Choose to Believe the Best

When you go through life and you observe someone's actions or words, do you automatically presume the best or worst about them?

If someone cuts you off in traffic, are they in a hurry due to an emergency or a jerk of a driver?
If someone steals something from your store, did they accidentally forget to pay (and maybe will return to remedy the error when you're not there) or did they maliciously take the item?

Far too often, we, as Christians, are quick to assume the best about our actions, flaws, and sins, and equally quick to presume the worst about other people's actions and grave sins.

Yet if we don't know the motivation and thoughts behind the actions we observe, why shouldn't we presume the best about others until we are proven wrong? Why is the default for so many Christians to presume the worst about others when we don't know their story or their ending?

Yes, I realize that most rude drivers probably aren't trying to get their spouse to the doctor ASAP, but if that keeps resentment, complaining, and bitterness out of my life and heart, why shouldn't I believe that? I won't encounter them again most likely to learn why they were driving so poorly.

My husband and I had two unique experiences with workers in other countries that highlight how we have intentionally chosen to believe the best about others, even when we realize that we are probably being overly-gracious in our interpretations.

The first encounter we had was in 2013 with the self-proclaimed "Cheap Miguel". We were on a cruise with my family and at one of our stops, we were looking around a market, trying to find maracas to purchase. Cheap Miguel drew us into his shop and had exactly what we were looking for. We were short on time, so we gladly parted with $20 for a set of maracas. We blithely walked on to meet our tour guide, only to encounter another vendor selling those identical maracas for $2.
We were...how do you say...swindled. We were frustrated at Cheap Miguel and soon recognized that if we didn't change our response, we would soon allow an ungodly root of bitterness to grow in our hearts. So we looked at our encounter with eyes tuned to grace and compassion.

Miguel might have had a family. Maybe even a large family. Someone in his family could have been sick. He could have felt torn by his desire to keep vigil at their bedside, but he also recognized his responsibility to earn money for the medical bills. So he sold souvenirs and trinkets to cruise ship tourists. He could have been frustrated by tourists trying to haggle him down on prices to save a buck, when he needed that money to buy medicine for his sick family member. He knew that he was selling homemade, hand-painted artisan goods, but he thought that most tourists wanted cheap prices to brag to their friends about instead of paying for the time and talent it took to hand-paint maracas. He possibly saw their extravagance as these tourists threw away money on luxury goods, when he faced the real needs of providing food and medicine for his family. He might have resented them, even as he craved their business. At the end of his rope, he might have cried out to God asking for a sign of generous, radical, slightly naive tourists.

Yes, most likely, we got conned, but if we continue to remember the worst about Cheap Miguel and allow that incident to turn us away from interacting with those who might rip us off, we are not living Christ-like lives.

Our other story happened in 2014. We were volunteer missionaries in Costa Rica for a year, which meant that every 90 days, we needed to leave the country for 72 hours to renew our visas. We visited the US once for the Christmas holidays and we visited Nicaragua twice. Now even though Nicaragua was right "next door" to Costa Rica, things were different there. We went from staying in a walled seminary to a small-town hotel. We were in a different climate, using different money, in a strange city, trying to figure out where we could get food cheaply. We got off the bus in Rivas, Nicaragua the first time and we were to wait for a Nazarene District Superintendent to help us get to our hotel. He arranged for us to volunteer at a local Nazarene school & even arranged rides to & from our hotel and school during our stay. He wasn't there when we got off the bus, so a kind "bicycle taxi" driver (think a bike pushing a bench two people can sit on) lent us his phone to call for our ride. Fast forward to our next trip to Nicaragua. We were supposed to get to our hotel ourselves, so when we got off the bus, we looked around and recognized the friendly bicycle taxi driver from before. Lucas asked him if he could give us a ride to our hotel. The taxi driver agrees and we hop on. Now those of you playing at home may realize that we forgot to do something important before we got in our taxi. We forgot to negotiate rates. We get to our hotel and Lucas asks the taxi driver what we owed. The number he stated was 5% of our cash for the entire trip, but that was for one of us, not both!! So in our first hour in Nicaragua, we spent 10% of our total cash for the hotel, our food, and our other necessities!! Needless to say, I was stressed and we felt conned.

Again, we could have let this event sour us towards all bicycle taxi drivers in Nicaragua and let a bitter root start growing in us, but that would not have been to react in a Christ-like way. We instead choose to forgive (and keep forgiving) this driver. We choose to learn the lesson, but set aside our feelings of being wronged. We had enough money for our trip and the money wasn't ours, but money that we were stewarding for God. Again, our naive response may have been his answer to prayer.

What was the point of these stories? Besides pointing out that we are still rather naive and gullible? A lot of time, we see parts of people's lives. We don't know their story. We don't know who they are, what they have faced, or why they are acting a certain way. If we see a glimpse of their actions and choose to believe the worst possible intentions behind those actions, we will become mistrustful and negative people, hardly the Christ-like believers we are called to be. But if we see people as God's creations, recognize that we don't know their story, and choose to believe the best, then we are letting love cover over their sins and mistakes.

So will you choose to believe the best about others?