Oftentimes it is a temptation to want to judge the hearts of those who we disagree with, or who have opposed us in some way, or who have hurt us, or hurt our feelings, or who have diminished our pride.
Only God knows the secrets of the heart. You and I have no way to know, or to guess, or to imagine, or to assume, what is in the heart. Only God knows that.
We can only see people’s actions. God sees the heart. And remember to never judge other people’s actions more harshly than we would judge own actions if we were to do the same thing.
It may make us feel better to think that others have bad intent. It may be that if we think the hearts of others to be evil, to have ill intent, that we then are morally superior.
To think that we know the motives of our neighbor, and to tend to think those motives unjust, is not how we would want our neighbor to think of us. We would want our neighbor to give us the benefit of the doubt. To deal graciously with us.
Jonathan Edwards, put it clearly: “Another evil of the tongue that I would warn against is censoriousness, or a readiness to pass sentence upon other to the secrets of their hearts; a disposition to determine the worst of others from any outward appearances.”
To love our neighbor, we do not look for a reason to be provoked, and we do not assign evil intents to their heart’s motive.
Part of I Corinthians 13:5 says that charity (love) “is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”.
Free yourself from thinking that you can know your neighbor’s heart.