"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid." —Proverbs 12:1
Failure is necessary for proper growth. I know. I don’t like that truth either. I would prefer to get everything right and have everyone feel utterly amazed by my awesomeness. The truth is, I get a lot wrong, and, unfortunately, there’s a lot I get wrong that I am probably not even aware of.
Living in fallible broken bodies with limited minds within a broken and twisted world means we are going to get many, many things wrong. It’s not a question of if we will get things wrong, but rather how often, how badly, and will we even see our error? The last part of the question is perhaps the most concerning. Without help to see, we will do damage without even knowing it is happening.
He who hates reproof is stupid.
I both laugh and cringe at this verse. I can’t help but giggle that the word stupid is in the Bible. That being said, I find myself unsettled by how much I dislike being reproved. Nothing in my middle-child, performance oriented, get-everything-right-or-everything-will-fall-apart worldview has space for receiving reproof as anything other than a benchmark of cataclysmic failure. I need help believing it is good to be reproved.
There is remarkable freedom in the realization God has not asked us to get everything right. He knows our frailty and our proneness to error. He has provided through Jesus a means back to righteousness and right relationship with Him. But, to receive it we must admit our errors and love discipline. We must accept our weakness and ask for help. Without doing so we will not grow or learn to love knowledge. Without reproof we will be stupid and, more likely than not, blind to our stupidity. So, may God teach our hearts to love discipline, love knowledge, and to receive reproof as a gift for our growth.
