Not Sitting at the Popular Table: Standing Firm in Faith

What do you do when opinions collide with Scripture? (paraphased)

I was recently asked that question. It has a straightforward answer, at least to me. 

There is a reason I write instead of putting myself in front of a camera, it is because answers to questions like that tend to show up on my face before I ever say a word. Being wired the way I am, it is hard not to react when something that should be simple gets treated like it is complicated surgery.

The answer is simple. If an opinion does not align with Scripture, I am not going to have anything to do with it. To me, that is basic common sense, and I would not hesitate to say it. I also understand that it does not make me popular. 

Being grounded in Scripture and not bending to every opinion the world throws out will almost always put me at odds with the popular crowd. That is not new, and it is also something I am not concerned about.

But it raises two questions. 

How many people are actually grounded enough in their faith to live that way? 

How many are grounded enough in Scripture to even recognize when something is misaligned?

Outsourcing

So we have an issue in this country that has been building for generations. Well, there are plenty of problems I could point to, but this is the one I want to focus on because it sits underneath so many others. 

We have slowly been trained to hand off our critical thinking. Instead of us sitting there wrestling with ideas and testing them, we have grown used to letting someone else do that work for us. Teachers, schools, pastors, mentors, leaders, influencers, algorithms, and now even AI, and search engines have become the places we go not just for information, but for conclusions. 

Over time, that fundamentally changes not just how a person interacts with information, but with everything else in their lives. When people consistently rely on outside sources to tell them what to believe, like, feel, or think, they lose the ability to think critically for themselves. It becomes easy to accept what sounds right on the surface without ever examining what is underneath it. 

Without the ability to weigh, test, and search things out, people will struggle to recognize when something conflicts with Scripture. And if people cannot clearly recognize the conflict, they will not resist it.

The FlipSide Of That

There is another problem that has been forming alongside this. Even if someone does recognize it as conflicting with Scripture, do they have the backbone to stand firm and be counter to the crowd?

When you have spent most of your life being shaped by what others think, it becomes very difficult to stand alone when your stance is not the popular one. The pressure to agree, to stay quiet, or to blend in can be stronger than the conviction to stand firm, especially if that conviction was never deeply built in the first place.

Without exercising the mind, it becomes weak. 

A person cannot stand on truth if they have never taken the time to study and understand truth. Over time, this creates people who may believe they value Scripture, but in practice, they are far more influenced by the voices around them than the Word in front of them.

This is exactly why the example in the Book of Daniel stands out to me. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not in a situation where they were standing surrounded by people who agreed with them. They were in a situation that demanded conformity, and the consequences were not just social but physical for them.

What stands out to me is not just that they refused, but they didn’t hesitate to refuse or engage in an internal debate when that moment came. They did not need time to figure out where they stood with things because they already knew. 

The situation shows us where their conviction already lay, not that it was formed during what happened.

Truly, that kind of response does not come from a borrowed belief system or surface-level understanding. It comes from a faith that had already been tested, studied, prayed on, and thought through. Critical Thinking was used.

Conclusion

When thinking keeps getting outsourced, people will look around to see what everyone else is doing, what their peers' opinions are, what their leaders' opinions are, etc., before they decide where they stand. 

What do you do when opinions collide with Scripture? More importantly, what would your response be to that question? Because in the end, your answer reveals exactly where you stand.

“Everyone will hate you because of me.”

© 2026 Jane Isley. Want more content like this? Explore more articles in Exploring Scripture.