Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I do believe in the afterlife; I have heard stories from people who I can completely trust that have seen ghosts.
If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.
If you're going to counsel people - and that's all my ministry is, it's a counseling ministry more than anything else - people have to believe that they can trust you and that they can listen to you, that you're going to try to help them and not just politically try to convert them to your views.
It's important to build trust if you're trying to deal with big things. Big issues require everybody to get outside their comfort zone, and people are more willing to do so if they believe that their partner is sincere in their efforts. And the only way you can do that is to engage them on a personal level.
Snowden grants that NSA employees by and large believe in their mission and trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people - deliberately, in the case of bulk records collection, and 'incidentally,' when the content of American phone calls and e-mails are swept into NSA systems along with foreign targets.