Expectations (an NCC of Spencer Blog)

Last night, at our weekly meeting, we discussed expectations. Like how when you take a drink of what you expect to be Iced Tea and it turns out to Pepsi. At first you make a terrible face, because what you were expecting wasn't what you got. That's how it is with church a lot of the time. Either we expect the people to be perfect, because it's church, or we expect it to be terrible because thats all we've ever known. And if we expect these things we are either disappointed, because they can't live up to our standards, or we are smug because they just proved our point.
These "expectations" are more like prejudices. We "expect" Christians to be perfect, but truth is we aren't. We are human as well! Only by Christ's love do we even survive, because Christ is the perfection and we are his children. We hope to attain his perfection, but we aren't perfect yet.
Or we "expect" Christians to be hypocritical, puritanical, annoyances of the world. And when we "expect" this then that's all we see in others. But truth is, expecting someone to be perfect or hypocritical doesn't make them that way. Just like expecting Pepsi to be iced tea.
So, why do we let these "expectations" color our view on Christianity and other religions? How about this, the next time you find that you are expecting (assuming) that someone will fall, change your point of view and expect that they will do well, and even if they don't expect that you will help pick them back up.