Jumping to Conclusions

By Dawn Wilson –

The first time I heard my mom talk about spring cleaning, I thought, “Why would anyone want to clean a spring?” (With my elementary school thinking, I envisioned my mom scrubbing bed springs … or even my rusty metal Slinky!)

I don’t think I’m alone in jumping to (mistaken) conclusions, but I do it quite a lot. Once, when my husband was looking at some old photos from before our marriage, he said, “You really looked good there—thin and healthy.” Immediately, I jumped to the conclusion that he thought I was now fat and practically on my deathbed. I got offended by his simple statement.

I let him off the hook with a date at Outback Steakhouse, but my resentment wasn’t very pretty.

A verse in scripture addresses those kinds of conclusions. “[Love] … is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5 NIV).

Sometimes conclusion “jumps” are big leaps of misunderstanding.

I read about a 24-year-old “boy” who gazed with amazement out a train window. “Dad,” he said. “Look! The trees are going behind!”

The father smiled, but a young couple sitting near them looked on the 24-year-old’s childish behavior and pitied him.

Suddenly the young man said, “Dad, look! The clouds are running with us!”

The young couple shook their heads and one of them said to the Father, “Why don’t you take your son to a good doctor? I’m sure he could help.”

The dad just smiled, glanced at his son, and then toward the couple.

“We just came from the hospital,” he said. “You see, my son was blind from birth, but he just ‘got his eyes’ today.”

It’s so easy to jump to conclusions, but what we see might not be the truth. What we think we understand might be far off the mark.

Our enemy, Satan, loves it when we jump to conclusions. With a little coaxing, he tempted Eve to deduce that she could be “like God,” knowing things she’d never known before (Genesis 3:4-5). But Eve didn’t read the fine print in the devil’s contract. Yes, her eyes and mind were opened, but to the horrors of sin.

Satan loves it when I reason apart from God today. He’s glad whenever I think God doesn’t love me or has forgotten me in a tough circumstance. He smiles when I act like my Heavenly Father—so sovereign and powerful—is somehow uninvolved, standing by “helpless” when my life seems to spin out of control.

Satan, the master deceiver, the liar of all liars (John 8:44), delights in casting doubt on God’s Word (Genesis 3:1). I need to remember that, and question him rather than my Lord.

Satan’s target is always our mind. He uses lies to make us ignorant of God’s will and ways. Our strong defense is the faithful Word of God. It exposes and teaches us to hate every false way (Psalm 119:128).

Warren Wiersbe wrote, in The Strategy of Satan: How to Detect and Defeat Him, “If we try to evaluate things around us on the basis of our own thinking and knowledge, we will get into trouble. We must believe that what God says about things in his Word is true.”

In other words, I need to guard my heart with the Scriptures. I don’t want to “spring” to any foolish conclusions or actions.