"For you are a stiff-necked people." Deuteronomy 9:6
It is impossible to be righteousness together with being stiff-necked. What does it mean to be stiff-necked?
1. Being stiff-necked refers to someone who follows the arbitrary feelings of his heart and his own subjective
thinking even though a Torah scholar will show him with clear proof that his thinking is incorrect and will cause him loss
or harm. He will not turn to the Torah, as if his neck were as hard as iron and he is physically unable to turn it this way
or that. Instead of listening to reason, he continues to follow his own emotions.
2. A stiff-necked person is someone who knows the truth but is still not willing to change
his negative ways.
A person has to be willing to act according to his intellectual understanding. If a person's original way
of thinking was mistaken and someone pointed it out to him, he should resolve to make the necessary changes. Many people,
though, find this very difficult to do. It is so much easier to continue to behave as you have done previously. It takes
a strong act of the will to make positive changes in one's behavior.
Be flexible and open. Be willing to change anything that needs changing. Anyone having this positive trait
will continue to grow and improve throughout his entire life.
