I left my house by 5 a.m., drove to Louisville to pray with a parishioner who was
undergoing a complicated and major surgical procedure, drove back to Lebanon, and
walked into the church office by about 10 a.m. Hearing someone speaking loudly to me
from the other end of the hallway, I turned around to make sure he was addressing me.
He was.
“Well, it must be nice not to have to come to work until 10 o’clock,” he hollered.
I immediately had a vision of Jackie Gleason as “Ralph,” in the classic TV sitcom, “The
Honeymooners,” when he would get into an argument with his wife, “Alice,” and finally
in frustration, yell, “One of these days, Alice, one of these days–Pow! Zoom! Straight to
the moon!”
You’ve been there, too, haven’t you? Someone sees one aspect of your life and makes a
general, negative assumption from it.
Or they take a part of something you’ve said and go to town with it, putting their
personal spin on what you said—one you never intended.
Things are not always what they seem.
I’ve always loved that story about the airplane that was diverted from its destination to
another a city. The pilot announced what had happened and that all passengers would
have to deplane and reboard in about an hour. Everyone got off the plane except one
blind lady.
Apparently, she was a frequent flyer on that route because the pilot saw her and called
her by name. Having noticed her guide dog resting quietly next to her, he asked, “Sally,
we’re going to be here for an hour. Would you and your dog like to get off the plane?
“No,” she said, “but someone could walk my dog for a few minutes, if that’s not too
much trouble.”
The pilot himself offered to walk the dog.
Now imagine the scene in the boarding area: suddenly, passengers see the pilot getting
off the plane with a guide dog for the blind.
Even worse, the pilot is wearing sunglasses.
Passengers scatter, some trying to change planes or find another airline.
Appearances are often misleading.
People often want to make negative assumptions about others but don’t want to be
responsible for having made them.
A tricky way to do that nowadays is to use the phrase, “Just asking.”
It works like this, “Have you noticed that Bill has worn that same shirt twice in the last
week? Is he color-blind, or does he think that shirt is so rad that we’re too dumb to
notice he’s worn it twice in the past few days? Just asking.”
The questioner wants to gossip about why Bill is over-wearing a shirt but doesn’t want to
be held responsible for starting something and would rather be perceived as simply a
curious bystander, hence the little phrase, “Just asking.”
I caught myself using that phrase the other day.
I had taken my wife to the airport to catch an early morning flight. We walked past a
restaurant on the way to her security line. Seeing a man sitting on a stool at the bar,
hovering over his drink, I said, “Yuk, drinking at such an early hour. You think he has a
problem, or what? Just asking.”
At that moment, we turned the corner, and looking back at the man from the other side,
I saw that rather than an alcoholic beverage, he was drinking a cup of coffee.
Had we turned the other way, I would have forever assumed my wrong assessment of
that man was the correct one.
But, you see, I saw him, or what I thought I knew of his life, from my very limited angle
and made an inaccurate judgment of him.
So, before you are locked and loaded, ready to fire your salvos of accusation toward
someone, don’t you think you should make doubly certain that you have the full picture?
Are you sure your assessment is the complete one, one that includes their inner heart
and motives?
Are you unthinkingly trying to take the place of God, who alone has perfect vision?
Just asking.