Wearying

I tend to be an opinionated person, and I seem to attract opinionated people. I can count my non-opinionated friends using my fingers. Nevertheless, Natasha has pointed out several times that one of the problems with our culture (faith-based and secular) is the overabundance of opinions. Everyone has an opinion, everyone thinks their opinion is right, and everyone acts on their own opinion, often to the exclusion of other opinions.

This occasionally rolls around in my mind when I read about worship and theology. Today, I read in the NLT, "But, my child, be warned: There is no end of opinions ready to be expressed. Studying them can go on forever and become very exhausting!" (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This is another way of stating the common "much study wearies the body" phrase that my college roommate and I would quote when we wanted to put the books away and play. This verse struck me today, though, because of its fresh approach. Most other English translations say something like, "There is no end to the making of books," but this translation calls it what it is. Opinion making.

Opinion making is both a blessing and a curse in our culture, but I'm going to pick on believers for a moment. Our opinions about God and about faith are wearying. More often than not, our opinions aren't really as much about God and our faith as they are about us. We haggle, struggle, argue, and bicker trying to figure out what the Good News really means, when we could be sharing the Good News with others. And when we share the Good News, we often stick to the Roman Road or Spiritual Laws when we could be actually describing what's good about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection - a resurrection that means that Jesus is still alive. In other words, He's still living, and He's still active. The Good News wasn't Easter weekend; the Good News involves Easter weekend and is played out as Jesus lives among us every day! It gets very wearying trying to sort things out in our minds in our effort to understand God. While there is great benefit in thinking coherently about God, if we could figure Him out, then what kind of God would that be?

Most readers of this post are saying, "Hmmm...that sounds an awful lot like an opinion." It is. Sorry to weary you with it. Instead of studying this, just take it for what it is and move on to the next opinion. If this opinion is close to right, the Lord will bring it back to you. :)