Pilgr-image 20 - Truthfulness

Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one. - Matthew 5:37

The whole problem of our time is not lack of knowledge but lack of love. If we only loved one another we would have no difficulty in trusting one another and in sharing the truth with one another.

- Thomas Merton

Love and trust.  Trust and love.  Peanut butter and jelly.  Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire.  R2-D2 and C-3P0.  Bacon and eggs.  Cheetos and ketchup.  Ok, maybe not the last one (although that might have been something I used to eat a LOT when I was a kid).  Great pairings where it is hard to think of one without the other.  Can we love without trust?  Can we trust without love?

These words from Thomas Merton go to the heart of what it feels like Jesus is getting at with this next teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  While Jesus is teaching on “oaths,” it really feels like the deeper issue is that of trust (and of love).  When you read this teaching in context with the others, it feels like this one is the center of all of them because all of the other parts (reconciliation and how we treat one another, how we view one another and are united in marriage with one another, and then getting into how we treat our enemies.  It feels like love and trust are at the heart of all of those as it is at the heart of whether we trust others with their “yes” or they trust our “yes.”

And wow...do we ever need that right now.  With all the issues of what is “real” today (AI, media manipulation, etc) as well as the ways that people want to weaponize people against each other, we need to get back to love and to trust with one another.  Can we approach one another through a lens of love that can lead to trust?  Can we try to approach one another through a lens of trust rather than a lens of suspicion?

PS - Give Cheetos and ketchup a try...