When you see _ _ NNER<\/strong>, what\u2019s the first word your brain makes? BANNER<\/strong>? TANNER<\/strong>? Heaven forbid, FUNNER<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his book Talking with Strangers<\/em>, Malcolm Gladwell writes about a study in which participants were given a list of words with letters missing. They were asked to fill in the blanks to make whatever words first came to mind. Gladwell, trying the exercise himself, wrote: GL<\/strong>UM, HATER<\/strong>, S<\/strong>CARE<\/strong>, ATT<\/strong>ACK, and others. After participants finished, they were asked what they thought their lists revealed about them: if someone writes \u201cSINNER<\/strong>,\u201d are they a different kind of person than if they\u2019d written \u201cBANNER<\/strong>\u201d? Respondents didn\u2019t feel their words said anything about them. Then they were given another person\u2019s list and asked what they thought it revealed about them. Immediately, everyone had ideas: she\u2019s vain, he\u2019s competitive, she\u2019s on her period, he\u2019s unfocused. Study conductor, Emily Pronin, calls this the illusion of asymmetric insight. That\u2019s academic speak for: I think I know you better than you know me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If a person affirms one truth, we assume they\u2019re negating another\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The study highlights our ability to understand nuances in ourselves and our unwillingness to allow other people to be complex, too. If someone says they think the police should have more training, we hear, \u201cAll cops are evil and racist.\u201d If someone is concerned about the pandemic\u2019s effect on the economy, we conclude they must not care about the elderly. If a person affirms one truth, we assume they\u2019re negating another, which isn\u2019t always the case. This kind of inaccurate simplifying leads us to see the worst in people, and it\u2019s what starts wars on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If anything is unprecedented nowadays, it\u2019s not just COVID. It\u2019s our unwillingness to see the good and truth in people and realize there are more than two sides to an issue. Paul exhorted us, though, that love \u201cdoes not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth<\/em>\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:6). God calls us to believe the best<\/em> of others, especially the people we disagree with, and that starts by humbly accepting that we might not know them as well as we think we do, and remembering that people\u2014whether the stranger online or your uncle\u2014are as complex as we are. When we do, we start to listen instead of shout, we try to understand instead of simplify, and, ultimately, we walk towards the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Love Believes the Best of Others When you see _ _ NNER, what\u2019s the first word your brain makes? BANNER? TANNER? Heaven…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Love_Matters_Most_pt9-1.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3tP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13381"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15525,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381\/revisions\/15525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}