Assumptions that Turn Into Lies

It’s often startling to realize the amount of influence our preconceived ideas have over the way we respond to things like someone’s youth, singleness, physical or mental handicap, alternative education, ethnicity, etc. What is even more startling is our lack of recognition of what these assumptions cost the other person. We jump to conclusions about who and what someone is without waiting for evidence of what it true about them or asking them any questions. We then treat that person a certain way based on our assumptions. Sometimes we’re right, but more often than not we are wrong. 

When we do this and we’re wrong about our assumption, it means the way we treat that person is a response to a lie that we told ourselves rather than a response to the truth of who they really are. We are supposed to be speakers and doers of truth. But when we make false assumptions because we fail to take the time to see or seek the truth, we are neglecting the truth and are in essence expressing a lie. 

Worse still, we’re reflecting that lie back on the person that we’re lying about. I think we don’t often consider this to be a lie. We also don’t often consider the cost of such a lie, because rarely do we evaluate it from the direction of the assumer. So let’s reverse it. When someone wrongly assumes something about who you are, what happens inside you?

For example: Let’s say you’re waiting to order at a coffee shop and anticipating the arrival of the friend you were supposed to meet there. But your friend is running late and isn’t answering their phone. In fact their running so late you’re starting to worry something might have happened to them. You’re shifting back and forth on your feet, checking your watch, jiggling a leg, and wondering what to do. And suddenly a person says behind you, “Looks like you’ve already had enough coffee today.”

Now, if you’re a polite person you’ll probably just brush off the person’s comment. But there is a moment between when it is said and when you choose to dismiss it, where that lie hangs in the air over you as a statement about who you are. You can and should dismiss any false statements. But that lie has a cost. You can choose to willingly bear that cost and thus not turn that lie justly back on the person who created it. You can forgive—someone does something costly against you, intentionally or unintentionally, and instead of making them pay for it, you choose instead to pay that cost yourself. You pay it, let it go, and move on. That is the good version of what might happen. 

But there are two other version of what might happen.

1. You might react in anger and go after the person who lied, making you then guilty of your own sin.
2. You might take what was falsely assumed about you and hear it as truth instead. Then you may begin to internalize and respond out of that lie yourself. 

Now, when it comes to an assumption like you’ve already had enough coffee, that lie probably doesn’t sound too serious. But what if it’s something like, “Are you even old enough to be operating that machine?” Or how about “So what’s wrong with you that you’re still single?”

Such assumptions even made flippantly or as more of a joke, have a cost, and that cost may be far weightier than we realize. Truth speaks and so do lies.

We need to carefully mind our words, speaking truth to ourselves and to others and not lies.

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God… But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, ‘Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,’ for we are members of one another.” ~ Ephesians 4:17-25~

Challenge: Don’t make assumptions that lead to lies. See, seek, and speak truth!