Deuteronomy 7:5 · World English Bible
But you shall deal with them like this: you shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their engraved images with fire.
What a person leaves standing is what they will return to on the worst day of their life. A fallback option runs a person's state long before they ever use it, because the mind quietly scores every available route and softens toward the easy one.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
What a person leaves standing is what they will return to on the worst day of their life.
A fallback option runs a person's state long before they ever use it, because the mind quietly scores every available route and softens toward the easy one. That softening sets the emotion, the emotion sets the hand, and a people who left their neighbors' altars intact would never have to decide again; they would simply drift back on the first bad harvest.
God commands demolition instead of distance because a burned image cannot be bargained with later, and the burning is what leaves a person cut off from any other possibility. What this costs is the comfort of a second plan, and that comfort is what has been funding every return.
Self-Help lens
What have you kept within reach, telling yourself you would never use it?
A craving left with a root left intact grows back, however often the stalk is cut. The work is at the root, not the surface.
If you want to stop wanting a thing, stop keeping it near and handling it kindly in your mind. Remove it from reach and the wanting loses its supply.
Place the troops where there is no road back and they fight as men who have decided. A retreat left open is the route the body takes.
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Self-Help