Acts 26:9 · World English Bible
Acts 26:9 Meaning I Myself Most Certainly Thought That I
I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
What does Acts 26:9 mean?
Sincerity is no safeguard; a man can be completely honest, completely wrong, and moving at full speed. A model of what God required set the whole thing running, the belief producing the certainty, the certainty producing the zeal, and the zeal producing warrants and consent to killing.
From the Self-Help reading below.
Acts 26:9 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
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Sincerity is no safeguard; a man can be completely honest, completely wrong, and moving at full speed.
A model of what God required set the whole thing running, the belief producing the certainty, the certainty producing the zeal, and the zeal producing warrants and consent to killing. Every link held. Only the first one was false.
Nothing inside that model could correct it, because every objection came back processed by the model and counted as further proof. It took an encounter the map had no category for, a voice naming Jesus of Nazareth as the one being persecuted. Saying it out loud years later costs a man the identity of someone who was always on God's side, and without that cost paid, nobody running the same play could ever hear it from him.
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Live Acts 26:9 today
- Think of one opinion you hold strongly and spend five minutes reading or listening to the most reasonable person who disagrees. Not to reply, just to see what their map has that yours does not.
- Ask someone who knows you well what you are confidently wrong about. Then say thank you and sit with the answer instead of defending yourself.
- When a conversation turns and you feel the urge to prove you were right all along, say out loud that you may have had this wrong. The sentence costs very little and changes the whole room.
Where are you completely sincere and possibly completely wrong?
The same truth in other traditions
Taoism · Zhuangzi
The frog in the well argues confidently about the size of the sky, because every answer it gets comes back shaped by the well.
Stoicism · Epictetus
He said no one can learn what they already believe they know, since the full cup has no room for anything true.
Zen
A student arrives sure of their understanding, and the teacher keeps pouring tea until it spills, which is the only argument the student can actually hear.
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