Some of you may know that I have a side job performing assessments for calibration and testing labs. I get invited to dig into a laboratory’s Quality Management System, documents, records, and even the competency of their staff to see if they meet all the requirements of being accredited in the work they perform. I enjoy the work and it helps keep the real geek in me contained to a few days every other month or so.
There’s a common phrase I use when I hold an opening meeting with an assessment client. I tell them, “If you hear me say the words ‘I don’t like’ please feel free to reply with ‘I don’t care’.” When assessing a lab and its staff I have to eventually give my recommendation on whether or not this lab will achieve/maintain its accreditation or lose it. Losing the accreditation can be disastrous for a lab. Their customers require it, without it they lose the customer. It’s no small responsibility. Livelihoods are sometimes on the line.
This is why it is important that my opinion doesn’t count. You see, there are published standards the labs must adhere to. I could list a bunch of them, and the list would be very long. But nowhere in that list will you find “How a Lab Should Look According to Steve Proctor’s Opinion”.
Do we remember this in our daily lives? That our opinions don’t count for much? There’s a standard written on how God wants our lives to be governed. And he certainly didn’t ask my opinion on it. He simply laid out the standard and expects us to conform to it. When it comes to spiritual matters do we try to insert our opinions on the way it should be, or do we simply trust the standard God gives us? Do we try to inflict our opinions on someone else rather than God’s standard? The Pharisees were famous for this very thing. They had the standard and decorated it with all their opinions. Doing so they would alienate the very people the law was written for. Do we do the same?
Be on the watch for the danger of our opinions. They’re dangerous. They’ve led many astray and tend to make false teachers out of good Christians.
Romans 6:17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
