When a promise is broken ... (Part 1)

In our world today, we see lots of lies, broken promises, and betrayals on a daily basis resulting in great hurts and irreparable relationships. One of the news highlights of the past week would undoubtedly be the confession of a world-class athlete who won the Tour de France seven times in a roll, Lance Armstrong. Lance confessed that he doped in order to win yet he maintained that doping was necessary and helped leveling the playing field because almost everybody out there is taking performance enhancing drugs. He argued that of the 200 who have competed, only 5 had not taken drugs. One of the most disgraceful things he did was that he not only lied during all those past investigations, he went on to sue people he knew were actually speaking out the truth. 

In the business world, we can clearly see most businesses would be concerned about profit-making or providing shareholders good returns on their investment. They do not mind bluffing. In advertising their products and services, they magnify the half-truth or the non-truth, and put a tiny clause of the truth somewhere that is hardly readable. People suffer because of that.

Recently Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department released data about marriage and divorce. 30 years ago, there were some 2,000 marriages ending in divorce. Now, that’s a 10 times increase to almost 20,000 couples who fail to honour their promise.

All these broken promises, lies and false pretenses often come from people who are impacting us – top athletes, political leaders, big corporations and sometimes our loved ones. Can people be trusted? Can Christians be trusted? This not only erodes our trust for one another, but for God too. These days, people are getting more negative towards church and Christianity on the whole particularly with the mounting child abuse scandals one after another. The image that Christian Church has portrayed about God to the society has been deteriorating. People have been asking – can God be trusted after all? What can we trust Him for?  

If these questions echo what has been in your heart, stay tuned as we will look at if God can be trusted and why.