Refinement By Reproof

“Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish.” (Pr 12:1 AV)

 

Brutish here is a comparison with a brute – or a common large animal.   Like an ox or bovine in the field the brute is not intelligent nor does he care to be intelligent.  He has neither the inclination nor ability to do anything but to pull a large load.  Any skills he may have learned were done so the hard way.  Being brutish speaks of being dull of mind and hard-headed.  However, there is another way of thinking about brutishness that couples with the animal's nature more so than his mind.  That is, a brutish animal really has no class.  There is little to admire, esthetically, from a brute.  We admire the power and strength of a brute.  Not his mane, horns, or physique.  The brute is not the most picturesque animal in the field.  He is used for more base purposes.  He is used for labor or meat, but not for pursuits of a more grandeur nature.

Living only a mile from our state fairgrounds, going to the fair every year is a foregone conclusion.  As state fairs go, a  state fair would not be a state fair without livestock judging.  Our state fair is no exception.  Several outbuildings are segregating different types of animals.  Bovines might be in one build.  Goats and sheep in another.  Swine still in another.  Fowl also claim their own pavilion.  When we go with my inlaws, they get into all that stuff.  Me?  Only two types of animals I am willing to peruse.  I enjoy the fowl building only because of the obvious variety of the same species.  What I really enjoy is the horses.  My wife and I will sit in the stadium and watch the horse judging for hours.  Draft horses to painted horses.  It doesn’t matter.  These beasts are majestic.  They are trained to show well.  As the handler struts the beast around the arena, the majestic horse trots along knowing that all eyes are on him.  What I find common between show horses and show fowl is their nature to be majestic.  They are not common by any means.  These beasts are not brutes.  They have class.  Their intelligence level is higher than the brute and can be trained to perform certain tasks.  The higher the intelligence, the more majestic.

When the Spirit led me to meditate on this verse I couldn’t help but ask the question of how much class does a person have if he repeatedly refuses instruction and correction?  When I was a child, my parents were big on table manners.  No elbows on the table.  Knowing which fork to use or how the table was to be set was earnestly taught.  My father was really big on teaching us the proper way of eating spaghetti.  Don’t ask me why.  That was his thing.   My parents were trying to teach us life skills of appropriateness.  These table manners may not seem like much, but the idea of learning the finer things in life does mean something.  It makes all the difference in becoming a painted stead running the open field versus a mud-slung ox chewing the cud.  The more we are willing to be corrected, the more we will learn to represent the King of Kings well.  As a famous African-American preacher used to say, “Get you some learnin’ so that others don’t look down on ya.  Then get ya some more learning so that you don’t look down on other people.”