This year I’ve been reading through “I Want to Live these Days with You”, daily devotionals based on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I thought that yesterday’s (August 26th) selection was particularly appropriate to our present day: “A More Dangerous Enemy of the Good”.
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 need only 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, (but fools despise wisdom and instruction)” [Proverbs 1:7] says that the internal liberation of people for responsible life before God is the only real way to overcome stupidity.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~
Bonhoeffer, writing in the 1940’s, was surrounded by the evil of Nazi Germany (this particular passage was written in prison). Yet he realized that the greater threat to “the good” wasn’t plainly obvious evil, but the susceptibility of a certain segment of the population to propaganda. He calls these people “stupid” a term that may seem rather harsh to our 21st century ears. But when I imagine Bonhoeffer watching his fellow Germans willingly following along with the Nazi lunacy – “stupid” probably seemed a pretty apt description. I suppose we could call them ignorant, sheeple, the easily misguided, but “stupid” is still the truth.
