the participating presence of God in human life. An
obstacle in the way of this achievement occurs when people separate God
from life and make Him a kind of absentee operator of the machine called
the world. It then is necessary for the child to make a huge leap from
his trust of his parents to faith in God. While we cannot equate
parental action with divine action, nevertheless we can affirm that
divine action takes place through human action. When such an affirmation
is made and accepted as a part of the parents' faith and is interpreted
to the child as he is able to receive it, he is helped to grow up with a
religious understanding of life itself, rather than conceiving of
religion as being merely a part of life. He will grow up with the idea
that being trustworthy and trusting others has not only psychological
and sociological meaning, but also theological meaning.

A sense of trust is basic, because without it the further development of
the individual would not be possible. Its foundations are laid in the
very first year of an individual's life. The act of taking from his
mother not just food, but her ministrations, her companionship and
friendliness, is the beginning of his emergence as an individual apart
from his parents. As he becomes an individual person, he immediately
begins to be a giver as well as a taker. Giving, as well as receiving,
must become a part of the dialogical relation between two individuals,
whether between a child and the parent, or between two adults. As soon
as a child begins to become a giver, the parent must consent to be a
receiver of that which the child has to give, and thus, again, is a
relationship of basic trust established.

Without parental reception the child would not be affirmed as a giver,
and would, out of his mistrust, become a compulsive taker, a result that
is tragic not only psychologically and sociologically, but religiously
as well. He will not be able to trust God; but because he needs to trust
God, he will begin to create images of God in the context of which he
will try to handle his existential problems. Thus, the foundations of a
false religion may be laid in early childhood, and this false religion,
as it matures, closes the person off from the truth of the gospel and
keeps him from becoming an instrument of the gospel in relation to the
whole world. The church is filled with people who do not really trust
God, even though they publicly profess their faith in Him