God has blessed our family to live at the foot of the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Our family loves nature and we try to enjoy it when we can. My second son and I decided to take a little walk in the desert, and as we walked through a bend in the wash, I took a quick look into one of the little pits worn into the side of the rock. We don’t typically see anything in them, but this time I looked into one and seeing something laying in the bottom of the small pit, I drew what I would call a “knee-jerk conclusion,” a quick conclusion without much thought or investigating.
The conclusion I came to was that there was a snake curled up in the bottom of the pit! My son looked and looked and couldn’t see it—which I attributed to his color blindness. But after asking where the snake was several times, he said, “You mean those rat droppings?” I hadn’t looked as closely as I normally would before declaring what I saw. (A snake would have been more exciting!) Drawing knee-jerk conclusions is not something new to me. I have done it many times but it’s usually about people.
Drawing knee-jerk conclusions can cause us to make assumptions about others that are simply not true. When we’ve formed bad habits of this nature, it often takes someone else pointing it out to us before we realize what we’re doing. It’s almost impossible for someone to do this without hurting our feelings.
At first, I did not realize I did this. It took my husband pointing out my reactions and describing what I was doing before I realized I was. It took some time, but after several times of him pointing out what I was doing, regardless of my defensiveness and anger, I finally began to listen.
He would remind me that I don’t know all the facts about the other person, so I can’t possibly know why they acted like they did or the whys of how they dress, walk, talk, treat their husband, or talk to me. We rarely have all the facts. How many times have you spoken out about something that didn’t seem right to you, only to have someone give you some additional information and immediately your opinion is changed. This is so typical of us humans! And when there’s pride in the mix, if anyone tries to approach us, we can become abrasive with a remark or an excuse. I know, I’ve done this many times. Pride is often at the root of our faults.
Those who know me don’t consider me a bold person, but I still have had enough pride to allow myself to jump to these knee-jerk conclusions, even about those closest to me. This is not the behavior of a godly woman. Most of us are familiar with I Peter 3:4 and the surrounding verses. This passage teaches us to be “meek and quiet.” That’s not “weak and quiet,” but meekness, as Webster’s 1828 dictionary puts it, is “mild of temper; soft; gentle; not easily provoked or irritated; yielding; given to forbearance under injuries.” I think of meekness as a quiet strength. A meek woman knows when to bite her tongue or not to act out in selfishness. She doesn’t have to act out to get the attention she thinks she should have. She doesn’t correct her husband for what he’s doing wrong but encourages him for what he’s doing right. God wants us to have modest behavior as described in verse two when it says “chaste conversation.” We all have to keep our pride and selfishness in check and relearn good habits in the place of bad habits. We need to retrain our minds to not give in to this thinking that in turn affects our behavior.
You may have to stop yourself and ask, what other reasons could cause a person to behave in the way that they did? If you can’t think of any, try asking someone else (not in the spirit of gossip, but of you learning good thinking patterns), “What would cause a person to do such and such?” You may be surprised at the many alternatives they give that you hadn’t thought about. This is one area that we need to “think our way into the lives of others,” as Mrs. Marlene Evans regularly taught years ago.
The Bible says in James 1:19b, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”
- Swift to hear. If someone close to you repeatedly expresses a concern over your behavior, you should probably listen. Our pride prevents us from wanting to hear anything negative about ourselves.
- Slow to speak. Let them finish talking before you jump in to defend yourself and make yourself look better. Refusing to listen is a form of pride.
- Slow to wrath. Realize that the person trying to approach you, maybe your spouse, is doing so because they love you and your behavior genuinely bothers or hinders them. In fact, your behavior may be putting a damper on your relationship with this person and that’s why they express their concerns.
If this is you, realize that you’re not alone in this. We all have to work on this. Let’s ask the Lord to forgive us for our pride and teach us His ways. Psalm 119:66 says, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.”
