Out of Context

"You took my comment out of context!" During any political season, we're sure to hear this excuse for something a candidate said that the opposing party made a big deal about. Most often, it seems, both sides have a point - the candidate did say something offensive, stupid, or inaccurate, and the opposing party did take the comment out of context to make it sound far worse than it actually was. One of the few things they agree on is that the fair thing to do is to take someone's comments within the context they were spoken, and then take whatever issue with it as you please (even though they rarely do so).

We have the same expectation of literature, research, and statistics. Most of us have had homework marked wrong because we quoted something out of context to better fit our point. Statistics are perhaps the easiest to take out of context, according to 3 out of 7 scientists. ;-) One thing that drives me crazy are internet posts that take some factoid out of context to make a point the statistics never did support - I don't care if I agree or disagree with your conclusion, I'm going to call you on it when I see it. It's a form of lying.

For those who study religious texts, we are particularly sensitive to context for quoting. We grieve over "teachers" who rip a verse out of Scripture to make the most unscriptural points ("I can do all things...", "If my people pray...", "Increase my borders..."). Most common, however, is taking a passage out of context to make a perfectly Scriptural point - Scripture does say that, but not in that passage you just quoted. Responsible teachers intentionally consider the contexts: literary, historical, and cultural.

We critique people who take things out of context, and we should. However, there's another contextual concern that we too often ignore. We are far too quick to take people out of context.

At a store, we see a child yell at his mother, neither of whom we know anything about, and then we draw all kinds of conclusions about the child ("how disrespectful!") and the parent ("if she'd practice discipline at home..."). We cry out when someone uses statistics out of context to draw conclusions, and yet we so easily take people out of context to draw all kinds of conclusions. What is the child's story? Does he have an emotional disorder or disease? Did he just lose his father? Is he just an obnoxious brat? What's the parent's story? Is that the child's parent at all? Has she already tried everything and is near her wit's end? Is she an addict and only hears people when they yell?

I'm not at all suggesting that everyone is innocent and we just need to understand them. Sometimes, they're in the wrong. But if we take them out of context, then we're also in the wrong for doing so. We simply cannot take someone out of context and pretend to know what their problem is or what they need. Doing so is a form of lying.

Like statistics, we must understand the context before we understand what we've seen. And for people, that most often means patient listening (or else butting out!). As any teacher would do, we need to do the "research" about the context before we dare suggest we understand the person, let alone be so bold as to conclude what they ought to do.

Use the same discipline - refuse to claim anything about the statistic, or the person, until you've understood the context it comes out of. And if you cannot determine the context, refuse to make any strong assessment at all (otherwise called "being judgmental"). If we can't do this for simple numbers, we cannot do this for complex people with complex histories and varied contexts.

Don't we wish that's what others would do unto us?