While none of her tendencies that I just mentioned are necessarily bad, combine them together and repeat them day after day, and the rest my coworkers can slip into making assumptions. 

• She doesn’t like us. 
• She doesn’t enjoy her job.
• She doesn’t want to be part of a team.
• She thinks we overcommunicate. 
• She feels suffocated by our tendency to favor ‘togetherness.’
• And so on.

My boss, on the other hand, has not fallen into making any of these assumptions. She has known this tricky coworker for a long time. She worked with her at a different school, and she was so impressed with her, that when my boss switched and started working at my school, she brought this teacher along with her. She has seen her teach with excellence, care deeply for children and families and offer new ideas that help make a school a better place. If I share my concerns and worries about my coworker, my boss is quick to highlight her strengths and how she’s working to strengthen her weaknesses. My boss remains endlessly optimistic. 

This can be difficult to understand when my personal experiences with my coworker are one way, while my boss’ experiences with her have been different. After a conversation with my boss just the other day, I had an “a-ha moment.” She will never have the same worries about my coworker as I do because she knows her in a completely different way. I realized even when I subconsciously assume that her thoughts are the same as mine, they’re not. She is coming from a completely different angle (as boss rather than coworker), she has an entirely different collection of background knowledge, she’s known her way longer, and she also knows her more intimately.

As I thought about this, my brain compared it to the way we humans often subconsciously assume things about God. Because we understand how humans think and operate, it’s only natural for us to unintentionally assign the human tendencies that we’re familiar with to God. For example… I’m a people pleaser by nature. So when I was a young school girl, I followed the rules and tried my best to please my teacher every day. I believed that if I didn’t follow the rules, my teacher might get mad or be disappointed in me (which was certainly true to some extent). Now, even as an adult, I’m conscious of the employee handbook at my job. I follow the guidelines and try to please my boss every day. I still think about the possibility of my boss being mad or disappointed in me if I don’t do my job just right. Because of this people pleasing human nature inside of me, I subconsciously assume that God is the same. I’ve caught myself making assumptions like: If I don’t keep His statues, He might love me less or be so disappointed in me He turns His attention away from me. 

But God is not like humans. He is perfect and complete in all that He does. While a human might become impatient with a frustrating coworker, God is perfectly patient, understanding and compassionate. While a human might have a hard time forgiving a friend for betraying her, God is perfectly merciful and is quick to forgive. While humans have moments of unkindness, God is always kind. While humans are often quick to judge, God is impartial in every way. 

It’s easy to assume that God would react to human situations the same way that we might because we assume what we know. Psychology Today taught me a few things about assumptions:

• As adults, we continue to make assumptions in order to manage, navigate and control outcomes in our environment.
• We believe we’re adept at the “guessing” skill through our years of training.
• When we make assumptions, our “guesses” are based on a lack of evidence.
• People jump to conclusions because of impatience to achieve a resolution to confusing, unresolved situations.
• Inferences and conclusions may be negative or catastrophic, but people draw them in order to feel the situation is resolved.

As you read through these statements and think about assumptions you may have made about God, do any light bulbs go off in your mind? When a light bulb goes off, and you realize you may have assumed that God stopped loving you because you messed up, the good news is, we have a source to turn to with all the evidence we need to make an informed conclusion instead of an inaccurate assumption. 

Remember my assumption about God? If I don’t keep His statues, He might love me less or be so disappointed in me He turns His attention away from me. 

Scripture directly counters all inaccurate assumptions.

For starters, God loves me the same no matter what I do or don’t do. I know this truth because in Romans, Paul teaches that there’s nothing that can change God’s love for us.

• For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 8:38-39

He doesn’t turn his attention away from me when I fall short of His standard. I know this truth because in Isaiah, God spoke through the prophet to tell the Israelites that even though they were intentionally rebelling against Him, He was continuing to reach out to them.  

• All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations -Isaiah 65:2

When you find yourself making assumptions about the character of God, fact check in the Bible. Through the Word, you can learn all about who God is. Each time you read a passage, stop and ask yourself, What can I learn about God from these verses? Ask the Holy Spirit to make you aware of any inaccurate assumptions you’ve made about God, and ask Him to help you come to informed conclusions instead. God is God. He is unlike you and any other person you know. Let Him be God in your life!