I sat in the stands watching my son’s first football game of his senior year. He started off well, but slowly I noticed he was slamming into people hard and not wrapping them up. In fact people from the stands started yelling “wrap them up” when a player broke through the line.

I figured it was first game jitters and prepared my “dad speech” for after the game. He came off the field after the loss and I gave him the usual hug. Then I told him that he needed to tackle better. He said, “It was hard to tackle when I can hardly feel my left arm.” He turned over his arm and it was obviously swollen and red from his wrist about half way up his arm. He told me that he had been stepped on early in the game and his arm was killing him.

In that moment I felt about an inch tall. I had rushed to judgement about my own son. I saw a boy who was not prepared enough and was not completely fulfilling his job. In reality, he was gutting out the pain and trying to do his best while wanting to quit. Quickly my perspective changed about him and the way he played the whole game.

I have been reflecting about this incident over the last few weeks. I have come to the simple understanding that most things we see in life are not as they initially appear. I believe this is especially true in a sound bite culture of social media. A person writes one thing and it gets taken the wrong way. A person can be seen doing something and it is perceived in a negative way. Someone from the outside shares their opinion on what they saw and the story gets repeated. Many times the truth is far from what everyone thinks they know.

One job of a Christian is to not rush to judgement. We are to give people the benefit of the doubt. We are to function under the assumption that there is more to the story that we will never know. A Christian believes the best in other people.

How many times have you wanted to shout out to a group of people, “This is not what it looks like!” Maybe you have wanted to write to the editor and say, “Here is what really happened.” Quite possibly you still bear the scars of being misunderstood by a group who only had half the story. We have those feelings and yet we rarely cut other people the slack we think we deserve.

So today, what if you believed the best in someone? What if you accepted the fact that you don’t know what really happened? What if you encouraged instead of criticized? What if allowed people the grace we all so desperately need?