suspicion ...

I don't have a lot of time right now, but I wanted to "comment" a little about suspicion ... specifically suspicious people.

First, let me say that I do not speak as an outsider to the human race, someone who thinks he has it all together, but as someone who struggles with the same things as everyone else. I know I am blind to many of my own shortcomings, and worst of all, that I am blind to my own blindness.

I am very suspicious of suspicious people. It is my own experience that leads me to look at my own life and conclude that often, the areas I am suspicious towards others in are the very areas where I have struggled myself. Something about us makes the assumption that others are "just like me" - and yet, I really do believe that there is nothing we do that others don't do themselves. Some people assume the worst about others - they assume the rumors are true, or that past admitted behavior is worse than was admitted, or that supposed past behavior really continues into the present - just concealed better. So called "good behavior" is never really that good - someone must have an ulterior motive. I am very careful dealing with people like that because they don't seem to understand human nature - their own nature - and they assume the worst - which reflects on them.

I am convinced that if more people took Paul's description of love more seriously in Corinthians, we would have a better world (of course, it's not that easy, and yet it is). If we are to love others as we want to be loved, if we are to love our enemies, if we are to love our brothers, then we must take seriously what the Bible says about love - from the Author who is Love. Love is not only patient and kind - it keeps no record of wrongs. While you deal with someone in wisdom for their good, we are not to hold grudges or never let anyone become incapable of changing our view of them. The past does not absolutely determine the future. Your past has no bearing on whether you can be loved by God, and it has no bearing on whether or not he can change you.

Love not only keeps no record of wrongs - it believes the best. That's not a call to be naive - we are to be wise as serpents but as gentle as doves - but a call to not harbor a suspicious spirit, not to be a "pessimist" about others - to not live without hope and expectation of change. Someone who lives with a suspicious person can never do enough to satisfy them, never do enough to make up for the past - someone who is bound up in the prison of another's making.

Now, I believe fully in the doctrine of total depravity - that there is no aspect of human nature unaffected by our disobedience to God. There is nothing that given the right circumstances and the permissive will of God that you and I are not capable of. It is only by God's mercy and grace that we are not as bad as we could be. I don't often like simple sayings, but sometimes, they're true truth. And I have learned that "there but for the grace of God, go I." No one likes to hear that - so we set up "us" against "them."

People who are suspicious of everyone wear me out. They take the joy out of serving. I grow more suspicious of people the more suspicion they exhibit. Of course, this is an example of my own self-righteous heart, and in this, I condemn myself. There is no hope for you or I, apart from the Only One who can help us - and it is only out of His love for us that we have such hope. Someday, though, those of us who have accepted that we are hopeless without Him, helpless without His help, and clinging to nothing to make us right with Him but Him, will be the ones who will be like Him - not because we're better or more deserving or smarter or more pure, but because we're His. And that is the only thing that makes life bearable ...