In God We Trust

that's what the quarter says (I don't believe in God myself, although I won't foolishly deny the possibility.) but is is really possible to trust in a God that you know exists? Anyone who is a Christian believes God and the Bible to be undeniable knowledge, and since God is perfect, how is it even possible to trust him? Well, you might say, "just because we know him to exist and be perfect doesn't mean we can't trust him, right?", but at least to me, in order to trust anyone or anything, risk is an absolute- thus without it you cannot trust it for that reason.

Well, from a psychological standpoint this holds true, as well is financial- I haven't found any non-theistic examples in which trust does not require risk for trust to risk. Okay, maybe God is supernatural, but why make him an exception on such a fairly irrelevant basis?

It is true that although all the definitions of trust infer risk, most do not clarify as such, although some do. Perhaps this is the source of the confusion, or perhaps maybe the definitions were reworded to better suite the more theistic connotations. Well, now I'm bordering on conspiracy, but then again every conspiracy has legit origins anyway (well obviously we can't prove that, but it would be a more logical conclusion.)

Earlier, I had a similar struggle with the word "believe", wondering why a God we know exists is possible to believe in, since the criteria for a belief includes not being a fact. Recently though, I came to the conclusion that saying you belief in God, or certain related aspects, is simply saying that it's a fact while removing the opportunity for the person you say it to to be offended or voice their disagreement. By means of this middle ground, adherents of various religions are able to make it clear that their beliefs are fact, while avoiding the otherwise inevitable negative reactions when communicating with those of different beliefs.

However, trust is not limited to religious contexts, and thus cannot be given the benefit of the doubt on account of socio-psychological adaptation practices. In order to best define trust, all variables must be taken into account.

Faith, however, seems to be limited mostly to religious context, although there are some exceptions. But due to the usage being almost entirely religious, it would be acceptable to use it in the same way as "believe" even though faith bears a definition highly synonymous with that of trust. Due to popular usage, this exception was made, however, this leads to an even greater confusion due the meaning being the same of that of faith, at least in practical usage.

My conclusion is that in religious contexts, trust bears a slightly different definition than in other contexts, in the same way as faith and belief. However, although all three words are interchangeable in practical contexts, (the extent to which belief is interchangeable with the other two is comparably limited though, because the approach is slightly different; trust and faith are more passive, where belief is more active.) in religious contexts are markedly distinguished. In other words, they all mean the same thing in most contexts, but in religious contexts, all three words have very different connotations.

To avoid confusion, let me clarify: in religious contexts, all three words are apparently used to declare certain religious opinions as if they were fact without the ones of a different belief taking offense or other negative reactions. However, each word represents a different approach at accomplishing this, and has different goals associated with it. In spite of the clear distinction, however, the only reliable part is the distinction- the differences associated with the distinction is up for debate, and inherently unknown. Pretty useless distinction if you ask me. Perhaps it was made solely to emphasize the words chosen in the Bible, or if relevant, other religious texts, were not simply chosen to hold the readers attention by means of variety, but in fact represents an integral part of God's purpose. Well we'll never know, but in either case, because the distinctions cannot be statically defined, many religious adherents use them interchangeably as they see fit, relying primarily on what fits best, which is in turn usually inspired by the ever-evolving religious writing, continuous attempting to adapt to religion(s) in which words have undefined distinctions. From this point of view, it is one of the most useless things to ever attain such an undeserved level of influence.