Is It Always Sinful to Act on Negative Assumptions?

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

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No. No. No. I like that. That's funny.

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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.

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But, okay. So, no. It's not always wrong to act on negative assumptions.

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So, why not? What kind of scenarios are you having in mind when you're saying no to a question like that?

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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.

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The assumption essentially is to take something for granted as if it's true without necessarily having conclusive proof that it actually is true.

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So, there's a sense in which, you know, if you were to think about, like, love believes all things, love hopes all things.

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You want to generally assume the best about people, particularly about loved ones.

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The Bible would generally encourage you to think the best about them, to try to put their actions in the best possible light.

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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.

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You know, a general rule that biblical counselors would 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, like, consistently.

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So, you have to make decisions in the moment. And, you know, life is filled with thousands and thousands of decisions in the moment.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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Okay. But that's a negative assumption that you just made. Do you understand? You just made a negative assumption about a person calling you on the phone with an accent from Pakistan.

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Like, you assume that they're probably trying to steal from you, right? Like, this is a waste of time.

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So, you assume that, you know, they're probably... Now, can you verify it? No, 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?

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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 order.

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Go buy the gift cards. Right, right, right. So, you can do that or you can say, Hey, you know what?

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Like, I don't have time to walk through this big speech, particularly when people call so many times during the day, right?

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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.

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And, you know, I just... You're making a habit just to hang up, right?

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Not even deal with it, right? Yeah. Well, I don't think you have to. Well, I mean, you know, now, like, thankfully, the phones will just say, like, spam.

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And it's like, all right. All right. So, often they do spam, but then sometimes, like, numbers will get through and you have to figure out what...

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Yeah, they do slip through. 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.

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Then what kind of assumption are you making at that point that you're operating under the assumption,

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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?

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Yeah, typically. All right. 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, right?

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

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Right, right. So, you're making some sort of assumption there that's a negative assumption about what's happening.

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And then you're actually acting on it too, okay? And so, you know, and we do this, like, this is just a part of life.

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Like, where, you know, 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?

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He looked a little bit shady. So, he was, you know, he was flagging all these shady kind of things.

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And, like, there's a hand motion that people can make when they're going into a situation like that to where they kind of, like, they see the church, right?

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They're looking at the church building. I'm standing outside. He sees our church building. He looks at the church building. Then immediately his hand goes down to his pocket like this, right?

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And then, like, he crouched over a little bit and starts walking into, like, very determinedly into the church building, right?

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And so, what I assumed in my mind, it was a negative assumption, I said, does he have a gun in his pocket, okay? And I acted upon it, meaning

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I went, I followed him in there and I stood at a distance behind him to see what he was doing, right?

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Like, and I was ready to go in case he was, like, something, you know, he had a, he was planning on taking his hand out rapidly from his pocket.

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He would have been tackled really quickly by me, okay? Because I was, you know, because I followed him in.

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Now, I made an assumption there and I was acting upon that assumption. But then, like, you can make assumptions in different ways.

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You can assume that something, you know, looks suspicious and you're going to act upon it. And you can, like, you know,

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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.

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And I could have taken the knife out or gun out or whatever and just unloaded on him and asked questions later, right?

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Well, that would be a different level of assumption, right? Uh -huh, yeah. So the action plan there could be very different than me just saying, okay, that looks suspicious,

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I'm going to act upon it, I'm going to follow him in. And so I'm making a negative assumption that looks odd, right?

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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, particularly when you're talking about something like a negative assumption in that way.

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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?

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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.

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But then 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.

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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?

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I didn't know that. I didn't know he was going to shoot. But I can say, hey, like, that looks really suspicious.

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I'm going to alter my behavior in light of that looking very suspicious. And I'm going to assume, like, my operating assumption is he may be up to no good, right?

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And so it's very different to have an operating assumption to say he may be up to no good and I'm going to act upon that than it is to say

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I know without a shadow of doubt he's up to no good and I'm going to act upon it, right? 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,

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I don't want to do this, right? I don't want to go through this. Typically, when I was on the job hunt, I'd have people calling me for a group.

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Like, whenever I heard group interview, I thought to myself, wasted time, probably a scam, not going to bother with it, right?

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You know, pyramid scheme, probably a pyramid scheme, not going to mess with it. So, like, what you don't have to do as a

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Christian is just be totally naive and reject all wisdom, right? Yeah, didn't Jesus, was it Jesus that said, you know, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves?

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Yeah, be wise as serpents. 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?

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Right. And so, like, and then Paul, you know, of cretence, he says, you know, that they're always lazy, gluttons, evil beasts, and liars.

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And he says, you know, as a prophet of your own says, and he says this testimony is true. So, I mean, there are 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, certain groups of people have.

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You know, everyone can, you know, if you see a prostitute greeting you on the side of the road and, you know, her behavior is in the language of the

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Bible, wily or whatever, you can say, I think she's probably a prostitute, right? And I'm not going to go near her in that way.

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I don't want, like, so I think wisdom, like part of wisdom means you learn to read certain patterns.

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And then you operate on the basis of those readings. But then what you don't do is you don't absolutize it, right?

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You don't say, I know for sure, like, you don't say, okay, she's throwing off prostitute vibes, so let's throw her in jail, right?

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Yeah, yeah. Well, that's what I was going to ask you is, like, 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?

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

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Okay. So I assume she's probably a prostitute, okay? I assume this telemarketer is probably trying to scam me, right?

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I assume this interview is probably a scam. I assume, like, based on the evidence

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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?

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Does that make sense? 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.

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One is you're assuming, you're taking for granted it's probably true, right, or you're taking for granted that it absolutely is true and you're convicting on very small amounts of information.

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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?

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Like, you're assuming certain things are probable and you're operating under the probability of that, and 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?

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Does that make sense? What do you mean? Okay. All right, so telemarketer calls.

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He's not, like, I don't owe him my time. Like, he doesn't deserve it.

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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, 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, like, they're a scam, before I could hang up on them, then

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I would be wasting a lot of time there. So they don't, they're not owed my time. And they're not owed my consideration in that way.

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So I don't, I don't know them. I don't know them that. Okay? So in that way, you know, I'm making reasonable predictions about the way life works and making reasonable predictions.

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Like, I see, I hear Pakistani voice, right? In America, I'm in America.

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I hear Pakistan voice, right? From a number I don't know. My name is

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Andrew or something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so there's certain signs, like, and now you don't have absolute burden.

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You don't have, like, absolute, like, this is a scam. Like, I can convict you in a court of law, but, you know, because I'm not owed, like, you don't, you're not owed anything.

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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,

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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.

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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, right?

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Like, it's a wise way to live your life, right? Like in that way, right now. Now, so on the other hand, right?

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Like there are certain people who are owed certain things from you, right? Like, so, you know, your church member calls you up and, you know, they, and you think, you know,

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

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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.

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Right. To understand where they're coming from, to shepherd them in that moment. And you can't just say,

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Hey, no, 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.

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Right. So like, you know, part of that relates to like the responsibilities you have to the person.

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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

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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.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. 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.

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However, on the other hand, you do have to actually like, you can't test everything in the moment.

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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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Okay. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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