Are You Stupid?

If you do this, then you are.

Photo by Michal Matlon on Unsplash

I was reading Proverbs and came across this passage.

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid. (Proverbs 12:1)

Thinking about the passage.

The Proverbs writer lays out a contrast.

• The one who loves instruction (discipline - ESV) loves knowledge.

• The one who hates correction (instruction, discipline) does not love knowledge and demonstrates that they are stupid.

Now, we probably don’t like being called stupid, and if you’re like me, you weren’t allowed to call people “stupid” when you were growing up.

But the Proverbs writer is pretty clear here - if we hate or despise instruction, that which shows us the right way and “corrects” us when we stray from the right way, then we are “stupid.”

The Bible Knowledge Commentary defined “stupid” in this passage as meaning “to be brutish or dull-minded like an animal.”

According to the Proverbs writer, “stupid” people are not “slow learners.” A stupid person is someone who is confronted with instruction and correction - and hates it.

A stupid person is someone who refuses to learn from their mistakes. A stupid person is someone who sins, realizes from God’s Word that they are in sin, and rejects what God says.

So are you - am I - stupid?

Well, that depends.

How do we respond when we find out we were wrong? How do we react when God’s Word points out something in our lives that’s not as it should be? Do we turn back to God and make corrections? Or do we get angry and defiantly keep doing things our way?

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid. (Proverbs 12:1)