See People as God Sees Them
Your heart folds up and drops to the floor. How could they have misunderstood you so completely? “You don’t understand,” you stammer. “I didn’t mean,” you begin. But harsh words do not let you finish. You have been misunderstood, and your antagonist gives you no chance to clarify.
To live in community is to be sometimes misunderstood. These misunderstandings can leave us feeling depleted and hopeless, as if the walls of interpretation between us are higher than our ability to scale them. You’re somehow misjudged as mean when trying to be kind, argumentative when trying to be direct, or perhaps cloying when trying to be caring. You’re then shocked when told you were distant when you were just trying to give space. These mishaps can make our heads spin.
Omniscient narrators in fiction are popular for a reason. They always have insight into characters’ thoughts and feelings. They seem to know everything, as though they could read minds, and they’re able to explain the background information that we need to properly understand characters’ lives. It’s an appealing idea. We imagine ourselves as protagonists in Life’s story, our motivations and internal battles never going unseen, and consequently we expect never to be misinterpreted. But we are not omniscient narrators.
Instead, we fumble for people’s true motives and intent, bruising and misjudging as we careen through our days.
The Independent Path
I’m sure you could relate to this recurring argument between my husband and I. He uses his rational computer-programmer voice to respond to something I’ve said. I interpret his unemotional voice as disdain toward whatever I’ve said and toward me for saying it. I further interpret his rational comments through the reminiscent lens of bullies past and react accordingly. At this point he tells me I am over-reacting. I then react to his seeming dismissal of my feelings, and so it escalates. We’re getting better at defusing the process part-way through, but it’s taken a decade. This sort of dialogue isn’t reserved for marriage relationships. Misunderstandings between friends and extended family have not always had such fortunate outcomes. When we enter discussions about theology, parenting, critical race theory, and a host of other controversial topics, the tension begins to build, and the misunderstandings multiply.
It’s at relationship crises like these that we’re prone to become most cynical and disdainful of people. I’ve often felt the desire to retreat to a cave, metaphorically and literally, living out my days as a hermit, talking to no one, risking no conflict or misunderstanding, and abdicating the responsibility to maintain a public self. We want to travel the path of least resistance. But if we can’t amicably disagree with people or refrain from projecting our fears onto their motives, then how can we learn anything new? Or grow closer?
We were not created to live independently. God created Eve for Adam (Gen. 2:18–22). Jesus told the disciples he would not leave them alone but would send the Spirit as their Comforter (John 14:16–18). Elijah had Elisha (1 Kings 19:19–21). Even monks and nuns live with other monks and nuns. God, in whose image we are created, exists as a Trinity. Jesus himself said, “Each of you . . . will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (John 16:32). All of us, having come from someone else, are designed to live with others. And our experience tells us relationships are extremely important in our lives—even when we don’t understand each other.
Two Divergent Paths
To preserve relationships through conflict, we cannot stay independent—we must interact. How we interact is crucial. We can choose the way of humility or the way of pride. Wanting to understand and be understood is a healthy part of conflict resolution. But so often we seek to be understood more than we seek to understand. If we’re honest, we often pridefully want to come out on top more than we humbly want to seek unity—Let them see I’m right, Lord! We want unity only if we are right.
Atop the walls of the relationship maze, we see ourselves, benevolently spreading our superior knowledge downwards to bring healing. But the way past walls is not to elevate ourselves. How many times has a conflict you’ve been part of been resolved by one party insisting their understanding is the only valid understanding? None, in my case.
Instead, we find a way through the walls between us when we graciously listen—really listen—shrinking the walls and uplifting both sides. The disarming power of feeling you are being heard in a conflict cannot be underestimated. Lord, help us to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19).
None of us can ever reach the height of a God’s eye view over all the walls that divide us, where we can see all the reasons for our misunderstandings spread out below, with a path forward clearly mapped. Sometimes, even after we’ve listened and listened and listened, we still cannot understand another’s perspective or intentions.
Thankfully, God does not call us to know all but to love all. “Love the Lord your God,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” are the greatest commandments (Matt. 22:37, 39). Your neighbor is whoever is around you, whoever you encounter on social media, whoever you talk to on the phone. This includes people you don’t like or agree with. It’s hard.
In the classic novel The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov was onto something when he said, “The people it is impossible to love are precisely those near to one, while one can really love only those who are far away” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Book V, Chapter 4). Ivan suggests it is easy to feel love toward those whom we never interact with up close, but the true test of our love is how we respond to the people right in front of us. We easily feel pangs of love for the grimacing child after disaster, a man who’s lost his family to violence, an empty-eyed woman on the street. These images from screen and memory pull at my heart. I mourn their despair and disadvantage. I feel empathy and love for these neighbors of mine. But when my neighbor is in my face, sniffling and rude, perhaps with cutting words, loving them is suddenly harder. It requires more from me.
Love indiscriminately, says God. Love those you don’t agree with. Love those who know less—or more—than you do (Matt. 5:43–48; 1 John 4:19–21; Luke 10:29–36). It makes sense really. It’s hardly the case that knowledge makes us better people, somehow more worthy of love.
So Christians who understand creation theories differently can still pray for and love each other with acts of practical love. Friends who vote differently can still love each other. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 39) cannot be paraphrased as “Love those who agree with you on all points of theology and politics.”
The Path Forward
True, love includes rebuke and vigorous debate. Sometimes our well-intentioned but straying paths must be corrected. But remembering that an idea is not synonymous with the person who holds it allows us to still love that person. Remembering people are greater than the sum total of what they think or know keeps us humble, keeps us capable of love when we feel disillusioned. We are all works in progress, in need of God’s grace constantly. I’ve said and believed some stupid things in my time. Arrogant in youth, and entitled, I thought I knew more than I did. Lectures and canceling me didn’t help. Listening ears, sharing life, and gentle guidance did. Whoever is correct, if anyone, is more likely to win the other person over when words are spoken in love nearby, rather than yelled from a distance.
It’s hard. Different subjects and situations emotionally trigger each of us. But ascribing meanness or willful ignorance where there is actually just a difference of opinion or simple ignorance only builds walls higher. Instead of being offended, we can give others the benefit of the doubt—assume they are not trying to hurt us. We can also calmly share why and how we feel and think the way we do.
Though we try to take into account how our words and actions might affect others, we will still sometimes hurt or offend. Because we are not perfect. Nevertheless, we are still responsible for how our words affect others, regardless of intent. Instead of taking offense at misinterpretation, we can use it as an opportunity to know each other better and show unconditional love and grace. Linked in humility and love, and clinging to Jesus, the barriers between us disarm and dissolve, revealing the people right there in front of us to whom we are bound.
If we ever feel alone in the friction of misunderstandings between friends or family, we can take comfort in an omniscient Author who knows us fully—all of our thoughts, motivations, and feelings—and loves us dearly (Ps. 139:1–6). He is El Roi—the God who sees us.
Jessica T. Miskelly lives in Australia.