Love believes

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. – 1 Corinthians 13.7

This is one of those saying from scripture that can seem hard to grasp. ‘Love believes all things?’

That surely doesn’t mean that believes everything we hear from those we love? Surely it is not just blind acceptance without looking at all the facts and evidence.

Of course not, because love also rejoices in the truth.

But I do think it means that love is willing to take a chance. Love is willing to believe the good about someone we love and does is not willing to believe otherwise without evidence.

I love this idea. When we love someone and we hear something bad about that our first response ought to be to doubt the veracity of what we hear – not doubt the person. Too often we are quick to hear the ‘gossip’ and not even check it out. Our response in that case should be something like ‘that doesn’t sound like them, let’s ring them and ask about right now, shall we?’

Can you imagine how quickly lies would die if we did that? Can you imagine how many fights and divisions would be avoided? Can you imagine the relationships that would be saved?

Love sticks with our friends even at the risk of being wrong or looking foolish. We may be proven wrong. The bad we hear might be proven true. But our love ought to believe until proven wrong.