Do you sometimes find yourself making snap judgments about people? Often these judgments may not be that helpful, particularly if they accuse the person you’re judging of ill intent. In the last 24 hours I’ve encountered 3 or 4 reminders that we all have the same insecurities under the surface. Sandy Toskvig, in her book Mind Your Peas and Queues talks about how similar humans are the world over. What marks different cultures apart are the subtle differences in customs and habits. These are only skin deep, but they have a profound effect on our opinion of others if we’re not careful. As she says ‘the devil is in the detail’.

This made me think even more. I’ve always winced when people have highlighted when I’ve not picked up the detail in something. I’ve felt like a bad person. I’m not so sure now. Perhaps the emphasis should be on the devil rather than the detail. A bigger perspective is so much more forgiving.

Imagine the recent furore about Syrian children refugees being brought to the UK. The big-hearted UK government allowed entry to a whole 250 ‘children’. With 7 million people having been displaced from their homes it’s a start. The papers all made lots of noise about some of the supposed children looking like grown men. Perhaps they were. Perhaps 25-year-old men aren’t as much in need of help. But speaking as a slightly older than 25-year-old man I think even when I was at that age I would have had enormous concerns about leaving my home at the bidding of my family, paying probably most of my life savings to someone, travelling several thousand miles to a place I had only heard of and then having to live in some uncomfortable conditions indefinitely.

I had a year in the Royal Marines when I left school. It was, at times, ‘very emotional’. But as one of the chaplains pointed out there is something called ‘endex’. After a week or so of unpleasantness it all ends. I struggle to imagine what that unpleasantness would be like if there was no end.

The detail stops at the habits, customs and skin colour. The bigger picture encompasses everything else: the political situation and the inner person. Radio 2’s Pause for Thought all this week has been focusing on the beautiful inner you. When you see the detail in someone else’s behaviour try and remember that’s only the devil: the inner person is beautiful.