Don’t Assume Motives

Let's Start With a Story

You text someone. An hour goes by. No reply.

By the time they finally text back, you've already decided they're avoiding you, they're mad at you, or they just don't care. You didn't ask them why. You didn't need to — you'd already built the whole story in your head. You'd cast the roles, written the dialogue, and reached a verdict, all without a single word from the actual person involved.

Then they say, "Sorry, my phone died at the gym."

Nothing happened. Except everything happened — in your mind, for an entire hour.

That's what this lesson is about: the habit of assuming why people do what they do, and then living, feeling, and acting like our guess is the truth. Not a theory. Not a possibility. The truth.

We do this constantly, and it's rarely dramatic — it's usually small and quiet. Someone doesn't wave back, and we decide they're stuck-up. Someone gives short answers, and we decide they're upset with us. Someone doesn't show up, and we decide we don't matter to them. We never asked. We just assumed — and then we treated the assumption like a fact we were entitled to act on.

Here's the problem: an assumption isn't information. It's a guess wearing the costume of information. And once we believe the guess, we build feelings on top of it — hurt, anger, suspicion, distance — and then we take action on those feelings. We pull away. We get cold. We say something sharp. We tell other people our theory as if it's already been confirmed in a courtroom somewhere.

The other person never even knows there was a trial. We just quietly convicted them, sentenced them, and started serving the punishment ourselves — usually by withdrawing love from someone who did nothing wrong.

Why We Do This

If we're honest, there are real reasons we default to assuming instead of asking.

It's faster than asking. Assuming takes two seconds. Asking takes courage, vulnerability, and a real conversation — one where we might hear something we don't want to hear, or worse, have to admit we were wrong.

It protects our ego. If I assume you're ignoring me on purpose, I get to be the wronged one instead of the anxious one. Being wronged feels powerful. Being anxious and unsure feels exposed. So we quietly choose the story that lets us feel strong instead of the story that leaves us waiting.

We fill gaps with our own history. If people have hurt or dismissed us before, we expect it again — so we read that old wound into a brand-new moment that has nothing to do with it. The past reaches forward and grabs the present by the throat.

Certainty feels safer than not knowing. Even a bad answer feels better than sitting in "I don't know why they did that." Our minds hate open loops, so we close them fast — even if we have to make up the ending ourselves.

None of these reasons make the assumption true. They just make it understandable that we jump there so quickly. Understanding why we do it is not the same as excusing it — but it does help us catch ourselves with compassion instead of shame.

The Deeper Root: We Assume From Our Own Playbook

Here's the part that's harder to admit: most of the time, we're not pulling assumptions out of thin air. We're pulling them out of ourselves.

We tend to assume other people's motives based on what we would be thinking or doing in that moment — or based on the ways we've hurt or been hurt before. In other words, we don't usually judge people; we judge people through ourselves.

A few examples of what that looks like:

• If you tend to go quiet when you're upset with someone, you'll assume someone else's silence means they're upset with you.

• If you've ever used distance as a way to punish someone, you'll assume distance from others is punishment aimed at you.

• If you struggle with jealousy, you'll assume other people's success or attention toward someone else is a threat.

• If you've learned to manipulate to get your needs met, you'll be suspicious that everyone else is angling too.

• If you carry insecurity about being liked, you'll read neutral behavior as rejection.

In other words, our assumptions are often less a diagnosis of the other person and more a mirror held up to ourselves. We're not really reading their heart — we're exposing our own patterns, wounds, and coping mechanisms, and pinning them on someone else like a name tag that doesn't belong to them.

This is why two people can witness the exact same behavior and walk away with two completely different "motives" attached to it. The behavior didn't change. What changed is whose internal playbook got projected onto it.

This should actually be freeing, not just convicting. If your first assumption about people tends to be harsh, it might say less about the people around you and more about what you're still healing from. That's worth naming out loud — to God, and to a mentor — rather than just noticing quietly and moving on. Growth happens in the naming.

What Scripture Says About This

On judging what we can't see:

"For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." — 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)

We genuinely cannot see someone's heart or motive. Only God fully can. When we assume we know why someone did something, we're claiming a kind of knowledge that was never ours to claim. We're stepping into a seat that belongs to God alone.

On answering before we understand:

"If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." — Proverbs 18:13 (ESV)

Assuming a motive is a way of "answering" a situation — deciding what it means — before we've actually listened to the person involved. It's a verdict handed down without a trial, a conclusion reached without any evidence except our own imagination.

On being slow, not fast:

"Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." — James 1:19 (ESV)

Notice the order: listen first. Most assumptions skip straight to anger or hurt feelings before any listening has happened at all. We leap over the whole first step and land directly in the reaction.

On love's posture toward others:

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." — 1 Corinthians 13:7 (ESV)

This doesn't mean being naive or pretending we can't see red flags. It means love's default lean is toward the kinder explanation, not the darkest one. Love gives the benefit of the doubt before it demands proof of guilt.

On judging others:

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" — Matthew 7:1–3 (ESV)

Assuming a bad motive in someone else is a judgment — and Jesus warns us we'll be measured back by the same standard we use on others. Notice the image itself: a log in your own eye. You're trying to examine someone else's motives while looking through the very thing that's distorting your own vision. You can't see them clearly while that log is still in the way.

On judging others by our own patterns:

"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things." — Romans 2:1 (ESV)

This is about as direct as Scripture gets on projection. Paul is saying our harshest judgments of others often expose the very things we ourselves do or fear doing. The finger we point outward has a way of curling back around.

On the heart being hard to trust — including our own:

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" — Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)

If our own hearts are that hard to fully read, we should hold our confident reads of someone else's heart even more loosely. We barely understand our own motives half the time. What makes us so sure we can read someone else's from the outside?

A real-life example — Job's friends.

Job's friends sat with him in his suffering, and then they assumed why it was happening — that he must have secretly sinned, that he deserved it. They were confident. They spoke with certainty, built whole theological arguments, and never once considered they might be wrong.

They were also wrong. God says so directly: "My anger burns against you… for you have not spoken of me what is right" (Job 42:7, ESV). Their assumption about Job's motives and character caused real damage to a hurting friend at the exact moment he needed comfort, not accusation. It's a sobering picture of what happens when we're sure we know "why" — and we don't.

Bringing It Home: What This Looks Like in Real Life

Imagine a friend cancels plans last minute for the third time. The assumption comes fast: They don't value this friendship. I'm not a priority to them. And maybe that feeling has some truth buried somewhere in the pattern — but you don't actually know that yet. Maybe they're overwhelmed. Maybe they're ashamed to admit they're struggling and canceling is easier than explaining. Maybe it really is carelessness. The only way to find out is to ask, gently and honestly, instead of building a case in your head and quietly sentencing the friendship to death by a thousand assumptions.

Or imagine your spouse comes home and barely talks. The assumption: They're upset with me. I must have done something. But maybe they had a brutal day at work. Maybe they're wrestling with something that has nothing to do with you at all. When we assume, we respond to the imagined offense instead of the real person standing in front of us — and sometimes we create the very conflict we were afraid of, simply by acting on a story we made up.

This is the quiet danger of assumed motives: they don't just distort how we see others. They shape how we treat them. And how we treat people based on a false story can create real damage — damage that was never necessary in the first place.

Practicing the Better Way

Here are a few simple shifts that can interrupt the habit of assuming:

• Notice the leap. The moment you catch yourself saying "they probably think…" or "they're doing this because…" — pause. That's an assumption forming, not a fact arriving.

• Ask instead of assume. A simple, non-accusing question — "Hey, I noticed you got quiet, is everything okay?" — does more to protect a relationship than a week of silent theorizing ever could.

• Offer the kinder explanation first. Not because it's always right, but because it's the posture love calls us to, and it keeps your heart soft while you find out the truth.

• Ask the second question. Before reacting to someone else, ask: Is this actually about them, or is this a pattern from my own story showing up right now?

• Bring it to God before you bring it to a conclusion. Prayer is a good place to sit in the unknown instead of rushing to fill it with your own fear or history.

The Core Truth of This Lesson

You can see what someone did. You almost never actually know why.

The "why" is invisible. It lives inside the other person, in a place only they and God can fully see. When we skip past that and invent a why of our own, we're not engaging with the real person anymore — we're engaging with a character we made up in our own mind. And then we let our feelings and our actions respond to the character, not to the person God actually placed in front of us.

Real connection requires humility here — a humility that sounds something like this:

"I don't actually know why they did that. Let me find out, or let me hold it loosely instead of deciding I already know."

And a second layer of that same humility, aimed inward:

"This assumption I just made — is it actually about them, or is it a reflection of me?"

That second question is often the harder one. But it's the one that turns a moment of friction into an opportunity for real growth — not just in your relationships, but in your walk with God.

"If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." — Proverbs 18:13 (ESV)

A Closing Word

None of us will get this perfect. We're all going to catch ourselves mid-assumption, halfway through building a story about someone we haven't actually talked to yet. That's not a failure — it's just being human. What matters is what we do the moment we notice it. Instead of letting the story keep writing itself, we can stop, hand it back to God, and ask for the humility to say, "I don't actually know why they did that." That one sentence, prayed honestly and often, can protect more relationships than we'll ever realize. It keeps our hearts soft toward people, keeps our eyes on our own hearts first, and keeps us walking in the kind of love that always hopes and always trusts — even when we don't yet have the whole story.