The Problem With Suspicion

And how to unlock the creative power of confidence

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

(A four-minute read.)

I was speaking with a new friend a few months ago, getting to know a bit of his story, and he shared with me how he had previously attended a well-known evangelical seminary here in the United States. In the course of our conversation, he explained that he was quite close with a particular member of the faculty there who has made quite a few waves in the evangelical world. In fact, so many waves that he was forced out of the seminary and essentially excommunicated from evangelicalism.

Knowing a bit of this faculty member’s story, which basically entails him rejecting the evangelical view on the inerrancy of Scripture, I asked my new friend if this person’s views were completely radical when he was forced out of the seminary or whether they only became so once he left. “Oh,” my friend said, “I think his views were a lot more innocuous when he was still a member of the faculty. But they didn’t know what to do with him.”

So I then asked him a follow-up question that seemed natural to me: “So do you think that his views would have remained innocuous if they had kept him on the faculty, or do you think his views became more radicalized as a result of them kicking him out?”

“There’s no doubt,” my friend said without hesitation. “I think his views became more radical precisely because they kicked him out.”

This whole story is a bit vague and perhaps a bit hard to follow because I’m purposely trying to avoid identifying places and people. But I think it acutely illustrates a very interesting—and critically important—dynamic that is operational within human and social situations. The dynamic is simply this: what we believe about people, and the attitude with which we interact with them, often becomes their reality.

Simply put: faith begets faith while suspicion begets suspicion.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure because there’s no way to replay people’s stories with them taking an alternative path. And, indeed, I’m sure those who looked at this individual with suspicion felt they had their suspicions confirmed when he went way off the theological rails. “See,” they could say, “we were right. He was a heretic all along!”

My suspicion, however, is that if they had maintained faith and confidence in him, they could have equally said, “See! We were right. He was a faithful follower of truth all along!”

I’ve actually seen this in my own journey. Over the last few years I’ve had a number of people—some quite publicly—accuse me of drifting far off my denomination’s reservation. I’ve had people question whether I—or my church—are even a Seventh-day Adventist anymore.

And do you know what such suspicions have done to and for me? They’ve caused me to become suspicious of myself, leading me to wonder if I am, in fact, a bona fide Seventh-day Adventist anymore. In some ways, I’ve been left wondering if, perhaps, what those people are saying about me is actually true.

In other words, suspicion, rather than uncovering some hidden reality, often just turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if we relate to others with suspicion, they will often live up to our expectations.

Confirming suspicion

Over a century ago, a wise writer, Ellen White, pointed to this phenomenon in a book she wrote about education (which was aptly named Education), explaining the ways in which students develop along these lines. “The wise educator, in dealing with his pupils, will seek to encourage confidence and to strengthen the sense of honor,” she explained. “Children and youth are benefited by being trusted. Many, even of the little children, have a high sense of honor; all desire to be treated with confidence and respect, and this is their right.”

After explaining the benefits of placing a positive confidence in young people, she then dropped this incredible statement. “Suspicion demoralizes, producing the very evils it seeks to prevent.”

Read that again. It’s quite a thought. Suspicion, in other words, doesn’t simply identify what is already reality; it actually creates the very thing it suspects.

That’s because, as social, open-loop creatures, our self-perception usually isn’t self-perception at all. How we perceive ourselves is largely a reflection of how we perceive others to perceive us. And how we perceive others is how they will often perceive themselves.

So if we want to create little heretics, we should treat others as heretics—whether such an attitude is justified or not. And if we want to go on witch hunts, we will never fail to find witches—or, more accurately, turn people into them.

On the other hand, as Ellen White went on to explain a few sentences later, “Lead the youth to feel that they are trusted, and there are few who will not seek to prove themselves worthy of the trust.”

In other words, trust begets trust.

Elsewhere, the same writer put it in these tongue-twisting but mind-bending words: “If we wish to do good to souls, our success with these souls will be in proportion to their belief in our belief in, and appreciation of, them.”

The first time I read that thought, it blew me away.

Of course, this is not a naïve, put-your-head-in-the-sand type of trust. It doesn’t mean there aren’t true heretics in the world. It doesn’t mean we will never have to draw boundaries or hold people accountable.

But we have a different attitude when we do so. Instead of saying, “We’re holding you accountable because you’re a heretic,” we say, “We’re drawing this boundary because we believe in you and know you’re capable of better” (of course, even this latter approach can sound condescending and smug if it’s shared in the wrong way).

I wonder what would happen if human beings discovered and fully embraced the creative power of confidence rather than suspicion. Imagine if even just religious people got on board?

I bet we could turn the world upside down.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.