to earn trust, and once they have, we need to give it.
LOPEZ: Can politics ever really be trusted? Should it be? How can trust in God help the concerned citizen?
FR. WILLIAMS: We need to expect from politics only what politics can give. It is a human enterprise, fraught with human passions, vices, and temptations, but also, occasionally, an arena for what is best in humanity. With our eyes wide open we need to continue to work so that politics truly serves the common good. We cannot afford to abandon it.
Religious believers have something unique to offer to the political process. They have a transcendent view of the human person, a strong moral compass, and a deep commitment to the common good. Trust in God can keep them steadfast in the face of adversity and hopeful in the face of apparent failure, since they know that God will prosper the work of their hands, often in ways they do not see.
LOPEZ: At the end of your book you recommend Psalm 91 for those who wish to grow in trust. What makes it so special?
FR. WILLIAMS: Psalm 91 is a hymn of trust in God. It reminds us that he alone is truly faithful, now and every day of our lives. At the end of the day, when we have given our best and often come up with very little to show for it, he is our consolation and our prize. It’s essential to know that no matter what he will be there for us, in time and in eternity. He is our strength.