Embracing Joy: Week One/Day One (Podcast Episode)
Transcript: The Hidden Influence of Assumptions
“Imagine you’re seated on a subway train, engrossed in your favorite novel, when a woman’s screams jerk you out of your book. A large man in a three-piece suit careens past you and leaps through the open doors onto the platform, clutching a baby.” (Embracing Joy, pg. 8)
What would you assume is going on here?
And, based on your assumptions, what would you do? How would you react?
All of us tend to react based on our assumptions.
When I think about assumptions, I think of them as habitual beliefs. They’re beliefs that simply pop into our minds by habit.
Our assumptions are formed by our life experiences, including our education and training, our culture, whether it’s regional or ethnic, our temperament and personality.
Basically, everything about us and our lives forms our beliefs—and our assumptions.
Because we don’t tend to think about our assumptions, they hold a hidden influence on how we interpret all we see and experience, from a man leaping off a subway with a baby to what we read in the Bible and experience in life.
Right and Wrong Assumptions
We all make assumptions.
Sometimes we make right assumptions like assuming the weather in September will be cooler in the Canadian Rockies than it is in South Carolina. It still tends to be hot in South Carolina in September.
Sometimes we make wrong assumptions, like when my husband and I took our two daughters to the Canadian Rockies in September one year, and I wrongly assumed the weather would be just a little cooler than it is in South Carolina.
My daughters looked fabulous in their thick sweaters and warm coats. I looked like was nine months pregnant because I had to put on about ten layers of my thin early Fall/late Summer clothing, including two thin coats.
Wrong assumptions lead to wrong responses—and wrong packing.
Assumptions and Studying the Bible
It’s best to make right assumptions, especially when we study the Bible.
When we open our Bibles, let’s remember how easy it is to make wrong assumptions—especially about an ancient book.
The ancient Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic idioms, phrases, and poetry—their writing is much different than ours. The Hebrew writers loved hyperbole (in other words, exaggeration). They used it all the time, which is of course an example of hyperbole.
Because assumptions drive our reactions, we need to be especially careful as we approach the Bible. Let’s put away our modern lenses and mindsets and read the Bible as God intended His original – and ancient – audience to understand it.
In Embracing Joy, my Bible study of Habakkuk, I use sound Bible study principles to help keep us from making wrong assumptions about God’s Word.
So, now I’m curious. What would you have done if you were in the subway when the man with the baby and ran past you and leaped out and onto the subway platform?
Would you leap after him and rescue the baby?
Or would you sit there paralyzed in fear?
Or maybe, as one lady told me who grew up in New York City, based on her assumptions, she said might not have even noticed because crazy things happened all the time on the subway when she lived there.
Our assumptions drive our reactions. Let’s study God’s Word so we at least learn to make right assumptions about Him and His Word.
Thanks for joining me today. If you like what you heard, share it with others. Hit the subscribe button and write a review on your favorite podcast app. And if you haven’t started studying Embracing Joy yet, get it today. The link is in the show notes. I’m Jean Wilund. But It’s All About Him!
