I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naïve people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. - Romans 16:17-19
There are people who take up an opinion, not because they think that that opinion is correct, but because it gives them an opportunity for power and significance.
Sometimes, they will choose an wrong-headed opinion, not because it is right, but because everyone will be forced to deal with them. If I say exactly what is already being said, people can ignore me. But if I say something outrageous or wrong, they will have to-at least-react to me.
Sometimes, they will choose to the same opinion, because the person whose opinion they share is embattled and by joining them, they will be embattled. They can take up the rallying cry and wear that badge of persecution and injustice proudly.
In both cases, they don't care about the truth. They care about their own desires. The emotion that is fed into an issue can become the fuel that feeds their ego-on either side of the truth. This is true in peoples' lives or people's life in church. When we start to use the truth as a passport or a badge, we no longer care about the truth but what it can give me. When we start to use God as a passport or a badge, we no longer care about God but what he can deliver to me. And that is the death of truth in me.
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