Fleshing Out Trust

If you were an absentee landlord and had to find trustworthy tenants, what would you seek? (Serendipity Bible, 10^th Anniversary Edition, p.1373).

In a sense we are all absentee landlords in those we must trust.  Trust implies that the person is to some extent outside our control, otherwise there would be no need of trust.  The other implication is that what the person does (or doesn’t do) will have impact upon us.  Some of the factors that can put one outside our control is our own limited skill or knowledge.  That is, because of my lack of skill or knowledge regarding brain surgery, if I needed it I would hopefully find a surgeon in whom I had trust.  Trust in such a case can be essential for it serves to give me a willingness to undergo surgery in the first place.

Now it is possible that someone I trust (say as a tenant) is not someone I would trust in other activities (say as a brain surgeon).  In other words, a consideration of trust also entails an understanding of a limited field of that trust.  As adults we probably never truly give trust in a carte blanche sense simply because we know that even the most skilled and knowledgeable in one area can be inept and even downright fools in another.

Now on consideration of an absentee landlord-->tenant relationship in particular, we can immediately list reliability, stability, responsibility, and cleanliness as traits bestowing confidence and trust on the part of the landlord.  But even here, one is tempted to insert the word “acceptable” before each quality.  This is true because though one wants cleanliness, one does not want a fanatic that ruins one’s floors by applying a caustic chemical; and while one wants responsibility, one does not want an unskilled tenant to play electrician out of a false sense of duty.  Some performances are essential in the landlord-->tenant relationship as in the payment of rent and the respect of property.  In matters of trust, performance always counts most in sustaining the relationship under the long-term duress of reality.

Print Page