I have a heard a lot of trash talking lately about professors. What I am hearing isn’t critic of material or teaching style or even the usefulness of the class, I have heard people say some pretty nasty things about the teachers themselves. These judgements leveed are based on classrooms interactions, methods of grading, and hearsay. What is most startling is that students are gleaning from these interactions the professors motivation.
Read this next line very slowly and carefully.
The one thing we cannot do is judge others motivations.
Read the above line again.
The only way we can truly know other peoples motivation is if they tell us.
The Bible has something to tell us about this.
Leviticus 19:15 reads, “You shall not render an unjust judgment.” Do you get it people? Basically, a six thousand year old commandment is telling us today to give people the benefit of the doubt.
This is a good life rule to live by, when we are interacting with others we should ALWAYS give them the benefit of the doubt. We do this because we don’t have all of the information at hand. When we render a judgment without all of the information it is unjust.
With professors and others if you are unsure why they are acting a certain way……ASK THEM! Most of the time it’s not about you.
Give them the benefit of the doubt.
This means:
We don’t call other people heretics until we know all of the information about their position (if they’re…. let’s say…. Pelagian then call them Pelagian, but that is more than a 5 min conversation). And never do it in front of others, it is in poor taste and only makes you look like a fool.
When we are given a bad grade we don’t take it as a personal attack but receive it with grace. The self-entitlement of thinking that 2 hours of work on a 10 page papers warrants an A is just wrong.
When you walk up to two people and they stop talking it’s probably becuase it was a private conversation, their silence may not actually be the commentary you think it is.
We are to think the best about others and assume their motivations are good.
If we wave to somebody and they don’t wave back, they didn’t see us, even if they were looking in our general direction. I see so many people offended by this because they don’t give other the Benefit of the Doubt.
I have heard so much lately a critic of the school administration and its modeling practices of the Christian life, but I wonder if we shouldn’t be looking at ourselves and how we model it first.
How else should we give people the benefit of the doubt?
-jpserrano
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