2 Peter 2:22 · World English Bible
2 Peter 2:22 Meaning But It Has Happened to Them According
But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns to his own vomit again,” and “the sow that has washed to wallowing in the mire.”
What does 2 Peter 2:22 mean?
An appetite that was never re-aimed will walk you back to the exact place you were pulled out of. What a person still wants outranks what they have been cleaned of, because appetite sits upstream of every decision that follows.
From the Self-Help reading below.
2 Peter 2:22 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Self-Help
SELF-HELP
Self-Help
An appetite that was never re-aimed will walk you back to the exact place you were pulled out of.
What a person still wants outranks what they have been cleaned of, because appetite sits upstream of every decision that follows. The conviction about where relief lives sets the state, the state issues the pull, the pull drives the act, and one act restores in a minute a condition that took an outside intervention to remove.
Escape and transformation are separate events, and the second one is optional. A man can be pulled out of a thing repeatedly while never once changing what he moves toward, and the record will show many exits and no change of direction. What that costs is the growing certainty, his own and everyone else's, that returning is simply what he does.
Self-Help lensGo deeper in the app
Self-Help lens
Live 2 Peter 2:22 today
- Instead of only cutting the old thing out, put something you actually want in its place today, the walk, the call, the music, the real meal. An empty evening always argues for the old habit.
- Say to one person what you are hungry for underneath the habit, the calm, the company, the escape, the feeling of being impressive. Naming it out loud takes some of its power.
- When the hard moment comes and the old thing starts looking like relief again, ask what you are really after right now, and go get that instead.
What do I still want, under the thing I say I have left behind?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Dhammapada
Cut the branches and they grow back, because the root is in what we want. Desire unchanged pulls a person back to the same ground every time.
Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita
The senses drag the mind along like wind on a boat. Until the wanting itself is turned toward something better, restraint only postpones the return.
Stoicism · Epictetus
It is not enough to be removed from a bad situation, you must change the judgment that found it appealing. Otherwise you will choose it again the first free evening you get.
Free · No account needed
Read all of 2 Peter 2 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store