Acts 21:17-22, 29
Paul had just come to Jerusalem after the close of his missionary journey. The elders feared there would be trouble when it became known that he had come. They arranged, therefore, for an observance of Jewish rites in the temple, in which Paul should take a public part. It was when this observance was about completed that he was discovered in the temple by some foreign Jews, who recognized him, seized him, and raised a great clamour against him. For him there was nothing new in this hostile outbreak.
They thought they had caught him in the very act. They cried out, “This is the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the law, and this place.” Their words were a gross misrepresentation. Paul never had uttered a word against the Jewish people, the law or the temple. Many persons take the words of others, give a wrong sense to them, and then repeat them. Others exaggerate what they hear. There are many ways of misrepresenting others and many people who are ready always to do it. Misrepresentation is a grievous sin. Many a calumny that destroys a fair name grows out of a mere misstatement, an inexact reporting of what is said or done. We should be scrupulously careful in repeating, if we must repeat a matter at all, that we state the precise truth. No fault of speech is more common that want of accuracy in quoting or narrating. Most people’s ears seem to hear with a bias in favour of their own prejudices. Then, in reporting what they have heard, the bias is too apt to show its influence a second time in the way the speaker’s words are twisted or distorted.
This is only part of the misrepresentation, however. They charged further that Paul had taken Gentiles into the temple, thus defiling it. Some of them had seen Paul on the street one day in company with a Gentile Christian from Ephesus, and now when they recognized Paul and his four companions in the temple, they jumped to the conclusion that this Gentile was one of the four. The charge was an entire misrepresentation. They “supposed” that this Gentile was one of the men with the apostle. The supposition was altogether groundless. But that is the way a great many evil stories about people are started. Somebody “supposes” something about another, and tells his supposition as a fact, and it goes on its ruinous errand. A good man does an entirely harmless and proper thing, but some one imagines something wrong back of it and reports his imagination as a fact, and a character is blackened. Many a scandal grows out of what some evil-disposed person supposes.
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