Beloved,
In my last sermon on James, I emphasized that we must be careful not to project the deceit of one person onto all people. It’s very easy to do this when we’ve been blindsided by lies—to start believing that everyone is hiding their true selves behind a mask of deceit. If you’ve ever been burned by someone, you know how quickly cynicism about others can take root. But the love God calls us to as His redeemed people will not allow us to assume the worst about others, especially when there is no objective evidence to support those assumptions. One of your elders often stresses this with a simple three-word phrase: “Assume positive intent.” We now refer to it by the acronym API. Until proven otherwise, we should assume the best about the hearts and motives of others, rather than falling prey to cynicism. That is what love does!
That said, I am not suggesting we should gullibly trust everyone. There is a difference between assuming the best about a person and entrusting ourselves to that person. The first should be our default position as Christians, but given the widespread reality of deceit in the world and in the church (because of the deceiver and the deceitfulness of sin), we should not be quick to hand over our deepest thoughts and desires or most precious treasures to others.
An example might help. A couple of weeks ago I had meetings that prevented me from taking Owen to baseball practice. Tessa reached out on the team’s group chat to let the coach know that O would not be able to make it. One of the moms from the team then contacted Tessa, offering to pick him up. It was a very kind offer! We did not assume wicked intent, as if she were trying to seize an opportunity to kidnap or traffic our boy. But since we had never even met her in person before (it was the beginning of the season), there had been no opportunity for trust to be established. We thanked her for her kindness, but we turned the offer down.
API does not equal trust. Refusing to be cynical does not mean we should be gullible. When a Christian leader is exposed as a fraud, or a close friend turns out to be different from who we thought they were, it should remind us that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. That reality should not change our default posture of taking people at face value (until there are clear reasons not to), but it should teach us the wisdom needed to discern when and to what degree we ought to give our trust.
It should also deepen our gratitude for belonging to Christ. In Him there is not the slightest hint of deceit. He is perfectly worthy of our unqualified trust. Resting in His trustworthiness and goodness frees us to trust others reasonably, even when doing so risks relational disappointment or pain. For if Jesus is for us, who can be against us? Through saving trust in Him, we are guarded from both cynicism and gullibility, as we grow in wise love and loving wisdom to His glory.
Yours in Him,
Pastor Nick
P. S. Next time you have an hour and a half to spare, I encourage you to check out the excellent documentary Truth Rising which was recently released and can be accessed HERE for free.