Deuteronomy 12:3 · World English Bible
You shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, and burn their Asherah poles with fire. You shall cut down the engraved images of their gods. You shall destroy their name out of that place.
As long as a person can still speak the old name with respect, that option stays on the menu. Words hold options open.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
As long as a person can still speak the old name with respect, that option stays on the menu.
Words hold options open. A thing that keeps its name keeps a place in the mind's inventory, and whatever sits in the inventory gets chosen eventually, on some bad week, which is why the command runs past the altars and the poles and out to the name itself.
Avoidance leaves everything standing and calls it progress. It holds while conditions stay easy and breaks the first time a harvest fails or a child gets sick, because the fallback was never removed, only unused. Demolition costs what avoidance never does: labor, the offense of the neighbors, the loss of a hedge against a bad season. Giving up that hedge means a people with nothing else to reach for when the season turns will either hold to God or hold to nothing.
Self-Help lens
What are you keeping as a backup, and what does keeping it tell you about where your trust sits?
As long as the smallest root is left, the weed will return. Pull it fully or expect it back.
If you must handle a habit again, handle it only to be rid of it. Keeping it as a comfort in reserve is already keeping it.
Deal with the thing while it is small and nameless. Once it has a name and a place, it has a claim.
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Self-Help