Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

• Proverbs 1:7

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid.

• Proverbs 12:1

So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.

• Ecclesiastes 7:25

Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.

• 2 Timothy 2:23

“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
    they will look for me but will not find me,
since they hated knowledge
    and did not choose to fear the Lord.

• Proverbs 1:28-29

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil is. Against evil, one can protest; it can be exposed and, if necessary, stopped with force. Evil always carries the seed of its own self-destruction, because it at least leaves people with a feeling of uneasiness. But against stupidity, we are defenseless. Neither with protest nor with force can we do anything here; reasons have no effect. Facts that contradict one’s own prejudice only need to be disbelieved—in such cases stupid people even become critical, and when facts are unavoidable, they can simply be swept aside as meaningless isolated cases. Stupid people, in contrast to evil ones, are satisfied with themselves. Indeed, they become dangerous in that they may easily be stimulated to go on the attack. Therefore, more care must be taken in regard to stupidity than to evil. …
“Closer examination reveals that every strong external development of power, whether of a political or religious nature, strikes a large portion of the people with stupidity. …
“The biblical saying, ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge’ (Prov. 1:7), says that the internal liberation of people for responsible life before God is the only real way to overcome stupidity.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for August 26, devotions compiled from his writings)

I have quoted Bonhoeffer twice this week, but when I saw this devotion that was entitled “A More Dangerous Enemy of the Good,” I could not resist.

I exhort people quite often to think.  I think thinking is a lost art.  A wonderful blogger from Colorado and I discussed, by comments, the wonders of pondering.  We pondered why folks rarely ponder anymore.

I was brought back to an old story of my sister’s husband.  Since they have been retired for about twenty years, you might say all their stories are old ones.  He was teaching class one day, and he tried to explain the difference in “stupid” and “ignorant.”  Stupidity being an inability to learn while ignorance is that you just do not know anything or a certain something about a topic.  One little boy kept saying that his teacher had just called him stupid, so my brother-in-law gave examples, but the boy got even more agitated.  The principal had been walking down the hall and he heard the boy’s agitation in his voice, and he entered the room, giving examples of stupid and ignorant.  The boy then said that the principal was calling him stupid too.  To that, the principal turned to my brother-in-law and said, “You know, this one might really be stupid.”

Did that little boy have a deficiency that prevented him from learning?  Or was he just so emotional that his brain shut down?  Or was he, like so many these days, brainwashed by the media that AI feeds them online, that he is convinced that the world is a bit sideways, and nothing can be done?

I think that last one is where Bonhoeffer makes his distinction, making it nearly a hundred years ago.  We have extremely intelligent people who think their way of thinking is golden, but their train left the tracks decades ago.  Nothing makes sense, or there is concrete evidence to prove them wrong, and they are intelligent enough to fantasize a new reality around their false idea and keep chugging along.  The scary thing is that due to their obvious intelligence, many people listen to their lies and believe the words as if it was a new oracle from God.

Part of this problem is what it says a few times in the Bible that to an unbeliever all the things of God are foolishness.

But rather than lament this condition that so many have these days, let’s look at the Scriptures above.

A fool in most biblical references is someone who does not believe in God, Psalm 14 as an example.  Proverbs 12:1 seems to define spiritual stupidity, someone who hates correction.  I have been convinced that I was right in many arguments, but I know that I can make a mistake, and it might hurt, but correction is necessary.

But then Ecclesiastes 7:25 seems to add something to that definition, an element of wickedness.  If God is trying to correct us, and we rebel against that correction, that is evil.  We are in sin at that point.  But for those that do not believe there is a God, they create a god in themselves, usually, or something else.

I wrote recently that I would not have a game on my computer or phone that was “Zen.”  Now the advertisements say that you can reverse Alzheimer’s Disease by playing the game.  When a neurologist diagnosed my wife with early onset of Alzheimer’s, she was given medication.  Six months later, he reevaluated her.  This time, she remembered who the president was.  She stumbled over what month it was, but she corrected herself.  And then he asked her what day of the week it was.  This was her answer.  She was frightened that her thought processes were getting faulty, so she thought out loud, “I did not have kidney dialysis this morning.  So, it is not Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday.  I doubt if you have office hours on Sunday, and we did not go to Sunday school this morning anyway.  I had dialysis yesterday, so that leaves out Monday.  Now, that leaves me with Wednesday or Friday.  I am going to guess Friday.”  I looked at the neurologist who was fighting back the urge to laugh.  My wife had a fifty-fifty chance, and she got it right, but the neurologist learned more from her thinking out loud than her just guessing a day.  He said that he had never heard of anyone making such a recovery from Alzheimer’s, so he admitted that she did not have the disease.  But these horrible game advertisements are purporting that “Zen” can save you from Alzheimer’s.  There are a variety of mental games you can play to keep the brain healthy.  I play several, but too many “stupid” people look toward such tricks and wonders to avoid going to God for their help.

But then, Paul told Timothy to not enter into foolish or stupid arguments.  When someone has closed their mind to the things of God, they want to argue.  C.S. Lewis wrote about how an open mind on many topics is very useful in learning, but if you have an open mind about fundamental truth, the least you can do is keep your mouth shut.  And trying to argue with one who does not keep their mouth shut, turns us into someone acting stupidly at the moment.

Bonhoeffer concludes that we must become liberated to a responsible life before God to conquer stupidity.  And a little further in the first chapter of Proverbs, Solomon warns there is a problem when we lack knowledge.  The “stupid” will call and God will not answer, for they rejected knowledge and did not choose to fear God. Yet, we need people who are equipped in apologetics to reach these people, who can explain without the discussion turning into a confrontation.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.