We’ve all heard the saying about about what happens when you assume something. This was brought home to me as I was meditating on a portion of Joshua 22. The chapter begins with Joshua thanking the Eastern tribes of Manasseh, Gad and Rueben for their faithfulness to God in keeping his commandments and to their fellow tribesmen in helping secure their inheritance of the promised land. He sends them off with God’s blessing and as they head back to their lands, they stop at the Jordan River, which borders their land on the west. Before they cross over, they build “an altar of imposing size” without explanation. Word gets back to Joshua and the leaders that they have built this altar, and they are incensed because they think that these tribes have gone rogue and intend to offer unholy sacrifices to other gods. Israel gathers as one at Shiloh to go to war against their fellow tribesmen having just fought alongside of them as they occupied the land. A delegation is then sent, headed up by Phineas, to lay out the charges of apostasy and idolatry against the people. After all, there can only be one interpretation for why this altar was built. He then reminds them of what happened to Achan and his family because of his sin, which is that they all perished. “If you sin in this way,” they say, “you will bring this onto all of their heads.”

The response of the accused lets us know that nothing could have been further from their mind. “We built this altar because we’re afraid that your children will cut off our children from the land because we are on the “wrong side” of the river. This altar is to bear witness that we are part of you and you are part of us.” This altar was not built so that we might sin against God, but so that your children would not sin against our children by cutting them off. Wow. Talk about your gigantic misunderstandings. Can’t you just see the whipped cream and pie filling oozing down their face?

Unfortunately for us, the question is not “how many of us have been guilty of doing this?” but “how often have we been guilty of doing this?” We often take a “shoot first, ask questions second” attitude when it comes to judging people’s actions. Case in point – I was just talking to Denise on the phone and she was asking me to run an errand for her before lunch, which I replied in a few sentences that I couldn’t. My answer was followed by dead silence because she was no longer on the phone. What do you think was my assumption? She hung up on me because I wouldn’t run an errand for her when she needed me to. I called her back and come to find out, her phone cut out and she didn’t even hear me say no. That’s what we do! Someone says something to us or do something to us and we assume that it can only mean one thing, which is usually the worst thing. The gospel reminds us that we are lousy judges of people’s hearts and motives, much less our own. The gospel doesn’t necessarily mean that we assume the best about a person, but we presume that we may not have all the facts and that we should seek more answers. As for me, I need to confess my judgmental heart towards Denise.