I Have No Opinion And I Am Told That Is Wrong

There is a list on the refrigerator with eleven names on it, and a man in that house likes all eleven.

Not politely. Actually. He has said each of them out loud in the truck on the way to work and every single one of them sounded like a person he would be glad to know.

And every time he says so, the room gets a little cooler.

You have no opinion. You are not engaged. You are leaving all of it to me. Do you even care what your daughter is called.

That last one landed in March and it has not left him since.

I want to tell you something about that man, because I have known a hundred of him and I have never once met the version everybody assumes he is.

He is not indifferent. He is the opposite. He has already imagined his daughter being called every one of those eleven names, and in every version he loved her, and that is why none of the eleven can be rejected. The imagining went too well, not too poorly.

But that is a hard thing to say at a kitchen table on a Tuesday, and so instead it comes out as whatever you like, which is the most infuriating sentence in the English language, and which is a translation error of the worst kind.

There is a road out past the county line where I have done most of my thinking, and I have thought about this one a long time, because it comes up more than anybody would guess and it is nearly always misread.

Differences of administrations, and the same Lord

There is a passage in the first letter to the Corinthians that has been read a thousand times as a passage about church jobs, and it says something plainer than that.

And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. (1 Corinthians 12:5, King James Version)

The chapter around it is about a body with a foot and a hand and an eye in it, and the whole argument is that they are not supposed to work the same way, and that the body is in trouble when it wants everybody to be an eye.

You are not built the way she is built, and Scripture has never once made one way of caring the standard for everybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who distributes them, which is stated plainly in the verses just after, and 1 Corinthians 12 sets the differences down as design rather than as defect.

Here is why that verse belongs on a refrigerator list. In that house there are two people caring about the same daughter, and the caring does not come out the same shape, and the shape that shows up as strong preference has been treated as the only shape that counts.

You have been measured against somebody else's way of loving a child, and the written word puts differences and the same Lord in one sentence. It is the Spirit of God who hands out the difference in the first place, according to that same chapter, which means the difference is not a fault to be corrected.

What the shrug actually means

Now let me say the true thing out loud, plainly, the way it should have been said in March.

I like every one of them, and that is not indifference. It is that I already love her and I cannot find a version of her I would not love.

That is a completely different sentence from whatever you like, and it is the sentence that was meant all along, and it has never once made it out of the truck.

Because here is the trouble with whatever you like. It sounds like an absence. It sounds like a man leaving the room. And the person who hears it is standing there with the entire weight of a decision, and what she needs is not agreement, it is company.

You are able to say the true sentence instead of the short one, and no verse anywhere asks a man to manufacture a preference he does not have. 1 Corinthians 12:5 makes room for a different administration of the same care, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that read as honesty rather than as an excuse.

There is a second thing hiding in the shrug, and it is worth digging out, because on that road past the county line it took me years to see it.

Sometimes no opinion is a way of staying out of the blame. If the name was hers, then the name is hers, and if anybody ever says anything about it, the man is standing to one side.

That is not the same as indifference either, but it is not nothing, and it is worth being honest about, because a person who has stepped aside from the choosing has also stepped aside from the carrying.

You are permitted to have no favorite and still be in this all the way, and Scripture puts the differing gift and the same Spirit in the same body. 1 Corinthians 12 will not let one member say to another that it has no need of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding that body together.

What to give her instead of a preference

So here is the practical part, and it is not a demand for an opinion nobody has.

She does not actually need a name out of him. She needs to know she is not standing there alone.

There are three things that do that, and not one of them requires a favorite.

The first is the true sentence, said once, plainly: I love all of them because I already love her, and I am not leaving this to you.

You are able to give her the first of those tonight, and 1 Corinthians 12 has never once asked a man to invent a gift he was not given. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a true sentence out of a quiet man, and the written word sets differing administrations under one Lord.

The second is a preference about something other than the name. Which one would be easy to shout across a yard. Which one sounds right with the last name, out loud, twice. That is an opinion. It is not a verdict on the whole list and it is not a competition, and it gives her something to work with.

You are able to hand her a real thing without pretending to a favorite, and 1 Corinthians 12:5 has never once required identical gifts inside one house. The written word makes room for administrations that differ, and the Spirit of God is the one who is at work in both of them.

The third is presence at the moment it gets decided. In the room. Saying names out loud with her. Not deferring, not scoring, not standing to one side.

You were never being asked for an opinion, and the written word puts the same Lord underneath two different administrations. The Holy Spirit is what turns a shrug in a kitchen into a man sitting down at the table.