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| Not Acts 7.15 but Acts 7.51 |
"Corrosion" is an apt word for the effects of overblown certainty, legalism, inerrancy, and the insistence on surely knowing everything when in a state of unteachability. It can eat a nation alive." - Anon
"Corrosion" conveys a sense of rigid attitudes that act destructively, like a slow-acting acid. Instead of strengthening a society, such dogmatic thinking degrades communities by hindering growth, stifling dissent, and making churches or nations highly vulnerable to collapse from what is was to what it is harmfully becoming. - re slater
Breakdown
“Corrosion” is an apt metaphor. Just as acid eats away at metal, so will rigid mindsets eat away at the soul of a people. What begins as zeal or conviction hardens into brittleness, until the democratic structures meant to give life collapse under their own weight of unloving acts of dismissal, indifference, denial. Instead of humility, there is hubris; instead of dialogue, fiat or decree; instead of growth, stagnation.
- Discourages critical thinking. People with overblown certainty reject new information and contradictory evidence because it challenges their pre-existing beliefs , a cognitive bias known as confirmation bias.
- Poor Judgment. Certainty gives people psychological comfort, but it does not guarantee accuracy. This can result in the Dunning-Kruger effect, where those with the least knowledge overestimate their competence and make flawed decisions with absolute confidence.
- Fuel for extremism. The most fanatical voices often command attention not because they are right, but because they are "unshakably sure of their stance". This kind of thinking fuels misinformation and extremism by discouraging people from questioning authority.
- Prioritizes rules over intentions. Legalism is the strict, literal, and excessive conformity to a religious or moral code , often paying more attention to the rules than the intentions behind them. Jesus judged the Pharisees as giving more priority to the rules of the Sabbath than they would to people in need.
- Leads to a judgmental culture. In a legalistic culture, a person's value is based on a rigid compliance to the law, which can lead to self-righteousness and the "trampling of others" in a competitive effort to be seen as more righteous.
- Fosters spiritual exhaustion and emptiness. When people focus on following a checklist of rules rather than the spirit of the law, it can create a spiritual life based on performance and personal exertion known as Christian legalism .
- Flattens interpretation. In a religious context, biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is completely free of error in all matters it affirms, from spiritual teachings to historical facts. This can make it difficult to engage in metaphorical or contextual interpretations of scripture. It becomes, in essence, a closed learning system which can say whatever it wants to say .
- Causes resistance to new knowledge. When a society says "We cannot be wrong," as a rigid system of interpretation such as inerrancy states of itself, such a system puts faith in direct conflict with scientific knowledge, history, and societal experience . Scientifically, this can cause people to deny scientific evidence like biological evolution and a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth to preserve a literal reading of the Bible. While socially, it can deny to non-majority members of a society the actual rights of membership such as freedom, liberty and justice.
- Used to justify harmful actions. Appeals to inerrancy are used to justify discrimination and oppressive social views . If a holy God is believed to endorse or fails to condemn certain actions in an inerrant text, those actions may be seen as righteous instead of self-righteous by a society acting in accordance with it's stiff-necked beliefs.
- Creates a closed system. Overblown certainty, legalism, and inerrancy all converge in a state of unteachability - the refusal to consider new ideas or acknowledge one's own limitations.
- Hinders growth and understanding. When a person or society is unteachable, it prevents the intellectual humility necessary for curiosity, open-mindedness, and learning .
- Exacerbates social divisions . An unteachable mindset can make conversations about opposing views impossible, as new perspectives are met with defensiveness rather than curiosity . This intellectual rigidity deepens the social divides that can ultimately tear a nation apart.
Biblical Parallels to Acts 7.51
Stephen is echoing a long prophetic tradition. The phrase “stiff-necked” is Mosaic language for Israel’s stubborn refusal to heed God’s voice:
Exodus 32:9 – “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” (God to Moses after the golden calf.)
Exodus 33:3 – God warns, “I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Exodus 34:9 – Moses pleads: “O Lord, let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people…”
Deuteronomy 9:6, 13 – Moses reminds Israel they are not chosen for righteousness, but are “a stiff-necked people.”
Prophets later pick up the imagery:
Jeremiah 6:10 – “Their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen.”
Jeremiah 9:25–26 – Judgment is pronounced on all “uncircumcised in heart.”
Ezekiel 44:7 – Foreigners “uncircumcised in heart and flesh” profane God’s sanctuary.
The apostle Stephen fuses these strands - decrying the Jews of Jerusalem as a stiff-necked (Moses), uncircumcised in heart and ears (Jeremiah, Ezekiel), and resisting the Spirit (Isaiah 63:10). It’s a threefold indictment: obstinate will, closed perception, spiritual rebellion. It also caused Stephen to lose his life when stoned by the Jews as the Pharisee Saul, later renamed Paul, stood by collecting robes of Stephen's murderers. Demonstrably, stiff-necked people kill dissent. They do not listen to dissent, take heed, and repent.
Theological Weight
Continuity of Resistance – Stephen shows his audience that their rejection of Jesus is not an isolated act but the climax of Israel’s repeated resistance to God’s messengers.
Circumcision of Heart – The covenantal sign in flesh must correspond to inner transformation. Without that, religion is but hollow, empty ritual with no Spirit-meaning.
Resisting the Spirit – This is the ultimate charge: the Spirit who animated prophets and raised Christ is still resisted by hardened hearts.
Process-Theological Lens
Stiff-necked = rigidity that resists God’s lure toward novelty, compassion, and change. In process terms, it is the refusal to take in fresh possibilities from the divine.
Uncircumcised in heart and ears = failure of perception. The heart is closed to new valuations, the ear has become deaf to new harmonies (as Pharoah's was in Exodus before Moses). Process thought sees genuine transformation as requiring openness to the Spirit of God and the call to creative advance.
Resisting the Spirit = the tragedy of corrosion: instead of flowing with God’s Spirit of relational renewal, a people fight against it, entrenching themselves in brittleness.
Corrosion to Renewal
From Stiff-Necked Rigidity to Processual Healing
In short: Acts 7:51 ties directly to your earlier “acid/corrosion” metaphor. A stiff-necked people resist movement; the Spirit calls them forward. Corrosion sets in when the neck stiffens, the heart closes, the ears go dull. Renewal begins when the Spirit’s lure is received with humility and openness.
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