We all have lived long enough “passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Christ bids us out of the shadows of suspicion, to live in the sunshine as children of the day, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). This is air from above — air that will keep us healthy and unified in this polluted and suspicious age.

I didn’t see the sin until I saw the effect it began to have on my wife. Once vivacious, childlike, radiant, she began to joke less impulsively and laugh less freely. She grew quieter, less energetic, less herself. My beautiful lily drooped before me.

As any husband would, I wanted to help. What had caused the change, I inquired one day. I soon unearthed the source I hadn’t expected: me. My general cynicism toward people — like weeds in a lawn — did not stay just with me. My suspicion was becoming hers.

Cynicism and suspicion, I know firsthand, crawl into our minds and make us traitors to ourselves, dangers to our families, and toxins to our churches. Our suspicions can make us strike at those dearest to us. They contain a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we suspect, the more reasons we find to suspect; the more we distrust, the more reasons we find to distrust. Every creak of the floor becomes a burglar.

Thinking the worst of our loved ones or our neighbors is unjust and often unreliable, and it passes too easily unnoticed. Yet if our sins have been (unimaginably) forgiven by God — and in Christ, they have been — then we have been set free to lay down our subtle suspicions, our default distrust, and to assume the best of others.

Love in an Age of Suspicion

As fallen men and women, sin’s bent naturally tempts us to say in the spirit of King Lear, “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.” Without being taught, we easily see most of our problems “out there,” with other people. Their sin against me, not my sin against a holy God, troubles me most. And when this is our focus, we are quick to speak and slow to listen, quick to write off and slow to bear with, quick to suspect and slow to forgive.

Yet, set that spirit against the spirit of love, the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the Christian:

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. (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)

The spirit of the age assumes the worst of his neighbor’s confusing comment. The spirit of a Christian assumes the reasonable best of his neighbor, interpreting him how he wants to be interpreted.

The spirit of the flesh is wronged by a church member and gossips or comments passive-aggressively online. The spirit of a Christian checks for logs in his own eye (Matthew 7:3–5) — mindful that he is a “man sinning more than sinned against” — charitably limits his judgments to what he can clearly perceive, and then wants to approach the person and discusses it with him directly as a brother (Matthew 18:15).

Instead of envying someone else’s influence or wealth, instead of being arrogant and rude, instead of husbands papishly insisting on their own ways or wives being irritable and resentful, Christian love is empowered and equipped to be different — in the family, the church, and the world. When suspicion chokes out laughter and distrust destroys friendships, the people of God ought to glow in our cynical world — bearing all things, hoping all things, believing all things (1 Corinthians 13:7).

This community of love, grace, and forbearance grows slowly, but surely. Imperfectly, with detours and setbacks along the road, but actually and increasingly. This is the inheritance of God’s Spirit-indwelt people and what makes us a witness to a watching, clawing world: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

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