Ezekiel 33:31 · World English Bible
They come to you as the people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don’t do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain.
A person's real god is whatever their week is arranged to obtain, whatever their mouth confesses. Two levers move every human being, and whatever has been linked to actual reward beats whatever the mouth has been trained to say.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
A person's real god is whatever their week is arranged to obtain, whatever their mouth confesses.
Two levers move every human being, and whatever has been linked to actual reward beats whatever the mouth has been trained to say. Warm words about God cost nothing and pay a small immediate pleasure, so the state they produce is comfort, comfort yields agreement instead of obedience, and years of agreement compound into a person nothing said to them can change.
Until obedience is linked to something wanted more than the next deal, the heart keeps traveling toward gain while they believe they are moving toward God. That reverses only when the delay is made to hurt, when the price of one more unchanged month gets named in specifics instead of carried as vague unease. Skip that and a person spends decades saying true things and building none of them.
Self-Help lens
If someone only had my week to look at, what would they say I actually want?
True words are not decorated and decorated words are not true. What a person values is visible in what they do, not in how beautifully they speak of it.
A man who recites the teachings but does not live them is like a cowherd counting someone else's cattle.
Say little and do much. The one whose deeds outrun their words is the one whose wisdom holds.
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Self-Help