Do we really know someone’s motives & intentions?

One of the consequences of the erosion of trust in others in contemporary society is the tendency to think the worst of their acts and intentions, making unfounded assumptions about their motives and rushing to quick judgement. This inevitably leads to suspicion and conflict.

We see this in the way that we are quick to judge and condemn politicians and leaders, celebrities or others in the public eye. Sadly it is also a danger within the church, amongst the Christian community. We are quick to make judgements about the motives of others, assuming them to be bad. We might, for example, ascribe bad motives to those who are starting a new church in a area where we think there is already a gospel church; or to those who are taking a different view about how to respond to theological compromise in a denomination; or towards organisations that we assume are perpetrating a cover-up of abuse because we have heard that allegations have been made, even though we don’t know all the circumstances. We might flounder in our pastoral counselling of others because we leap in, confident that we know what they are doing and why. For example, we assume that we can see the sin beneath their sin.

I have recently been reading Joshua, and Joshua 22 is a sobering warning against the danger of making assumptions about the intentions and motives of others. The main message of Joshua is that God keeps His promises to His people. He enables them to take possession of the Promised Land and then grants them rest. However, at the end of the book, after a long period of war against their enemies, war almost breaks out between the Israelite tribes.

The tribes who were given their inheritance east of the Jordan – the Reubenites, Gadites and half-tribe of Manasseh – returned home after having fought alongside their brothers to enable them to enjoy their inheritance. They left with Joshua’s blessing, but as they returned they built an imposing altar by the Jordan. The other tribes immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was a hostile act. They assumed that the eastern tribes were breaking faith with the LORD, turning away from Him and rebelling against Him. They assumed that they were intending to disobey the LORD’s command to worship Him only at the ‘place He has chosen’, which at the time was Shiloh where the tabernacle was pitched. They feared that such disobedience would lead to God’s judgement on Israel as a whole, comparing the actions of the two-and-a-half tribes to the sin of Israel and the Baal of Peor, when they committed sexual immorality and worshipped the gods of Moab, or the sin of Achan who kept devoted things for himself after the fall of Jericho. They feared that God’s wrath would fall on them, and so they gathered at Shiloh to ‘go to war’ against them.

In the event, civil war and division was avoided because the eastern tribes were able to explain their intentions. They denied that they were rebelling against the LORD, and explained that they were not building the altar to be a place to make burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. They were not seeking to cause division but the very opposite – to consolidate unity. The altar was to serve as a witness between the eastern and western tribes that they both had a share in the LORD. They were fearful that they might in time be excluded by the others. The western tribes could not have got it more wrong! When Phinneas the priest and the leaders of the western tribes heard the heart of the eastern tribes they were pleased, and the Israelites rejoiced and praised God when they reported back to them.

This story, which is placed with strategic significance at the end of Joshua, warns against the danger of leaping to wrong conclusions about others, without listening to what they have to say. It is a reminder that we cannot know the true motivations of others without asking. We tend to put a false significance on their actions, attributing intentions that were never there, and are quick to decide to ‘go to war’. Very often this is because we fear for ourselves, whereas we dress it up in our concern for the honour of God.

We live in an era that is saturated with information. We know what people who we have never met, and do not know, are doing. We are quick to jump to conclusions about them and their intentions, or to be led by others who have declared judgement without basis. This is exacerbated by social media, which demands that we express our agreement or outrage without having the facts. In some cases we leap to judgement even when we, for good reasons, cannot have access to the full facts because there are legitimate issues of confidentiality.

The alternative is not a naive trust that always assumes the best of others, no matter what. What is needed is a suspension of quick judgement in order to listen as others explain what they are doing and why. Dialogue and disclosure are essential to avoiding division. Do we really have any basis for the assumptions we are making about their motives and intentions? Do we know, or are we just guessing?

Christians, whether at an individual or institutional level, too easily ‘go to war’ with each other because they are quick to jump to conclusions about the true motives and intentions of their brothers and sisters. Joshua warns us to be on our guard against this tendency. This is the way of the world, and we are called to be counter-cultural.

We need to make every effort to preserve our unity, not to be those who are quick to ‘go to war’ because we think we know the real motives of others.