An “Opinion” Is Not Always To Be Respected

We have, in our culture, an undefined standard of toleration for “opinions.”  We use the word almost as a thing sacred, to be respected and deferred to whenever the invocation of the word is heard by disputants. When “Well, that is my opinion!” is asserted, we back off from any assertiveness, lest we be construed as “intolerant” or “aggressive.” 

How stupid. 

Imagine the racist invoking his defense for discriminating against or otherwise physically abusing someone because of his unacceptable color.  We would think such to be wrong because we arrived at and affirm the proclamation that “all men are created equal” and not to be judged by the color of their skin.  It is a fair principle which stands in the shadow of Biblical ethics as well as it is a proper application of principle announced in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence of 1776.   

It was the opinion of many folks, white and black in times past, that those of the black race were inferior to those of the white race.  Indeed, the black race was reckoned to be inferior in every way: intellectual, physical, and moral.  A black man was good, therefore, like any beast, for labor.

That was the prevailing “opinion”  and any argument calling for respect for that “opinion” today would be views as insane, stupid, wicked, and accordingly despised, rejected, and anathematized.  Emancipation and, much less, equality were regarded as radical, heretical, and seditious. 

How must we judge history as well as our own times?  By our own current, popular opinions?  Certainly not.  What makes us any smarter or more righteous than any other time in history?  OUR current opinion makers?  OUR politicians?  OUR wayward preachers? 

No,  American slavery was unethical because it was based upon the Biblically damnable practice of manstealing.   (Distinguish slavery resulting from incurred debt from slavery derived from the capital crime of manstealing!)  The theft of another person is a crime for which the proper punishment is death.   Those Americans who captured and enslaved Africans were capital criminals and ought to have been executed.

And what of those who participated in the “fruit” of such crime –  the buyers, not the man-thieves.  Theirs is, arguably, a lesser degree of criminality, and down the line: the poor but kindly farmer who buys a miserable slave to work on his rocky soil to attempt to make a living (in competition with many-slave owners) is even less guilty.

And so we have various degrees of guilt pertaining to the different crimes and holocausts that occur in history.  

What is to be said about those in our time, with access to endless information about the human biology, genes, and the cellular definition of humanity existent uniquely and indisputably at conception, who yet reject the unborn as a “blob of tissue” and defend his murder?

Well, it is nothing but damned, sinful, rebellious, selfish, blindness.  Period.

The answer is confession of the truth and repentance.

Nothing else will do for the nation or the individual.

23 Aug., 2021