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How to REALLY Give the Benefit of the Doubt

by Reid Kapple | Mar 23, 2022 | Featured, Headlines | 0 comments

In 1860, Dr. Thomas Inman recommended that his fellow medical professionals not prescribe a medicine for a cure if they weren’t sure it would work. Dr. Inman encouraged his colleagues to “give the patient the benefit of our doubts.”

We hear this phrase and think that all it means is that we should stop being so critical, minimize our differences, and assume the best in people. In one sense that is true. But giving someone the benefit of the doubt has more to do with the one giving the benefit than the one receiving it. When we give someone the benefit of the doubt, we tend to think that it is tantamount to saying “They are probably just having a bad day” or “I’m sure she didn’t mean that” or “He must not really understand everything that he’s saying.” When I say these things to myself, even in all sincerity, I am still placing the onus of the problem on the other person. I am still claiming that the reason there is tension or division is because of a deficiency of some kind in the other person, not me. The problem is due to something lacking in them, not me.

To truly give someone the benefit of our doubts is to assume the humble posture and perspective that says “There may be something I am not seeing correctly” or “Perhaps I don’t have my facts straight.” To really give someone the benefit of the doubt implies that we have some level of epistemic humility as we hold our viewpoints and opinions in dialogue with others. It also means that we own up and admit as much to the other person when we recognize this to be the case.

This is in part what the apostle Paul means in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians when he writes…

1 Corinthians 13:4–7
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

One of the ways we display the kindness and patience of love with others is by bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring all things. That list of “all things” that Paul mentions is a way of saying that love gives the benefit of our doubts to others. How can we increase our love for others and decrease our resentment of others? By properly giving others the benefit of our doubts.

So how do we do that?

A major prerequisite for really giving someone the benefit of our doubts is knowing the functional distinction between convictions, persuasions, and opinions. This is imperative because it is rather common to find these three things being used interchangeably and synonymously in conversations in our culture. But there is a world of difference between a conviction and an opinion. And as such, there is a world of difference between how you should hold, view, and communicate a conviction in comparison to an opinion.

Let’s briefly look at each of these so that we know what we are talking about and how to more genuinely give others the benefit of our doubts.

Conviction-something you hold to be true without question or concern. “I am willing to die for this.”

Persuasion-something you are inclined to believe but you are open to be challenged on. “I am willing to fight for this.”

Opinion-something you are drawn to but you could take it or leave it. “I am willing to let go of this.”

This is not an exact science, nor are these categories meant to be static. As we grow, learn, struggle, and experience things throughout our lives we should expect to see persuasions move to convictions and convictions move all the way down to opinions. And perhaps we might expect something to move into a fourth category that Dr. Martin Luther King referred to as “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.” Things that no one should care about because no one else cares about them.

Simply having a clear and functional understanding of these categories can help us tremendously as we engage in conversation and debate with people. But we must do the hard work of clarifying and admitting to ourselves and to others which category this subject falls into for us.

Problems arise in relationships and conversations when we hold opinions as strongly as we do convictions and vice versa. Additionally, we find tensions develop when we miscategorize other people’s convictions, persuasions, and opinions. It might be a worthwhile exercise in your next heated conversation with a co-worker or family member to simply ask them what category this subject falls into for them? You may find that framing the discussion in the proper category may mitigate a great deal of unnecessary tension and conflict.

So as we think about giving people the benefit of our doubts, one key way we can do that is to first admit to ourselves that we just might be expressing an opinion disguised as a conviction. This reminds me of that great scene in the Pixar movie Inside Out where a box of opinions and a box of facts spill over and get mixed up. And the character Joy says “All these facts and opinions look the same. I can’t tell them apart.” This happens so often in conversation.

If we are to grow in genuine love for others then we must learn how to genuinely give the benefit of our doubts. And that requires knowing the difference between our convictions, persuasions, and opinions.

But knowing is half the battle. The other half is found in communicating each of those categories with grace, humility, and slowness.

As the New Testament writer James so convincingly declares…

James 1:19
Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;

Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you must share it. Think through if what you want to share needs to be shared. And if it needs to be shared you should ask yourself if now is the time. And do you have all of the information you need in order to speak up?

There is timeless wisdom in the book of Proverbs on this subject. Here are just a few nuggets of stinging insight.

Proverbs 18:13
If one gives an answer before he hears,
it is his folly and shame.

Proverbs 18:17
The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.

Proverbs 18:2
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his opinion.

Proverbs 17:28
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

My paraphrase of that last proverb goes like this. “If you aren’t smart, try shutting up.”

In a day and age when convictions are held like opinions and opinions are shouted as if they were convictions we could stand to learn a great deal about the loving practice of really giving people the benefit of our doubts. But that’s just my opinion.

Demystifying the Holy Spirit

by Caleb Jenkins | Sep 29, 2021 | Featured, Headlines | 1 comment

In a Bible study discussing our sermon series on the Holy Spirit, the facilitator asked the group if anyone had ever experienced the Spirit. After a long silence, a few people confessed that they never had any “crazy” encounters with the Spirit. This was met with murmurs of agreement from the rest of the group. This struck me because many of these people faithfully follow Jesus and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. As a result, they are experiencing Him daily, whether they can identify it or not.

I don’t blame them for having nothing to say, because so often in Christian culture we assume encountering the Spirit must look a certain way. We intuitively think it must be dramatic and extreme, like tongues of fire, miraculous healings, or the audible voice of God.

Many followers of Jesus, myself included, know that the Holy Spirit lives within us and yet struggle to concretely identify what that looks like and miss out on the formation that occurs when we cooperate with Him. There is a need for Christians to demystify the Holy Spirit.

You may recoil at that statement. Shouldn’t we recognize God as mysterious and admit we will never fully understand him? Yes, of course. And yet, ironically, the impulse to view the Spirit’s work as ethereal and mysterious leads us to put His work in a box, missing out on what He is doing in our lives on a regular basis. We become like Elijah on Mount Horeb, expecting God’s presence to be something sensational, like a great wind, earthquake, or fire, when it is really a gentle voice (1 Kings 19:11-13). This is what I appreciated about our sermon series. It is important to expand our categories for what the Spirit does in our lives, and give concrete examples of them, so we can recognize what He is doing in us.

Whenever I find myself stuck in an implicit view of God, I find it helpful to listen to believers from a different time and place to see what my cultural blinders are concealing from me. The great reformer Martin Luther, though best known for expounding justification by grace alone, had a robust theology of the Spirit with applications that are surprisingly concrete for contemporary Christians.

Two helpful contributions Luther makes are designating the Spirit a special role in sanctification (the process of becoming holy) and illuminating how this primarily happens through Christian community.

First, Luther’s shorthand for explaining the Holy Spirit is “the spirit who makes us holy.” The Spirit takes the objective work of salvation that Christ accomplished for us on the cross in dying for our sins, and makes it a subjectively real experience for us. He does this by killing the flesh over time, that is, our corrupt human nature, and instilling a proper love for God in us. Luther says the flesh wants what benefits itself and avoids what is harmful. It enjoys and uses other people, things, and even God for its own benefit and the Spirit wants God for His own sake, which is the proper response. Luther adds that the Spirit works to reassure us we belong to God because of His grace, not our performance, so that we are not striving toward holiness out of fear. Any desire you have to do what is right, live the way God designed you to live, work for the best of another person without thinking about what you will get in return, is evidence of the Spirit working inside you, since these are not natural responses of human nature.

Second, for Luther this sanctification of the Spirit occurs in a caring community; the local church. So often contemporary Christians instinctually view their sanctification as a primarily personal journey. However, God does not make us holy in isolation but rather uses other Spirit-filled believers to produce Christlikeness in us. As someone who grew up in church, I have often heard Christian leaders quip, “it’s the Spirit’s job to convict, not mine,” while referencing John 16:8. However, Luther sees this verse referring not only to an internal guilt conscience, but also to Christians who, by the power of the Spirit, help other believers recognize where they might be going astray. Of course this must be done in a posture of grace and gentleness, with love and tact.

The internal holiness and the virtues the Spirit produces in us have a multiplying effect on other believers. For Luther, the fruits of the Spirit are not only vertical, but also horizontal by spurring other believers to do the same. Just like fruit contains seeds to produce other fruit-bearing trees, Luther views the Spirit’s work of renewing one believer as a tool used to develop holiness in another. Encountering Spirit-inspired gentleness in another person can lead us to grow similarly.

Luther picks up on how, in the structure of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the doctrines of the Church directly follow the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, meaning they are closely related. For Luther, the Church is the place and means of a believer’s sanctification because of the activity of the Spirit. He bemoans the enthusiasts of his day who became fanatical about the Spirit but left the church. They cut themselves off from the “bridge, the path, the way, the ladder” and all the other normal means He uses to affect the inner renewal of a believer. In looking for the spectacular and transcendent, many ignore the routine activities of the Spirit. Over time, these seemingly mundane practices of worship, preaching, prayers, communion, and Christian fellowship become supernatural catalysts for growth in holiness through the Spirit’s working.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you have this Spirit living inside you. Each day, whether you explicitly identify it or not, you are experiencing His work of making you holy. Each time you desire to act out of genuine love for another, this is God’s Spirit working inside you. Every time a still, small voice reminds you of God’s love for you when you might feel like a failure, you are hearing the Spirit’s voice. Whenever another believer encourages you to display Jesus better, you are experiencing the Spirit indwelling them. Every Sunday when you are comforted and challenged by God’s Word preached, it is the Spirit enabling that to occur for you. Even as we leave this sermon series behind, let us look for the concrete ways the Spirit shows up in our lives and cooperate with how He is working.

Additional Reading:

Luther, Martin. A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians : Based on Lectures Delivered at the University of Wittenberg, in the Year 1531. Translated by Philip Watson. Westwood, NJ: F.H. Revell, 1953.

Lectures on Romans. Translated by Wilhelm Pauck. The Library of Christian Classics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961.

“On the Councils and the Church.” In The Annotated Luther: Church and Sacrament, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, translated by Paul W. Robinson, Vol. 3. Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2015.

“The Larger Catechism of Dr. Martin Luther.” In The Annotated Luther: Word and Faith, edited by Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, Vol. 2. Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2015.

Malcolm, Lois. “The Holy Spirit.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, edited by Derek R. Nelson and Paul R. Hinlicky, Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.