In his book The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, Tom Sine shares the story of his parents’ friends and their love for gathering wild mushrooms. One weekend this couple came home with several baskets of wild mushrooms and decided to invite friends over for a mushroom party. Together they had a wonderful time eating mushroom crepes, omelets, and soufflés. When they could not eat another bite and they scraped the leftover mushrooms into the cat’s dish.
Around midnight, as the guests were getting ready to leave, someone went into the kitchen and noticed the cat sprawled out on the floor in convulsions. Next to the cat was an overturned dish of mushrooms. The guest screamed, “The cat!” Everyone ran into the kitchen and, after seeing the cat, called the doctor, fearing they would meet the same fate. The doctor instructed them to immediately go to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped. The dinner party ended up in the emergency room of the local hospital lined up on gurneys having their stomachs pumped. What a way to end a party!
About 1:30 in the morning, they dragged back into the host’s house to get their belongings. Sick and exhausted, they sarcastically thanked the hostess and were heading home, when someone asked, “What happened to the cat?” The group tip-toed to the kitchen, quietly opened the door, and found the cat asleep on the floor … with eight newborn kittens.
The moral of this story is that we need check our assumptions. We are often ruled by our confirmation bias. We assume something is true and therefore will not accept evidence to the contrary. Christians are guilty of committing confirmation bias fueled assumptions. For those moments, I apologize. When you check the New Testament, you find Jesus throwing open the doors of the kingdom of God saying to all, “Y’all come.”
God’s love, grace and acceptance of humanity is broader than mine. I need to grow out of some of my spiritual assumptions.
I am going to check my assumptions. I assume you will too.
