Yesterday, as I was driving the ladder truck back to the fire house after a morning training session, I passed several golf carts filled with visitors and gave them our normal wave (we wave a lot here while driving, whether we know you or not). As I continued on, for some reason my strange brain started wondering what those people could possibly discern about me from that brief interaction. They could tell that I have brown hair and glasses, and they would know that I am capable of driving a fire truck. They would presume (correctly) that I am a fire fighter. And they would know that I saw them sufficiently to acknowledge them with a wave. Beyond that, they could speculate about me, but they couldn’t really know much more about me. What they most likely took from that interaction, if I’m being completely honest, was that our little island has a few fire trucks, including a ladder truck. In the few seconds of that interaction, the fire truck would have made a much more significant impression than the person driving it. But I do hope that they thought for a moment that our island has friendly firefighters.
My little thought experiment gave me a few little takeaways. First, if I was wondering what tourists might be thinking about me after that interaction, I was thinking way too much about myself at that moment. In my daily battle with ego, it appears that humility lost yesterday. But secondly, I realized that we are being programmed as a society to form opinions about people and organizations based upon not much more information about them than the tourists on golf carts had about me. We are far too quick to try to extrapolate based upon the smallest bits of information, which means that we are considerably more likely to thoroughly misjudge someone’s character than we are to correctly understand them. Imagine if someone saw the Apostle Peter while he was out fishing and assumed that there wasn’t much more that they needed to know about him, or someone who, upon seeing the Apostle Paul making tents, concluded that he was simply a craftsman. We cannot judge the internal character of a person solely from external characteristics, nor can we have a clear picture of someone’s character from a few comments that were necessarily lifted from a broader context.
Thinking about myself too much is sinful selfishness, but not being willing to think enough about others and not assessing what I really know about them before formulating my opinion about them is lazy ignorance. Because Jesus could see the hearts of man beyond their external presentation and actions, he could rightly judge character, which led him to say to the religious leaders of that day: “you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). In the same manner, Jesus saw the heart of Nathanael even before they were introduced, and he declared “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit” (John 1:47). However, since we lack God’s ability to see the heart of man, we would be wise to withhold judgement about someone until we can see beyond the surface, beyond the white robes or fire trucks, and get to know the person behind the external and superficial.
Friends, resist the urge to make broad conclusions from a few breadcrumbs of information. Realize what you do know and, more importantly, what you don’t know, and then make realistic allowances for how the unknown could completely transform your initial impressions about someone else. Yes, it takes considerably more effort to do that, but the result is far better than being left looking foolish.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron