Waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep right away – I know I am in trouble if I start thinking. Then I will most likely be awake for hours. This happened last night and soon my brain had taken over. I pondered the difference between “trust” and “faith”. Is there a difference or are they in essence, the same thing? Is trust more secular and faith more religious? Can you trust God? Can you have faith in a business venture? Of course, the answer is “yes” to both questions. I then decided that they can both be secular and religious.
Do you first have faith and then trust is what follows? I have faith that my book will be successful. When I am convinced, is that where trust steps in? First you believe and then you can trust? Webster says under “trust” – “to place confidence: depend. …to do something without fear or misgiving. To rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of: believe.” For “faith”, Webster says “Firm belief in something for which there is no proof…Something that is believed especially with strong conviction.”
If you trust someone, you usually do so after a certain period of time, or with a certain knowledge that it is prudent to do so. Faith, on the other hand, seems more like “flying by the seat of your pants”. You have no reason to believe, you just do. There is no scientific evidence supporting it. Perhaps trust requires more than that.
So I say, trust that you will get yourself through whatever it is you are going through. Trust that God will help you get there. That seems to be injecting faith qualities onto trust.
I asked my sister what she thought. Her initial reaction was that faith is predominantly having to do with God (religion) and trust is more man-made. Faith is intangible, she said. It is an “inside job”. It involves just you (and maybe God). Trust, on the other hand, you can see in a child’s face, in the faces of people who love each other. It involves more than one. Trust says, “Are you there?” Faith says, “Here I am.”
I think as with the word “love” we have become sloppy in our language, substituting “trust” for “faith” and vice versa. We exchange these two words as if they meant the same thing. After giving it much thought, I say they are two different words with two distinct and different meanings. What do you think?