(http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/angry-ex-behind-plane-hoax-in-sweden-20100927-15u9u.html)
About the same time as this happened, a wife of 24 years threw petrol over her husband whom, she claimed, was having an extra marital affair. He died and the house burnt down.
Any day of the week, we can read of real life dramas where both men and women 'let fly' in their stressed emotional state – there was also the recent trial of a man who allegedly drowned his three children in Victoria after a father's day access visit, rather than returning them to their home with their mother.
Many glossy magazines and tabloids specialise in such calamities; the truth is people enjoy reading about it, otherwise the newspapers and magazines would not include the horrifying or dramatic stories.
The concept of 'trust' is at the heart of any discussion of 'relationship', which in turn is at the heart of these tragedies.
What is a relationship in this context, and why is having a trusting relationship so important to our emotional needs? The words 'trust' and 'relationship' are the two sides of the same coin. Without trust there can be no true relationship.
Yet, I wonder whether the word 'trust' is as valued today as it may have once been.
Sociologists in the West tell us that the nature of a relationship has taken on a very different form with the younger generations and the gradual changes in our social mores since the 1960s. They indicate that the word 'partner' does not convey the same longevity to a relationship as the word 'husband' or 'wife'.
Therefore one might expect a number of 'trusting relationships' until one 'settles down' (as it were). In this sense, the word 'trust' conveys a temporary situation, although with meaning at the time.
In exploring this further, 'trust' if means within the 'current partner' relationship. Sociologists also tells us that the television sitcom reflects society and from these much might be explored. Any number of sitcoms reveal such attitudes of 'generic-partner' mistrust when a partner is unexplainably late home or the lax attitude to flirting when at a party.
Although, of course, human nature has not changed over the ages, as reflected in the 'sitcoms' of previous eras from the ancient Greek comedy 'Lysistrata' to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer to the various parodies of married life in Shakespeare's comedies.
In summary, 'trust' is the glue that sustains a relationship and this is revealed not only by life time relationships, but from the beginning of time as revealed in the Scriptures. There is an 'old old' story and its central focus is that of trust. True dependable love without trust is a nonsense.
There is a reason why the Ten Commandments includes fidelity. There is a reason God calls to account those who go and worshipped other gods as behaving with infidelity. There is a reason why the New Testament compares the love the groom has for his bride as God has for His Church (Christians in community). There is a reason why Christians believe that Christ died for their sin on the Cross, in faith.
It's that trust is at the very centre of it all.
Therefore when a such a trust is broken, the world is tipped upside down. Something is no longer right. And in spite of all this, the forgiveness that Christ offers through His divine sacrifice on the Cross, is yet available to all sinners.
Relationships which were torn can mend, as in real life dramas, although the seam of sin will show, yet fresh loving assurances can be resurrected.