Opinion's Back-bite

I've written several recent posts on opinion. They come from the frustrating (and probably very common) experience of Sunday School classes and "Bible-studies" where getting at the truth in scripture's words is less the point, than people offering their opinions.

After studying what scripture says about "opinion" (http://cross-purposes.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-opinion.html), I'm convinced there's a place, when interpreting what God says, for clearly-demarcated individual opinion (or better, as Paul says, "judgement") that comes from walking closely with Him. A prime manifestation of that walk is deep study of scripture: which ties in with the first rule of heuristics (interpretation), that "scripture interprets scripture." As simple observation, that doesn't seem to be the case of most opinion in Sunday School classes and "Bible-studies" I've been in.

It's taken me a while to get past my frustration with fleshly opinionating. And past that, there's reason to pity the opinionated.

Not pity for what they choose to do: but pity for what they do to themselves in it. The back-bite of treating scriptural interpretation as a matter of one's own fleshly opinion is that it inclines us to view all scriptural interpretation as mere opinion. If we interpret (or rather, manipulate) scripture to confirm our own prejudices, we tend to believe other people do likewise.

In that mind, we become skeptical that any interpretation of scripture can be anything but personal opinion. And ultimately, we can become people who don't believe that scripture embodies objective truth at all.

My late best friend, Mike Baker, had a favorite phrase: that so-and-so "wouldn't know opportunity (or danger, or quality, or whatever) if it bit him on the ass." An unsanctified metaphor, but perhaps appropriate in this context: the back-bite of opinion is that we can get to where we wouldn't know truth if it bit us on the ass.