“In God We Trust”…or so they say

In God we trust. I noticed those words printed on the back of a twenty dol­lar bill yes­ter­day. While, the his­tory of these words and con­tro­versy over this phrase being uncon­sti­tu­tional has been much dis­cussed, I won­dered what do these words truly mean?

Is it really in God that we trust? Those words refer to the U.S. col­lec­tively as a nation, but what about indi­vid­u­ally? What about the print­ers of this money, do they?

We live in a world in which trust in God does exist, but trust in money is way deeper. The rea­son I say this is that when you think about it, how many peo­ple have been robbed of their trust in God? How many peo­ple have been mur­dered for their trust in God? When issues nation­ally arise such as the recent reces­sion were we all encour­aged to pray for and end to it? Of course not. So where is the trust really?

The trust truly seems to be in money itself and not God. The Bible itself says the “love” of money is the root of all evil. An exam­ple of that is the cri­sis in Haiti. People’s trust in money have led to them being involved in fraud­u­lent fund rais­ing for relief efforts that really were a means for them to profit.

Recent news of the mur­der of a Florida lot­tery win­ner as well as lot­ter­ies them­selves do not show a trust in God, but a trust in money. The per­son who is report­edly respon­si­ble for killing the man as a means to get his money cer­tainly did not show a trust in God. Lotteries pro­mote the idea of day after day invest­ing in the oppor­tu­nity to win mil­lions that will lead to a bet­ter life.

Even some reli­gions them­selves who are based on trust in God have suc­cumbed to trust in money by tak­ing mate­r­ial advan­tage of loyal fol­low­ers. Where is the trust in God in that?

If we are com­pletely hon­est with our­selves we have to admit that we have at times given the trust that actu­ally belonged to God over for mate­r­ial gain. Things like pros­ti­tu­tion, drugs, human traf­fick­ing and war can be attrib­uted to trust in money. People have done things that they never believed they were capa­ble of all based on their trust in money. We have seen this through­out his­tory. So with that in mind, in what do we really trust?

Thanks for read­ing,