Day 3569 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 18:2 NIV

Seems a surpassed understanding is a gift in waiting given unto only those who’ve become all but victims of their own.

For while it may take some time to grow in the humility of mind that allows for the rather pointed realizing of just how right you’ve never really been, once you do in that begin, it’s a miracle that continues to unfold into a freedom that could have never otherwise been found behind a mind that thinks it either knows everything or may soon accomplish such a selfish vanity as that. Which is indeed all that our every opinion can ever really be.

Because an opinion is defined as “a view, judgment or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter.” And thus it’s just us becoming convinced that what we think is justified simply because we think it with the same minds that think we’re never wrong.

Can this truly be such a gravity as that which it’s been given? For it seems that these days our opinions have become unto us what’s considered the only viable truth. And this has happened as we’ve grown into that forewarned time in which few would find within themselves the audacious humility to endure sound teaching. In fact I dare say our culture today has all but defined this disaster as we’ve delved rather deep into this incredibly disconcerting direction in which we all strive to live our own truth.

Can an opinion be true? Sure. But is this possibility able to then define, undeniably and indefinitely, that our every opinion is truth? No. For if it was, as we so often tend to assume, well then we’d no nothing of wrong, of mistake, of regret. We’d in fact carry no weight as that had in any of that. And yet, do we not? I do. But that I know that I do, does this define that any other may be wrong in their opinions, perspectives, perceptions, preferences?

Is my opinion that I’ve been wrong able to either define others as having the same potential for misunderstanding and mistake or, when you think about it, is it even an opinion at all?

Because an opinion can always be defined as a viewpoint that’s widely accepted, the generally held perspective as shared amongst most. And sure, many might agree that many of the things I’ve done were indeed wrong, myself among them. But does this really mean anything either when, again, we’re living within the times in which everyone is living their own truth as defined for themselves by themselves? Can any of us thus be the ones who define what’s wrong, what’s right, what’s worth regret and what more isn’t?

For the misery of mistake is of such humiliating weight that none of us seek for it in life. In fact we seek otherwise. We want to avoid such guilt, such remorse, such a force of folly finding us as failures to be anything from faithful to forthright. We don’t want to admit or accept or acknowledge any of this self-perceived nonsense. And yet, why is it anymore so vastly considered to be such nonsense?

Is it not because the generally held viewpoint as shared amongst most anymore is that none do any wrong? And yet, how can this be the case when we’re otherwise able to form all these divisions over such things as politics and professional sports? Does this not show the ease of opinions becoming shared? And if an opinion is shared, is it then more justified or merely just more broadly believed? And if something is indeed just broadly believed, does this make it right, true?

Well, it’s something that’s unfortunately a determination to be levied in what is a case-by-case consideration. But, thankfully, we’ve an ultimate authority as to what is right and what is true. And in fact it’s such an authority that it hasn’t changed all that much over the years, and this despite billions trying in what’s become an increasing urgency to disprove its validity. Hasn’t changed at all in fact, because He said it wouldn’t.

Can we say the same about these opinions we love more than life itself?

Have our opinions always stayed true to themselves? Have we stayed true to them? Or have, at times, we in fact been proven wrong, misunderstood, mistaken perhaps? Yes, have we ever, even once, been proven that our opinion in regard to whatever matter we may have thought only mattered in one specific way, have we ever learned otherwise and thus had our opinions undermined? And if we have, as we have, well then why still do we seek so fervently to defend these ideas that we’ve all but come to idolize?

Is this not what an opinion really is? Just a person’s mind becoming so convinced it’s right that we seek to serve and protect this point of view so as to not fall amongst the many others being proven wrong by the shiftings of time and tide into a turning asunder of every wonder to which we’ve wandered in search of the refuge of our being able to refuse the long-standing and ongoing call to get understanding? Is not our own understanding sometimes found only standing in the way of the wisdom to which we’re called?

And as our every regret has now proven it might, should we still remain so concerned about what our opinions merely think is right? Or should we not perhaps put a pause on our pride as we, even if we must at first pretend, pursue instead the path of potential as opposed to this one of already proven problem?

For has not our opinion caused us problem in the past? Do they not bring about the same even sometimes today? Is this not what a regret is, but a previously held opinion having been since proven wrong to the win of shame as opposed to the satisfaction we perhaps won within the moment in which our arrogance took yet again the audacious insistence that we couldn’t be wrong?

Why then do any have the ability to admit they have?

See, the reason we’re called in Scripture to everything from humility to the corresponding growth in wisdom is because we can know nothing of faith without them. We cannot understand who Christ is if we can’t allow ourselves to comprehend what He did. And we can’t comprehend what He did unless and until we understand why He had to do it. And we can understand why He had to do it unless and until we realize that we couldn’t. And we can’t realize this until we accept the humility that is found only within the wisdom of admitting that we cannot be wise as wisdom isn’t a finish line but rather and furthering.

Opinions don’t offer that.

Opinions are just outcomes that have been preconceived as proper, profitable, preferential, presidential, popular, prideful, perfectly profound in that perhaps. Yes, I am convinced that our every opinion is actually nothing more than pride once more speaking up and telling us just how right we are. And the problem then is that discussed here in Proverbs. For once we become convinced that we’re right, we will in that find every reason to never doubt it, never question it, never allow it to be questioned, to be doubted, to be denied or debated or otherwise potentially destroyed.

Because our pride couldn’t survive that. And as a people as prideful as we’ve been, we ourselves worry now that nor might we survive were our opinions proven suspect, mere suggest, a substance of something otherwise voiceless in terms of truth as spoken only inside these minds that we’ve all but mangled into a maze of webbed worries and wants overlapping one another and always seeking to outpace the other. Yes, we are rats running circles inside our own understandings.

And it’s thus no wonder as to where this has all gone so wonderfully off the rails as to arrive at this assumption that the world needs to know, hear, see, agree, believe our opinions so very much that we almost feel we’re doing those around us a deadly kind of disservice should we deny them the glory of our self-conceived wisdom. And I say self-conceived as, again, an opinion, as defined, is “a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind.”

Thus we find that we’ve come to be nothing but insanity embodied seeking to empty itself for the greater good of our being heard and hopefully understood so that we never need fear that we’ve been wrong as our opinions, hopefully, come to be validated by their being shared amongst a truly insane society. And thus we’ve become but a wreck upon a wreck, each of us so tangled up in our own understandings that we neither dare consider that we’re wrong nor deny others their opportunity to share in our vanity.

And so we all just go around spewing out whatever ideas we think might mean something in the moment. And as those ideas, thoughts, theories change like the shifting of sand upon a stormy beach, so too have we reached a possible point of no return. For again, when we become convinced that we’re right, knowing just how much we hate being wrong, we’ll ignore anything that might say otherwise.

And in that we can never understand who Christ is, what He did, why it was done, where it leads, what it means. We’ll just stay forever convinced that we couldn’t have been so wrong about so much as believed by our opinions that all this brutality and misery and suffering and sacrifice was as needed as seen inside the God of Heaven doing as we haven’t and humbling Himself to the point of the cross in order to finally and undeniably get across the message that we’ve never once been able to hear as our opinions have always shouted over it screaming out that we’re not that wrong.

Which is just the problem, for we’re not only that wrong as to deserve what He took in our stead, we’re instead so wrong that we deserve that without end!

All because our opinions have come to know only to deny Him.

And I know this for a fact for our understanding, as confused as it's so clearly become, it's a mindset set upon the seeking of some way to make something seem reasonable enough to justify our doing it despite any warning sign given kindly along the way. Indeed, anymore we seek out all these ways, reasons, excuses to excuse the things we do that we know shouldn't be done. We try so hard, in vain always, to make ourselves seem innocent in every way, every matter, every moment of every single day.

And it's within this that we've become victims of our own understanding as it's our understanding that stands to gain the most within this most prideful pursuit of the things which either make us feel good or help us not feel bad.

This is why we seek to justify our addictions. It's why we seek the applause of those who share them. It's why we look always to the world so vastly lost inside of such to inspire us as to the life of us, teaching us perfectly how to live impiously. And as we've grown so worldly in our ways, this is now why we spend our days doing as we shouldn't whilst seeking or speaking the voices which say it's all okay. And too, it's why we don't do what we know to, as what ought to be done just isn't, by anyone.

Almost.

For indeed there are a few who do do as we all ought to, or at least seek to, strive to, try to. There are some whose hearts break over the things that betray either the soul or that of another. There are some who carry the weight of knowing better and feeling shattered whenever they fall short all over again. But friends, this few shouldn't be so few. It should be all of us. For while we've come to seek that which soothes, freeing us from feeling bad by feeding us this lie that says that all we do is alright to do, the truth is that our comfort or justification isn't the goal in life.

In fact, in this case, they're the enemy of the goal of life.

For the goal of life itself is godliness, holiness, righteousness without shame or exception. I am not ashamed of the Gospel! But sometimes we all are. Sometimes we have to be. Sometimes our vanity seeks to be so as to not be so guilty, so dirty, so disheveled and disappointing as to accidentally admit, accept, acknowledge, agree that we do deserve what He did do for you and me.

Yes, His most perfect form of humility as won within godliness and holiness and righteousness and wisdom and understanding, they are the goal of life.

Except that such isn't our goal, is it?

No. For how can they be when we become so unwilling to be proven wrong that we cannot possibly know anything of humility? And if, in our vanity as needed to guard our opinions against them possibly being wrong, if in our vanity we cannot know humility, how can we know godliness when it’s God who came in Christ to show us this? And if we can’t know godliness, righteous (a matter proven in our pasts being so laden with mistake and regret), then we can’t know Jesus.

And if we don’t know Jesus, then we’re but dead men walking no matter what our opinions may say or how vehemently they’ll obviously disagree.

And so no, such things are sadly not at all our goals in life, for life, of life. For again, we seem to only seek this goal of our being right. We seek only to protect our perspectives, objectifying our opinions to the very point in which we’d rather die than consider we’re wrong. Indeed, anymore we seek to justify what we do, what we think, what we assume all so that we don't feel the weight of guilt, of shame, of sorrow and remorse. And at the same time we don't do what we need to, things such as learning and reconsidering and confessing that we’ve messed up and made mistakes for such things bring us low and leave us feeling broken and betrayed.

And by ourselves nonetheless!

And yet we have no idea how very much we need this. We need to be brought low and there left for a while so that we do feel the weight of being wrong. Not because it’s fun or something we know how to enjoy but merely because there is more life in our being wrong and able to admit as much than there can ever be in our believing that we’re right and in that unwilling to think otherwise. For the truth will hold that our opinions mean nothing as they’re often but stumbling blocks that keep us running away from wisdom rather than humbly crawling toward.

Fools have no delight in such crawling as that demanded of wisdom. Fools have no delight in hindsight showing them everything they couldn’t or wouldn’t see within those many moments in which mistakes we’re made. No, fools have no understanding of mistake as such a gift is given only to the humble who seek not validation but vengeance against their arrogance as proven so perfectly all over their past inside all those attempts to let pride lead the way, and successfully at that.

And that is why fools have no hope as they know not how to see that righteous anger which fuels a fire inside the heart that consumes it and leaves it then unable to lead so deceptively anymore. So deceptively in fact as to actually think that our opinions can’t be wrong.

They are my friends, maybe not all of them, but some of them. Do we really want to live our lives leaning on the odds of maybe being right? Or should we not rather humble ourselves to the point of not listening to ourselves anymore? For you see, all this stuff about following your gut and living your truth and looking out for number one, it’s number two. It’s nonsense. It’s hogwash. It’s foolishness.

Don’t follow your gut, follow God instead.

For rather than just arrogantly assuming He’s right, He knows He is as He’s the One who defined right and wrong. And considering He went all the way to the cross to go through the grave to prove as much, I think we’re far better off to let His opinion be the only one we worry about going forward.

Because His knows the way through the tomb. Ours still thinks that we should be afraid of it.

So be careful who and what you listen to. After all, whether we like it or not, our opinions have been wrong far more than we’ve been even close to being right.

Not at all the kind of odds I’m willing to bet my life on.

No matter how much my pride may want to.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold