Proverbs 14:15 Commentary and Bible Study

The simple or, in Hebrew, the open-minded man is naïve and open to every suggestion. He believes all that is said to him, having no sense that the world is a place where discernment is called for, where it is not safe simply to trust every message we encounter. It is easy to fool such a person and to take advantage of his gullibility, so that cruel people can find entertainment in leading him up the garden path and watching him fall for their lies. This is a picture of spiritual gullibility. In spite of the fact that God’s word warns us about the state of this world and tells us that human nature is fallen and man is at war with God, he proceeds as if the world is a harmless place and there is no enemy of our souls to worry about. He does not expect the world to deceive him and so lowers his guard and is taken in by its false messages: that he can find complete happiness in the here and now, that man is able to solve all his problems, that the world can be made a better place, or that human being should not be over-religious but can safely mix God and mammon together.Gullibility is attributed by Scripture not to the Christian but to the worldling. This is the opposite of what the unbeliever thinks, for he sees Christians as those who are taken in by a false explanation of the world and who need some story to help them get through the trials of life. The truth is the opposite. It is the non-Christian who is gullible, for his mind instinctively latches on to the myth of evolution in his desperation to have an explanation of origins that excludes God; he is determined to be free from the authority of his Creator and so substitutes a moral system of his own which is inherently inconsistent with itself; he believes that human beings can eliminate war and poverty even though history has shown that human greed which lies at the bottom of these will never leave the human heart.But the prudent are not easily taken in. If someone suggests some activity to them, they will consider it in the light of the commandments of God and reject it if it involves sin, or undue time spent in entertainment, or distraction from a higher task or spiritual duty to which they have already been called. Someone offers me a new job; I do not immediately say, ‘Will it please me? what advantage is in it for me?’, but, ‘Is it right, or will it lead me into wrong priorities?’