Have You Ever Wondered Why People Assume A Bad Motivation?

Have you ever wondered why some people assume bad motivations for scriptural actions? Texts like I Cor 13:7 (“Charity … thinketh no evil, … believeth all things, hopeth all things”) teach we should always assume the best of motivations, because we cannot read another man’s mind (I Cor 2:11).Is it possible that some people wrongly assume that other people necessarily think like them, and therefore have the same bad motivations for their actions that they do? Why else would they assume a particular motivation for another’s action unless that would be their motivation in the same situation? If that is true, then whenever a person judges another’s heart and assumes a bad motivation for an action, it reveals that the person making the false judgment has that bad motivation whenever they perform the same action.It may be hard to believe for some, but there are actually a number of Christians out there that try to emulate what Jesus and Paul did for the exact same reasons that Jesus and Paul did it – basically because they love God and their neighbor (Matt 22:36-40) and therefore want to help them. I guess people without an “honest and good heart” (Luke 8:15) just can’t imagine that ever being the case.