Jeremy Pierre has a must-read article online here entitled “The Culture War Hits Close to Home: Loving Wisdom, Spotting Stupidity.” Jeremy is explicit that “Stupidity is not really about the intelligence of someone’s brain but rather the affections of someone’s heart.” He correctly identifies the cultural war: “The war on wisdom in our culture is a war of attractions as much as it is a war of ideas. It is a war of who has the right to call something true or false, good or bad, smart or stupid.”

Jeremy is adamant that “identifying stupidity is an essential tool of wisdom. “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid” (Prov 12:1). There it is in Scripture. The ability to recognize something stupid asstupid is pretty important in a culture like ours.”

Jeremy is correct that the job of parents is not raising their kids to avoid bad grades; it to empower them to recognize stupidity. It’s raising kids “to reject folly” and empower them to “recognize the deeper war: not only between truth and error, but between competing visions of beauty.”

Why must we teach people how to spot what’s stupid? Because “culture is a cacophony of voices testifying to what is true or false, what is reliable or ridiculous . . . the culture war is a marketplace of voices making claims about what is true and beautiful and, therefore, what is stupid and ugly.”

While children are the most impressionable and thus the most important to equip with “studidity sensors”, young adults are increasingly susceptible to delusion. We must also teach them how to spot what’s stupid. Apologetics can help do that.