Trust Fall

You’ve been hurt by someone, right? Maybe your mom, overwhelmed by the pain of a broken marriage, chose a new partner and left you to navigate the confusion of divorce. Or maybe a friend posted something hurtful on Snap, leaving you to carry the weight of betrayal and embarrassment.

Unfortunately, these kinds of experiences are all too common. Trust is hard to build and incredibly easy to break. But why is that? Why can’t we all just get along?

The Bible gives us a sobering answer: we can’t—not on our own. In Genesis 3, we’re told how this all began. With one act—taking the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—humanity gained wisdom but lost its innocence. From that moment on, the ability to naively trust others disappeared. Suspicion, shame, and blame became part of our story.

When I was in college, I joined a program to develop my leadership skills. As part of that process, I did a “trust fall.” Blindfolded, arms crossed over my chest, I stood on a platform and was told to fall backward into the arms of my teammates below. Thankfully, they caught me—and this story doesn’t end with a trip to urgent care.

The reason exercises like that work is simple: trust is built through experience. We learn to rely on others when they consistently show themselves to be dependable. For most of us, our default setting is “don’t trust.” It takes effort, time, and intentionality to rewrite that script—especially with people we don’t know.

But here’s the hope: while humanity may have broken trust, God never did. And through Christ, He’s not just rebuilding our trust in Him—He’s showing us how to rebuild trust with each other. Healing begins when we move toward others not in blind naivety, but in grace-fueled courage.

Trust, once lost, may be hard to recover—but in God’s hands, it’s never beyond redemption.