Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…
(1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
Love "always trusts"... In some versions, it says that love "believes all things".
I was once grappling with the meaning of the verse which says that love "always trusts". How can we possibly trust the untrustworthy?
Believing the Best About Others
I found a number of commentaries online which helped to shed light on the meaning of the verse that love "always trusts".
The Pulplit Commentary explains that love:
Takes the best and kindest views of all men and all circumstances, as long as it is possible to do so. It is the opposite to the common spirit, which drags everything in deteriorem partem, paints it in the darkest colours, and makes the worst of it. Love is entirely alien from the spirit of the cynic, the pessimist, the ecclesiastical rival, the anonymous slanderer, the secret detractor.
The point is to believe the best intentions about others or their actions, and to refrain from attributing the worst intentions to them or their actions.
One particular incident in my working life brought this to the fore. I was away from office on National Service for the afternoon that day, and had asked a colleague to cover for me in relation to a particular simple court hearing. She did so and, with my approval of the draft email, sent out an email updating the client about the hearing. It was quite a regularly, routine update.
The next day, my director took me to task over the email that my colleague had sent out on my behalf while I was out of office. He began to accuse me, saying that I was telling the client that I did not care about my work and that the particular case meant nothing to me. He attributed the worst possible intentions and motivations to me over that one act of my colleague on my behalf.
I felt deeply aggrieved and maligned over what was a very regular and usual practice of having colleagues cover for each other when absent.
Someone once said: You tend to interpret your own actions through your intentions, while other people tend to interpret your actions through their effect.
Again, in an opinion piece published in the Straits Times on 3 October 2017, "Some more heaven-worthy than others?", Gary Hayden made a similar point:
When we judge other people's actions, we tend to attribute them to character rather than circumstances. But when we judge our own actions, we place much more emphasis on circumstances.
He added that "if we wish to judge people fairly, we should try to take both factors into account."
The Dangerous Tendency
In debates over contentious issues, especially in the political sphere, it is very tempting to regard everyone who opposes one's political or ideological position as a mean-spirited or evil person with malicious intentions, while seeing everyone on one's political or ideological side as a good person.
Mistakes and wrongdoing on the part of one's allies become excusable or justifiable, because they are seen as good people who simply made an occasional lapse, while similar mistakes or wrongdoing on the part of one's opponents are immediately pounced upon and used as weapons against them, since they are wicked people who can do nothing good.
Conversely, any good done by one's political opponents are either ignored or seen through coloured lenses as cynical or opportunistic steps taken to advance one's position, while any good done by one's allies are cheered and celebrated.
While deeply tempting, none of these tendencies are consistent with the principle of love that Paul has taught us in his letter to the Corinthians.
Good and evil remain good and evil regardless of who does those deeds. Indeed, Paul tells us earlier in the passage, "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth."
What About Falsehoods?
Does this mean that we should naively believe even the lies that people tell us?
Certainly not. As noted above, Paul has taught in the very same passage that love is not blind as between good and evil, or truth and falsehood.
When there is evidence of evil or proof that a matter is false, we not called to naively fall prey to evil or to believe lies. In such circumstances, it may often be necessary to confront and address the wrongdoing in love, and to rectify it so that the person may be edified.
Yet, in the absence of such evidence or proof, it behoves us as believers to refrain from assuming or jumping to conclusions that the motivations and intentions of others are evil or wicked.
A God Who Trusts
Earlier on in this post, I asked: How can we possibly trust the untrustworthy?
But there is another question we must ask: How can God possibly trust the untrustworthy?
All our motivations and our actions are laid bare before an omniscient God. We lie, cheat and steal; yet God still trusts us despite our untrustworthiness. He entrusts us, no less, with His Gospel message, and calls us to proclaim it to the ends of the earth.
Why?
It certainly has to be because of His Son Jesus Christ who has died in our place and imparted His righteousness to us, and the power of the Holy Spirit that ministers through us. In addition to that, I believe that it has to do with the fact that God sees not just who we are (or were), but who we can be.
Therefore, the same God who spoke creation into being with His Word (i.e. the Word that became flesh) is also transforming us into the likeness of His Son, so that, in the day when He appears, "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:2)
And thus, in that same way, just as our Lord has first loved us, we are called to love our neighbours as ourselves.
