The great weakness in the North American church...is our refusal to accept our brokenness. We hide it, evade it, gloss over it. We grab for the cosmetic kit and put on our virtuous face to make ourselves admirable to the public.  Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust

My first response to that quote when I read it was, "Ouch."  It is helpful to know that Brennan Manning is a Catholic monk, so he is speaking from inside the church rather than from the outside looking in with a sneer.  Manning is also very passionate about the church reclaiming and restoring what is at the center of the faith, which is not doctrine or creeds, but trust.  

Trust is in short supply today.  We don't trust our government on national or state levels.  We don't trust our employer to be there for us.  And the church has struggled with abuse scandals of all sorts.  The truth about trust is that is not so much that we spent all of our trust in previous years and now are running on empty.  Trust is not a consumable commodity.  Rather like the jar of meal when Elijah encountered the widow of Zarephath  trust cannot ever be fully used up.

To be sure, trust can be broken, which can feel about the same as running on empty.  Trust can be walked on and trust can definitely be mishandled in very hurtful ways.  What we are really talking about when we describe those very real moments is not the amount of trust inside us, but our willingness to trust again.  

Here is where I think Manning's quote is so important.  The church does not always know how to talk about the kind of broken trust or harsh words or painful experiences we carry with us into the sanctuary every Sunday.  Throughout my life in the church there has been an outsourcing of talking about brokenness.  Leave that to professionals like counselors and therapists.  Even in seminary I was encouraged to refer people if the situation was too broken.  I still think there is wisdom in that, but it can also feel like the church is saying to that person that we cannot do anything to help.  I think we can.  We can listen.  We can turn to the broken people we encounter in scripture together.  We can surround that person with unconditional love and reveal that our lives are not as perfect as we show on the surface.  

That is not the same as counseling, but I think there is a place and role for both.  I think when we are honest about our brokenness with others, and we see other's response as open to us, we are more apt to trust.  There is a sort of sacred math here: honesty about who we are plus a church community that provides that space can equal trust.   

And if we can do that as a church, I think Manning is correct, that not only we will be able to trust, we will also sense traces of God's grace.

Blessings and peace!