God couldn't let us all be wrong, could He?....Well yeah, I mean why not!?!

(Reading Matthew 15:1-39)

We count prophetic scripture as quite distinct from other writings. We even count prophetic scripture as quite distinct from the evolving opinion of what is sometimes romantically called "the Church".

Can we assume that God does not count it His responsibility to shore up people's errors? What about people who use His Name? Is it God's job to fix their errors or to make immediate corrections to their thinking? Or... can we assume that the Lord would allow a multitude, who use God's name, to also be in fundamental error? If we say, "Yes, the Lord would allow 'the people' to be in error," it is not necessarily a naked assumption. We find this truth in the Gospel itself. Jesus does not make it his business to shore up the understanding of the whole body of bible scholars and religious authorities in Israel even though they are making a universal mistake. They have authority (they have seated themselves in Moses’ seat) and they are the scripture experts (You study the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life), yet Jesus in no way concentrates his teaching efforts with them. One place we see his reticence to take responsibility for their error is in Matthew 15.

First, we see that "some Pharisees and scribes came" to correct Jesus, Jesus did not go out to chase them down and correct them. Jesus answers their loaded question with a question of even greater weight and He then goes on to quote Isaiah: "THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN".
Wow, did you hear that? "THIS PEOPLE", is a reference to the general entirety of Israel...a people who, unlike the heathen, "honored the God of Israel with their lips". After that the leadership of Israel and the Bible Scholars of Israel overheard Jesus give this law-changing statement:

"Hear and understand. "It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man."
So how did that go over????
“Then the disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?” But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. “Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit(Mat 15:12-14).”

I don’t think this means we can think of ourselves as having everything right. I don’t think that any of us should conclude we have little or nothing to learn from other studiers. But my loyal-acknowledgment of God and your loyal-acknowledgment of God through our loyal-acknowledgment of Jesus is something God looks in on, personally. And the last thing you or I should do is move the eyes of our loyalty off of Jesus and onto the unsteady or even stormy response of the guild or the experts or the magisterium or the romantically imagined Hegelian model of "The Church". If we do this we may lose Jesus Christ as our object of all true loyalty. If we do this we will surely begin to sink from our faith-filled-walk-over-the-water with Jesus Christ.

Real and substantive corrections to the scriptural understanding begin at the place of loyalty to Jesus. And loyalty to Jesus will be the end of a scriptural understanding that has received corrections which were real and substantive.

What I am saying is a real, substantive, and corrected understanding of Scripture, begins and ends with loyalty to Jesus. I can have many inaccuracies in my understanding of scripture and still be on the path of loyalty to God through Christ. If I am loyal to Jesus then meaningful corrections to doctrine may be expected to flow from that loyalty as God superintends our understanding hearts.