1 Kings 20:23 · World English Bible
The servants of the king of Syria said to him, “Their god is a god of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we. But let’s fight against them in the plain, and surely we will be stronger than they.
Explain a defeat by shrinking whatever beat you, and you will schedule the same defeat somewhere else. One loss generalized into a law about where power lives becomes a feeling of certainty the moment it explains something painful, and an explanation that demands no change from the men holding it is the kind that never gets tested.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
Explain a defeat by shrinking whatever beat you, and you will schedule the same defeat somewhere else.
One loss generalized into a law about where power lives becomes a feeling of certainty the moment it explains something painful, and an explanation that demands no change from the men holding it is the kind that never gets tested. That certainty set the strategy, the strategy chose the ground, and an entire army moved on a theory no one had checked.
Nothing about their own conduct came under review; the fault went to hills. Fitting Yahweh inside a range limit was the actual error, and the flat ground removed the last excuse when the second defeat came. A diagnosis that blames terrain protects a man's pride and costs him the next campaign, which he enters certain he has solved something.
Self-Help lens
Which explanation do you hold most firmly because changing it would ask something of you?
When things go wrong, look first at your own judgments and conduct; blaming the circumstances leaves the actual cause untouched and guarantees a repeat.
It is easy to see the faults of others and hard to see your own, which is why the same suffering keeps arriving in new clothes.
The frog in the well explains the whole sky from the circle it can see, and is certain.
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Self-Help