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“Cynicism has become the default,” actor Tom Hanks claimed in a recent interview. We no longer expect truth in politics, the Church is mired with abuse and the people many of us looked up to at our most trusting time of life – Jimmy Saville; Rolf Harris – we now know to have had stinking feet of clay. Into this ubiquitous climate of suspicion comes Hanks’ latest rôle: Fred Rogers, American children’s tv entertainer, in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, just premiered in Toronto. So Rogers must turn out to be a fraudster or philanderer, a crook or con-artist or pædophile, right? The journalist Tom Junod set out to find the man behind the image. And found the image was the man. Just a thoroughly good guy. Where’s the story there? And yet the film opened to critical acclaim and is predicted to be a huge hit. It’s foolish not to accept life has its dishonest side. Is there any one of us that’s never been cheated, abused or deceived? Fraud has become the country’s most widely-experienced crime, arguably least-understood by the country’s law-enforcement. I dislike even locking a door and used to be exasperated by all the security settings on my computer – not another password or PIN or verifying step – until my son pointed out I wouldn’t be the one picking up the pieces when I was hacked. My husband and I entrusted our entire future to someone reputable we’d known a long time... who turned out not to be worthy of trust at all. Our children suffered greatly and I came to believe our gullibility had been folly: our folly, sin. But perhaps it’s worse to be too suspicious. Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers, demonstrates the dangers of not just over- but also under-trusting those we don’t know. In Howard’s End, after their aunt reproves the girls for allowing stranger Leonard Bast into their home to retrieve his umbrella, Margaret Schlegel quotes their late father: “Better to be fooled than to be suspicious.” Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whole books must have been written, treatises argued as to what Jesus meant by these words. But one thing all children indubitably have in common is trust. They have no choice: they are helpless. As an adolescent Christian I was taught that all are sinners; all fall short of the glory of God: none is righteous, no not one. I can see the doctrinal force of this... but when I look about me, it doesn’t ring true. There is goodness everywhere. In any human disaster, total strangers help each other. Where is this “selfish gene” so vital for survival? It exists, yes. But far more counter-intuitive, astonishing and worthy of note is the unselfish gene. Trustworthiness, self-sacrifice, sheer human kindness all around us. “We are allowed,” Hanks says, “to feel good.” Surely a better default than cynicism? “The confidence trick is the work of man,” Miss Schlegel continues, “but the lack-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil.”