Deuteronomy 12:30 · World English Bible
be careful that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you, and that you not inquire after their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise.”
Curiosity about how another life works is already the first step of living it. Asking how a thing is done puts the mind to work collecting the method, and a mind holding the method rehearses it, and rehearsal hardens into practice long before anyone decides to convert.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
Curiosity about how another life works is already the first step of living it.
Asking how a thing is done puts the mind to work collecting the method, and a mind holding the method rehearses it, and rehearsal hardens into practice long before anyone decides to convert. The prohibition falls on the question because the act downstream is already settled by then.
The snare is laid at the moment of victory, when people who have watched those nations fall feel furthest from imitating them. What the question costs is a slow drift in what feels normal to worship, with no single moment where a decision was made that could have been refused.
Self-Help lens
What have you been researching lately that you have not admitted you are considering?
You become dyed by whatever you dwell on. The mind takes the color of its repeated company, whether or not you meant to join it.
Whatever you turn over often becomes the path the mind runs down. Rehearsal is already practice, long before anyone calls it a choice.
Keep company with what is good and you are shaped by it; study the practices of the corrupt and you have already begun to take their form.
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Self-Help