Is It Always Sinful to Act on Negative Assumptions?

I assume this telemarketer is probably trying to scam me, right? I assume this interview is probably a scam. I assume, like, based on the evidence I have, that this guy looks like a dangerous person, right?

So you're, you know, operating under that, but then you don't convict on the level of assumption.

All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is it always wrong to act on negative assumptions about other people?

No.

No.

No.

I like that. That's funny. I bet a lot of people were probably, well, I don't know. I guess if you're listening to us, you always expect the answer that you probably least expect from someone else to say.

But okay, so no, it's not always wrong to act on negative assumptions. So why not? What kind of scenarios are you having in mind when you're saying no to a question like that?

Yeah, so a lot of this has to do with the meaning of the word, you know, assume or assumption.

Well, I know how to spell it.

Yeah, the assumption essentially is to take something for granted as if it's true without necessarily having conclusive proof that it actually is true. So there's a sense in which, you know, if you were to think about, like, love believes all things, love hopes all things, you want to generally assume the best about people, particularly about loved ones.

The Bible would generally encourage you to think the best about them, to try to put their actions in the best possible light. And then, you know, we're not omniscient, right? So we don't know everything.

And so in the absence, like there's many situations in which you don't have the time to test every assumption. You know, a general rule that biblical counselors will say is, you know, don't assume, ask.

And that's fine as far as it goes, but then it's not the kind of thing that you can do, like in real life.

All the time.

Like consistently, right? So you have to make decisions in the moment. And, you know, life is filled with thousands and thousands of decisions in the moment. And, you know, the only way to navigate life is to have wisdom, right?

So you have to have wisdom. You have to know how things generally go in the past and make speculations about how they're going to go in the present. And so what you have to do in order to live life is you're going to have to, you know, at times assume the worst about people and even act on it in the absence of the ability to verify everything.

So let me just give you a couple of scenarios about how this works and then try to talk through a way of distinguishing this from just making uncharitable assumptions about people in a wicked kind of way.

But, you know, when you have a telemarketer call you, okay. And, you know, they sound like they're from Pakistan. What do you assume?

I mean, I just hang up.

Okay.

I just assume that like whatever is about to happen is going to be a waste of my time.

Okay.

All right.

So, but that's a negative assumption that you just made. Do you understand? Like you just made a negative assumption about a person calling you on the phone with a, you know, an accent from Pakistan. Like you assume that they're probably trying to steal from you, right?

Like, and this is a waste of time. So you assume that, you know, they probably, now can you verify it? No, right?

Right.

Now you can go through that sales pitch and spend 30 minutes of your day giving them all the information that they're requesting because you're operating under good faith assumptions, thinking the best about that individual who you've never met before.

And you didn't ask to call you, right? So you can go through that whole procedure and get to the part where they're asking you to wire the Western Union, like money or gift cards.

Right, right, right.

So you can do that or you can say, hey, you know what? Like, I don't have time to walk through this big speech, particularly when people call so many times during the day, right? This is God's time. It's not my time.

Like, I need to redeem the time because the days are evil. I know typically how this is going to go and has gone in the past. And, you know, I just, you make it, you, you, you're making a habit just to hang up, right?

Not even dealing.

Yeah.

Right.

All right.

Well, I don't think, you know, now, now, like the, thankfully the phones, the phone will screen, they'll just say like spam and it's like, all right, screen.

All right.

So often they do spam, but then sometimes like numbers will get through. And you have to figure out, well, all right, now let's just say that you don't even answer the phone, right? Because it's a number you don't know.

Then what kind of assumption are you making at that point that you're operating? You're, you're, you're operating under the assumption. I don't know this number.

If it's important, they'll leave a voicemail.

If it's important, if not, they're probably trying to scam me.

Right.

Typically.

All right. All right.

So, so in that moment though, like that's a negative assumption you're making about, you know, an individual who is sending you this call, whoever that is.

Who lovingly decided to take time out of their day to, to call me and talk to me.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So you're making some sort of assumption there. That's a negative assumption about what's happening. And then you're actually acting on it too.

Okay.

And so, you know, and you can, and we do this, like, like, this is just a part of life. Like where, you know, you, you go into a, like you're sitting at a restaurant or whatever, and you see someone like there's a scenario like this that I acted upon where there's a guy walking into the church one time and he looked a little bit shady, right.

He looked a little bit shady. So he was, you know, he was flagging all, all these shady kind of things. And like, there's a hand motion that people can make when they're going into a situation like that to where they, they kind of like, they see the church, right.

They look, they're looking at the church building. I'm standing outside. He sees our church building, looks at the church building. Then immediately his hand goes down to his pocket like this, right. And then like he crouched over a little bit and starts walking into like, like very determinedly into the church building.

Right.

And so what I assumed in my mind, it was a negative assumption. I said, does he have a gun in his pocket? And I acted upon it, meaning I went, I followed him in there and I stood at a distance behind him to see what he was doing.

Like, and I was ready to go in case he was like something, you know, he, he had a, he was planning on taking his hand out rapidly from his pocket. He would have been tackled really quickly by me, okay.

Because I was, you know, cause I followed him in. Now I made an assumption there and I was acting upon that assumption, but then like, you can make assumptions in different ways. You can assume that something, you know, looks suspicious and you're going to act upon it.

And you can like, you know, I could then make a, you know, a bigger assumption in that moment saying, okay, he's trying to, you know, he's a church shooter kind of guy. And I could have taken the knife out or gun out or whatever and just unloaded on him and ask questions later.

Right.

Well, that would be a different level of assumption.

Right.

So the action plan there could be very different than me just saying, okay, that looks suspicious. I'm going to act upon it. I'm going to follow him in. And so I'm making a negative assumption that looks like odd, right.

I'm going to act upon it, but I can't decisively prove it. And so like part of what's happening here is you have different senses to the word assumption, like particularly when you're talking about something like a negative assumption in that.

Way.

And I think Christians should realize that we're not omniscient and we can't know, like we need to have a very high standard of proof before we know anything like absolutely,.

Right.

Or, you know, certain beyond a reasonable doubt kind of certainty with any of these.

Things.

And so there's a lot of things that are just above your pay grade, but then you have to, you do have to operate in the real world and make real decisions in real time based on things that you can't always verify instantaneously in the moment to the degree to which you would like.

And so there's a very different posture to say, okay, that guy ducked down, put his hand in his pocket. He's going to shoot everyone up.

Right.

I didn't know that. I didn't know he was going to shoot, but I can, I can say, Hey, like that looks really suspicious. I'm going to alter my behavior in light of that looking very suspicious and I'm going to assume like, I'm going to, I'm going to, my operating assumption is he may be up to no good.

Right.

Right.

And so it's very different to have operating assumption to say he may be up to no good and I'm going to act upon that than it is to say, I know without a shadow of doubt, he's up to no good and I'm going to act upon it.

Right.

Yeah.

So in the same way, like when you have a telemarketer calling you, you have to operate, you say, Hey, he's probably going to scam me. This is probably a waste of time. I don't want to do this.

Right.

I don't want to go through this. Typically when I, when I was on the job hunt, I'd have people calling me for a group. Like whenever I heard group interview, I thought to myself, wasted time, probably a scam, not going to bother with it.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pyramid scheme, probably a pyramid scheme. Not going to, not going to mess with it. So like what you don't have to do as a Christian is just be totally naive and reject all wisdom.

Right.

Was it Jesus that said, you know, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Yeah.

Be wise as serpents.

General.

So, and, and, you know, he even, you know, tells his disciples to, you know, go and take their money and buy a sword because they're going in dangerous areas.

Right.

And so like, and then Paul, you know, of credence, he says, you know, that they're always lazy gluttons, evil beasts and liars. And he says, you know, as a, you know, a prophet of your own says, and this, and he says, this testimony is true.

So, I mean, there are like generalizations that you can make that are a category of negative assumptions about people that you say, Hey, these are tendencies, like negative tendencies that certain people have or certain groups of people have.

You know, everyone can, you know, if you see a prostitute greeting you on the side of the road and you know, she, her behavior is in the language of the Bible wildly or whatever,.

Right.

You can say, I think she's probably a prostitute.

Right.

And I'm not going to go near her in that way.

I don't want that.

So, so I think wisdom, like part of wisdom means you, you learn to read certain patterns and then you operate on the back basis of those readings. But then what you don't do is you don't absolutize it.

Right.

You don't say, I know for sure, like, you don't say, okay, she's thrown off prostitute vibes. So let's throw her in jail.

Yeah.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you is like, how do you, how do you determine what the line is in any given scenario between like an appropriate response that's informed based off of negative assumptions and an inappropriate response?

Yeah, I think so. I think assuming probabilities is perfectly fine.

Right.

Okay.

So I assume she's probably a prostitute.

Okay.

I assume she's probably, I assume this telemarketer is probably trying to scam me.

Right.

I assume this interview is probably a scam. I assume like based on the evidence I have that this guy looks like a dangerous person.

Right.

So you're operating under that, but then you don't convict on the level of assumptions.

Right.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So like you can assume something's probable or you can decisively say like, so there's two senses of like how assumptions can work. One is you're assuming like you're, you're, you're assuming you're taking for granted.

It's probably true.

Right.

Or are you taking for granted that it absolutely is true and you're convicting on very small amounts of information. But all I'm trying to say is in order to live life, there's plenty of times where you just have to make assumptions.

Okay.

Like you're assuming certain things are probable and you're operating under the probability of that and like not in really how you distinguish between when it's righteous or unrighteous is like, is the person owed certain responsibilities from you in that moment or not?

Does that make sense?

What do you mean?

Okay.

All right.

So telemarketer calls, he's not, I don't owe him my time.

Yeah.

Like he doesn't deserve it. It's not his, it doesn't belong to him. And if I were to give every telemarketer all the time that they are requesting of me by making me jump through all these hoops and answer all these personal questions, like in order for me to, you know, know for absolute certain that they're a telemarketer, like if I had to figure out for absolute certain, they are a tell like they're, um, they're a scam, uh, before I could hang up on them, then I would be wasting a lot of time there.

Right.

So they don't, they're not owed my time and they're not owed my consideration in that.

Way.

So I don't, I don't know them, but I don't know them that.

Okay.

So in that way, you know, I'm making reasonable predictions about the way life works. And, and making reasonable predictions. Like I see, I hear Pakistani voice, right?

Yeah.

Tell us in America, I'm in America. I hear Pakistan voice.

Right.

And they normally tell you, I don't know, my name is Andrew or something.

Yeah.

And then, yeah. I mean, so there's certain signs like, and now you don't have absolute burden. You don't have like a absolute, like, this is a scam. Like I, I can convict you in a court of law, but you know, I, because I'm not owed, like you don't, um, um, you're not owed anything.

Like you're not owed my time in this way. There is a sense in which a Christian can just say, Hey, you know, I, this guy's time. I'm not going to waste it in this way. I'm going to make certain rules that help me navigate life.

That means that I'm more productive in life with the things that God wants me to do. And I'm not going to give all of my time to, you know, son, don't give your strength to.

Women.

Son, don't give all of your time to telemarketers.

Okay.

Like it's a wise way to live your life.

Right.

Like in that way.

Right.

Now, now, so on the other hand, right. Like there are certain people who are owed certain things from you.

Right.

Like, um, so, you know, your church member calls you up and, you know, they, and you think, uh, you know, I, uh, they call you up and, you know, there's a negative assumption that Paul pops in your mind that, you know, maybe this is one of those church members who constantly can't pay their bills.

Right.

And then like, you can immediately assume something negative about, but you actually do have a responsibility to understand where they're coming from, to shepherd them in that moment.

Right.

To understand where they're coming from, shepherd them in that moment. And you can't just say, Hey, nope, you know, not dealing with you. Been there, done that. I got that t-shirt. I know exactly how this is going to go and not doing this anymore.

Right.

So like, you know, part of that relates to like the responsibilities you have to the person. And then the other part of it is just like, you know, we are, we're Christians. We're not God. We don't know everything.

And, you know, in order to live life, you're going to have to make plenty of assumptions you're going to operate on in the moment because you can't verify everything the way God has. But then you don't want to convict someone like formally convict someone or formally land in an absolute sense, like in a negative posture based on very little information.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense.

So in general, I think you should stick away from like assuming the worst about, you know, people like, and then particularly dogmatically declaring the worst to be true in the absence of very little information.

However, on the other hand, you do have to actually like you can't test everything in the moment. And so, you know, sometimes when you see certain patterns, you're going to have to operate under those for the purpose of wisdom.

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