Assumptions

I read an interesting article entitled Love Hopes All Things - And Tosses the Worst Assumptions. The article started with a wife who complained that her husband had left a dish on the table. She was miffed. What's wrong with him? She complained, and he apologized. "I'm sorry. The baby was crying and I thought I'd try to play with him to get him out of your way so you could have some time to yourself." And she was ashamed. She had assumed a motive (laziness) that wasn't the case. She was wrong.

Love, you see, "believes all things" (1 Cor 13:7). Love believes the best of the beloved. C.S. Lewis added, "... even against the evidence -- yea, against much evidence." That's part of love. Perhaps not our favorite part. Perhaps not the best known. But it's there.

Have you been falsely accused? Especially in terms of false assumptions? Someone assumes the motives for your actions are less than honorable when, as it turns out, you were genuinely seeking the best for others? Our society is embracing this false assumption wholesale. "If you're white, you're racist." "If you're a male, you're sexist." "If you opposed Obama, it was because you were a racist." "If you were against Hillary becoming president, it was because you were a sexist." Just some quick examples. Feel free to fill in your own. Oh, I know one. "The Left hates America." Oh, sorry, did that one get too close? Because I've heard that one from a lot of conservatives (alongside "Trump hates America" for today). It's not necessarily true, you know. That the Left thinks that what's good for America is different than what the Right thinks is obvious, but you can't assume from the outset that they hate America. That's perhaps a false assumption, false accusation.

Slander is defined as "the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation." When we make accusations against someone by assigning them a motivation they don't actually have, it is slander. It is a false charge that wrongly damages their reputation. When you accuse a Christian of hate because she holds to a biblical perspective of the sin of homosexual behavior, you'd better be sure it is hate and not simply believing the Bible and being concerned for their fellow human beings. When you accuse a white person of being a racist because they disagree with you on a subject with a racial component, you'd better be sure their argument is predicated on that racial component or it will be slander. If you make these kinds of false assumptions of motive, be careful. It is a violation of love -- believing the best of the other. Perhaps "swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath" (James 1:19) would be a better approach. Of course, if you say, "I don't care about any of that; I'm going to accuse them as I see fit," then perhaps it isn't a violation of love that should be your highest concern. Perhaps it's a question of whether or not you know Jesus.