Game Trust, Real Trust, and Love

When I watch reality TV, I'm always surprised by the contestant (and there's always at least one), who is shocked to find out that another contestant wasn't telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but that truth. It's a bit like someone being shocked that poker sometimes involves bluffing.

Of course, there's a whole conversation about ethics that can be had here, and it's a conversation that fascinates me, but I'm going to put it aside for the moment in order to focus on something else: the nature of trust.

Game Trust
In reality TV game shows - or in just about any game - the person you can trust is the person whose interests align with yours. You  have "game trust"*. Game trust means that you can predict what the person will do and therefore you can trust them to act in the way you expect. To use game trust to your advantage, find where your opponent's interests correspond with yours, and exploit that correspondence to your benefit.

All very dog-eat-dog, right? Well, it can be. It's also very close to the reason why capitalism works and is the worse system in the world - except for all the others. Capitalism is an economic system that assumes that people are going to operate in their own self-interest, and builds all its checks and balances around that assumption. And, people being people, they do act in their own self-interest, and that's why capitalism usually works okay.

So: game trust.

Real Trust

What comes next in this hierarchy of trust? It's what I'll call "real trust". It's what we have with our spouses, our parents, our friends, and our kids, at least in the healthy versions of those relationships. We can trust them to act "not just in our own interest, but also in the interest of others".

When I was engaged to marry my husband, my mom shared a great piece of marriage advice. She said, "If it's good for Adam, it's good for you." Or, in other words, if there was a thing Adam loved - say a hobby or a job or a friend - and it wasn't something I loved, it was still good for me if he had that good thing. Because when we married, his good became my good. Anything that makes him happier, better, stronger? Makes me the same, because we've become - in ways both mystical and practical - one. His good is my good, and my good is his.

Other good relationships work this way. I have friends who have passions that baffle me - they're things I'd never want to do. But I can see the good effect that nurturing those passions has on their lives, and because I love them, I'm happy to encourage them that make them happier, better, stronger - in other words, more themselves.

So, real trust. I can trust the ones I love to love me and do me good - sometimes even to their own hurt. There are people of whom I do not need to be afraid.

Love

But, of course, even in good human relationships, there's a limit to love. We're selfish in even the best of our relationships, we can't help it. We can never fully empathize with someone else. And since you have to know well in order to love well, we can never love fully: we're not omniscient. My husband probably has a better guess about what constitutes my good than any other human being has - but it's still, at least partly, a guess. He is not all-knowing and so cannot be all-loving.

But God can. He knows us fully and loves us fully. He knows what our good is (it is Him) and is constantly working to give it to us.

And here is the marvelous thing: as Christians, the Holy Spirit dwells within us. As we commune with God in prayer, the Holy Spirit continually works in our hearts to direct them towards love and good works. As we pray for our family and friends, He shows us how to love them.

In other words, real love, full love, can be ours. It can be ours when we let God love our loved ones through us. It is not us doing the work, but Him. Will we ever see more than that "dim reflection" here? No, but the light will grow, if we walk in obedience. I'm reminded of the words Tennyson wrote in memory of a well-loved friend:

We have but faith: we cannot know;

For knowledge is of things we see

And yet we trust it comes from thee,

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;

We mock thee when we do not fear:

But help thy foolish ones to bear;

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


*I'm not sure, but this phrase might have been invented by Linda Holmes back when she wrote for TWOP under the name "Miss Alli".

Lazarus

There's a small section in Tennyson's great poem, In Memorium, about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. One part made my breath puff out in a half-laugh, half expression of astonishment, as Tennyson wondered how Lazarus might have answered his sister when she asked him where he had been those several days he was dead, and observes:

Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.

Indeed. One wonders.

But then the next section of the poem caught me by surprise with its beauty:

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.

Can you even imagine?

And yet someday we will all sit around a table in that company: our beloved dead, who are no longer dead, and Life Himself.

God have mercy on us sinners.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Reading "In Memoriam A. H. H."

Strong Son of God, immortal Love . . .

Thus begins Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem of grief. This preface, which is addressed to Christ, was probably the last-composed part of the poem he took 17 years to write, but he placed it at the beginning, as an apology for all that followed.

"Strong" is the first word of the preface and "strong" remains the best adjective for the whole thing. It presents his case strongly ("Thou madest man, he knows not why/He thinks he was not made to die") and his faith in God just as strongly ("And thou has made him: thou art just.").

To that problem of sorrow Tennyson gives an answer that is, in one way, the answer of Job, "I had spoken of thee, but now I have seen thee, and I repent in dust and ashes." Or, in Tennyson's words:

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of thee,

And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

But it's more than the answer of Job, because it's the answer of a Christian, of a man who believes that God became incarnate, and is thus a God who knows our sorrows intimately. Tennyson again:

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou:

Our wills are ours, we know not how;

Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

(That "seemest", by the by, does mean "appears", but not, I think, "appears to be but isn't really". Just "appears and is".)

Yet his faith never stops him from describing death and sorrow in their bleakest terms:

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;

Thou madest Life in man and brute;

Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

Is on the skull which thou has made.

This is where we find ourselves. Which brings me to, why am I reading this? Well, because it is beautiful, and I have long loved Tennyson and long loved the preface. But more than that: because it was said, in Victorian times, that in this poem Tennyson taught England how to mourn. And the longer I live, the more clearly I see that either I am going to die or I am going to be mourning those who've died. And I'd like to read this now, before I am faced with the death of a loved one, so that I might have some words for my grief when it comes.

(I've had the experience before of reading things that didn't apply to me at the time, but being so glad I had them in my heart and head later on, when I needed them. I expect this will happen again. And again, and again. Isn't that why we memorize Scripture?)

And because I'm already mourning some smaller things, and I want to understand what's going on in my own heart.

And because, due to the preface, I already trust Tennyson. I know where he ended up, and it's where I want to end up too:

Forgive my grief for one remoed,

Thy creature, whom I found so fair.

I trust he lives in thee, and there

I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,

Confusions of a wasted youth;

Forgive them where they fail in truth

And in thy wisdom make me wise.

As I said, this preface has long been one of my favorite poems, but I've never read the longer poem (133 cantos) in its entirety. I'm deep into it now, and often wishing both to stop and to go on, because it is so hard to read and yet so beautiful and good. But as the proverb says, it is better to enter the house of mourning than the house of feasting, and the wise take it to heart.

Though, honestly . . . I don't know why exactly I'm doing this, despite all of the reasons I just wrote about. It's probably more true to say, "I just want to, and so I am." I want to, and so I'm making up reasons that make sense. We'll see. Even if it never helps me understand grief, or mourn properly, or any of that nonsense, I don't think I'll be hurt by letting my thoughts follow the thoughts of this great poet. I'll let you know how it goes.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell