Trust is Honey and Mistrust is a Dagger
Xue Feng
Trust is a virtue, trust creates the heavenly kingdom, trust is a tremendous invisible power, trust is the moral character of a simplistic and kind person, and trust is the natural instincts of children. Jesus Christ told us that unless you become children again you will not be able to enter the kingdom of the Greatest Creator, because the heavenly kingdom belongs to children.
If we want to enter the back garden of the Greatest Creator, then we must first cultivate our moral character of trust!
Let’s have a look at the power of trust. There is a story in the Chinese textbook of primary school, “The Father and Son in the Earthquake”, which runs like this: “In 1989 a great earthquake struck Los Angeles in the United States, which rendered harm and injury to 300,000 people within less than four minutes. Amidst the chaos and ruins, a young father rushed to the school where his seven-year old son was studying after getting his injured wife settled down. In front of him the classroom building, which had been full of laughters of children, was now reduced to ruins. He was dumbfounded and all was blank in his head. He shouted, ‘Amanda, my son!’. He knelt on the ground and burst out crying. Then he suddenly recalled the word he often told his son, ‘I will always be with you, no matter what happens.’ He got to his feet with great determination and headed directly to the ruins. He knew that his son’s classroom was at the left back corner on the first floor. He ran to that place and began work. When he was cleaning up and dredging the area, a constant stream of parents of the children rushed to the site. Seeing the rubbish, they burst into tears and cried, ‘my son’, ‘my daughter’. After this they left the school in despair. Some people came forward and took hold of this young father’s hand, saying, ‘It is too late, they are already dead’. Staring at these kind-hearted people, he asked, ‘Would you help me?’. No one gave him an affirmative answer, so he lowered his head and continued digging. The captain of the fire brigade blocked him, saying, ‘It’s too dangerous, fire and explosion may occur any time. Please leave this place’. The father asked, ‘Are you coming to help me?’. The policeman walked over and said, ‘We know that you are very sad and can not control yourself, but if you continue like this it will be harmful to yourself and will also expose others to danger, please go back home immediately’. He asked the policeman instead, “Are you coming to help me?’ People all shook their heads and left in sighs, thinking that this father had lost his mind over the loss of his child. This father only had one belief in his mind, ‘my son is waiting for me’. He continued digging for eight hours, twelve hours, twenty fours, and thirty six hours. No one stopped him. His face was covered with dust and his eyes were bloodshot. His clothes were tattered and stained with blood. When he had dug for 38 hours, he heard the voice of a child from below, ‘Dad, is it you?’. It was his son. He shouted, ‘Amanda, my son’ ‘Dad, is it really you?’ ‘It’s me, your dad, my son’ ‘I told my classmates to be brave, I told them as long as my dad is alive he will come to save me, and we can all be saved, because you have told me, ‘you will be with me whatever happens!’. ‘How are you now? How many children are still alive?’ ‘There are all together fourteen classmates here, all alive. We were in the corner of the classroom and have all been spared from the earthquake because the collapsed ceiling has formed a triangle and we were not hit’. The father shouted, ‘There are fourteen children here, all alive. Please come and help them.’ People passing by made haste to help the children. Fifty minutes later, a safe opening was created, and all the children were saved.”
This is a real story, which conveys to us a message: faith and trust is a tremendous invisible power. With faith and trust in mind, we can survive disasters.
The faith in this story can be seen in two sentences. One is said by the father, “I will always be with you no matter what happens.” The other is uttered by the child, “As long as my dad is still alive, he will come to save me.”The mutual trust between father and son has made it possible for them both to survive the disaster and become reunited. Just imagine, if the father had no trust in the son, neither did the son in his father, then the hope for the survival of the fourteen children would have been extremely slim.
There was once a couple who loved each other deeply. One day when the wife discovered that her husband had stuffed some money into the hands of a pretty woman, she became suspicious of her husband, speculating that he had been unfaithful to her and the family. Ever since then, she had always been wary of him. Any of her husband’s contact with women would arouse her suspicion, and she would throw a tantrum. And her husband came to be tired of all this, and ended their marriage with divorce. Who was the woman into whose hand the husband had stuffed money, you may ask. She was the husband’s sister. Because the wife stood very far from them and could not see clearly, all that she could make out was a woman standing with her husband.
This is the tragedy caused by mistrust.
The mistrust between men can do great damage to their affections and friendship for each other and hurt each other deeply. Mistrust will cause a rift in the perfect things and turn the paradise into a hell.
During the Spring and Autumn and the Warring State Period, there was a famous person called Wu Zixu, who was a person of no trust. On his exile from the persecution of the king of Wu State, he was helped by an old fisherman who assisted him in crossing the river. After crossing the river he was afraid that the fisherman might give him away, so he told him, “If the pursuers came here, don’t tell them about my whereabouts.” Hearing this, the old fisherman uttered a sigh of grief, “I feel compassion for the wrong you have been subjected to and helped you to cross the river, and yet is suspected by you, then let me die to dispel your suspicion!” With that, he killed himself by jumping into the river. Think for yourself, he had managed to save you at the risk of his own life, and yet you didn’t trust him. How great is the humiliation to his noble character! A word of mistrust has caused the miserable death of a person. The mistrust between men is nothing less than a dagger that kills people without spilling blood! Wu Zixu was sceptical by nature. He had caused the death of the old fisherman, and during his subsequent fugitive life, he met with a yarn-washing woman who had sympathy with him and offered him food. This time, he once again was overwhelmed with mistrust, and told the woman at his departure, “Please don’t tell others your encounter with me!”. After this he left but looked back only to find that the woman had already killed herself by jumping into the river with a stone in her hands.
During the middle of 1980s, I went to Xinhua Bookstore in Lanzhou to buy some books. While I was at the door of the bookstore, a saleswoman barred my way, saying that she wanted to have a look at my bag. Instantly I felt the indignation and humiliation of being wronged and ill-treated, and shed tears of misery. My goodness! She has taken me for a thief. Since childhood, my grandma and parents had told me “you should never take other people’s things without permission, no matter how poor or how miserable you are.” Why should I be doubted by anyone without any reason at all? Ever since, I have never been to the Xinhua Bookstore in Lanzhou.
Three years ago, when I was shopping at a supermarket of the Mt.Pleasent business center in Harare, I handed at the checkout counter a stack of money about over 100,000 Yuan to a black cashier. He put the money inside the cash register without counting it. I asked him, “Why don’t you count it?”. He answered, “I trust you!”. I was so moved and overjoyed at the time as if I was already in the heavenly kingdom. I would have hugged and kissed him. Ever since I have a greater liking for Harare and the people there in Zimbabwe.
I hope that people shall build the basic trust in each other. Only with trust can people build close relations with each other and only with trust can people build a bright future.
Ungrounded mistrust is a sharp killing dagger, please don’t raise the butchering dagger recklessly!
2007-09-06
lifechanyuan.org
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