Love Thinks no Evil

By Sandy Ditoro

 

Tonight as my husband and I sat studying the Bible with a young couple in our congregation my eyes focused on a phrase in a passage we were reading:

 

Love.........thinks no evil.  (1 Cor.13:5)

 

When we consider this phrase in the context of the others surrounding it:

 

...Love...is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor.13:5-7)...

 

We learn that love does not assign motives to others. Love does not take one action witnessed in another and build a whole person out of it.  Love does not give another person just one chance to make a good impression and if they goof up they are crossed off our list forever.

 

Many today have been very hurt and disappointed by others over and over and over again.  It is easy in our society  to get to the point of not trusting anyone.  Females tend to lump all males into one category and males assign all females certain feminine flaws.  What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

 

I had a friend once who told me a whole litany of negative things her husband thought.  I questioned her on how she knew he thought these things and she really had no proof except in her own imagination that he thought all of these negative things.  I told her that it was not kind or loving to assign people thoughts that we have made up in our own mind. 

 

I am addressing this problem because I know that there are those who have this attitude towards everyone they meet.  It is a terrible habit to get into of quickly judging all the motives, actions, and thoughts of a person just because one encounter was not perfect.  We would not want everyone we meet to treat us this way and we should not treat them this way in return. 

 

It is wise to watch a person’s actions and attitudes for clues when getting to know a person, especially when dating.  We should resist the temptation though to assume we know everything about a person by one action.  Otherwise our prejudices will rob us of the potential of any close relationships. People are not perfect and neither are we.  Grow in loving others better, by thinking no evil (or by not making up bad thoughts about others).  Judge the character of a person by the long pattern of actions and words you witness over a period of time.