The Garbage Bins of Personal Opinion

In our small town we have 3 color choices for our garbage bins. The red one is for recycling. The green one is for yard clippings and the black one is for household garbage. The black garbage bin goes out each week. There is nothing to remember with the black one. Where the confusion comes is from the bi-weekly pickup schedule that alternates between the red bin and the green bin.

What can really mess things up is when some of us on our street forget which bin is supposed to be put out the night before – the red one or the green one. The first person to set out their bin can set off a misguided roll out of wrong colored bins all the way up and down our street. I messed up this week. I was the first one to roll out my green bin, but it was a red bin week.

The confusion over a colored garbage bin selection reminds me of where our American culture finds itself at this moment in our history. There is an assumption that the first and most visible comment on a subject is one the rest of us should follow. We have a slavish addiction to groupthink – both in the Church and within culture. This seems OK until it proves to be the wrong colored bin of opinion. We live awash in assumption. We follow political parties in lockstep. We believe something on social media must be true because it aligns with our bias. We put out our bins of assumption without first listening to the Spirit only to realize later our confident selection was the wrong one.

Refuse to jump the gun and put your opinion on the curb of public opinion before it has been evaluated in the light of God’s truth. If you do this you won’t have to go back out to the curb like I did a few weeks ago to retrieve the wrong colored garbage bin I rolled out in a moment of personal assumption. I rolled out the wrong bin because I had assumed my neighbor down the street was right in his choice, so I blindly followed his garbage bin selection only to find out later he was wrong.

“The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him.” Proverbs 18:17