I Believe It

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:7

Love…believes all things.

You could read this and think that Paul means that love makes us gullible. We just believe anything that we are told. Again, it is a wise student of Scripture that interprets Scripture by Scripture and realizes that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself because God doesn’t contradict Himself. When we look at other texts, we find the Bible encourages us to be discerning and wise. It tells us to look out for false teachers and those who would lead us away from Christ. Therefore, believing all things is not a command to walk around with spiritual blinders on.

What, then, is Paul saying?

Paul is teaching that Christian love does not have suspicion and distrust of others as its default mode. What he wants us to do is start with believing the best about people. He wants us to assume that others are being honest and upright in their dealings with us.

I think it also means we are slow to believe the negative things people say about others. We don’t take that kind of testimony at face value. We want to believe better things about people. So, we wait and see for ourselves. We will make our own judgments.

One way I like to put this is to say that we believe the best about people until they definitively prove we shouldn’t.