The other day, I found myself doing something I have done a thousand times before. Someone said something that felt abrupt, and within seconds I had decided why. They were dismissive. Uninterested. Perhaps even a little arrogant. It happened so quickly that I barely noticed it. There was no conscious process, no weighing of evidence, no thoughtful reflection. Just an instant conclusion about another human being’s character based on a single moment.
Then, almost as quickly, I remembered how often I hope others will do the opposite for me. When I am distracted, I hope people understand I have a lot on my mind. When I forget something important, I hope they see the pressure I am under rather than assuming I simply do not care. It seems we can be remarkably skilled at extending grace to ourselves and remarkably reluctant to extend it to others. Psychologists call this the Fundamental Attribution Error, but the more I sit with it, the more I think it reveals something deeply human.
We are storytellers
Every day, in every conversation, we are gathering fragments and weaving them into narratives. A delayed reply becomes a story. A forgotten invitation becomes a story. The difficulty is not that we tell stories. The difficulty is that we often tell them with only a handful of pages. We meet people in the middle of a sentence and assume we know the ending. We witness a moment and mistake it for a character. We see a reaction and believe we understand the heart behind it. Yet how often is that really true?
I’ve often wondered how many relationships are damaged not by what actually happened, but by the meaning we attached to what happened. How many friendships cooled because someone assumed rejection? How many marriages endured unnecessary distance because hurt was interpreted as lack of love? How many conversations became battles because both people believed they already knew the other’s heart? The stories we tell ourselves matter. Because eventually we stop responding to people and we start responding to the version of them we’ve created.
The older I get, the more aware I become of the hidden landscapes people carry within them. The grief no one mentions. The diagnosis not yet shared. The anxiety concealed behind competence. The family burden carried quietly for years. The loneliness hidden beneath busyness. There are entire worlds inside the people we pass every day, and most of those worlds remain invisible.
Perhaps that is why I am increasingly drawn to the clarity of Scripture. Again and again, the Bible reminds us of the limits of our vision. Human beings see a small piece of the picture. God sees the whole canvas. We see actions. God sees motives. We see reactions. God sees wounds. In 1 Samuel 16:7 we read, “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
I have read those words many times over the years, but lately they feel less like a statement and more like an invitation. An invitation to humility. An invitation to loosen my grip on certainty. An invitation to remember that I am almost always seeing less than I think I am.
We are invited into deeper stories
One of the many beautiful things about Jesus is his refusal to settle for surface-level judgments. Where others saw a sinful woman, he saw a daughter. Where others saw a tax collector, he saw a future disciple. Where others saw a man consumed by failure, he saw his friend, Peter. Jesus consistently looked deeper. He saw people as they truly were – and as they could be once they had received his transforming love. Not because he was naive about human behaviour. Not because he ignored sin. But because he knew that the most visible thing about a person was not the most important thing about them.
We can never know like Jesus, but I wonder how many of our conversations would change if we learned to look beneath the surface to the heart – and God’s good purposes – within. What if, before deciding what someone’s actions mean, we paused long enough to ask what else might be true? What if we became curious before becoming certain? What if we approached people with questions instead of verdicts? Not every misunderstanding would disappear. Not every hurt would be resolved. Not every difficult behaviour would suddenly make sense. But perhaps our hearts would remain softer. Perhaps our relationships would become deeper. Perhaps grace would have a little more room to breathe. Because the truth is that every person we meet is carrying a story we cannot fully see and every conversation presents us with a choice. We can assume we know that story. Or we can acknowledge that there may be chapters we have never read.
The Fundamental Attribution Error observes how naturally we lean toward assumption. The gospel invites us toward something better. Toward humility. Toward compassion. Toward the quiet recognition that only God sees the whole story. To leave room for the possibility that there is more happening beneath the surface than we can see. Because every person you meet is carrying a hidden story. Every brother or sister is indwelt by the living and active Spirit of God. And every conversation is an opportunity to decide whether you will assume that story or lovingly seek to understand it. Perhaps that is one small way we learn to see people as Christ does. Not merely by what they do. But by who they are. Beloved, complicated, unfinished, and deeply known by God.
