Luke 19:21 · World English Bible
Luke 19:21 Meaning For I Feared You
for I feared you, because you are an exacting man. You take up that which you didn’t lay down, and reap that which you didn’t sow.’
What does Luke 19:21 mean?
The story you tell yourself about the one you answer to sets the ceiling on everything you will attempt. Certainty about another person's character gets assembled out of references collected early and almost never audited, and once it hardens it decides in advance what will not be attempted.
From the Self-Help reading below.
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The same verse, read by one tradition.
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The story you tell yourself about the one you answer to sets the ceiling on everything you will attempt.
Certainty about another person's character gets assembled out of references collected early and almost never audited, and once it hardens it decides in advance what will not be attempted. Fear of an exacting master is that certainty wearing the clothes of prudence: it sets the state, the state narrows every option down to the safest one, and the safest one is burial.
A man sure that a hard master punishes loss will never run the one experiment that could produce a loss, so the belief never meets evidence that could correct it. That is the fence taken for the horizon, accepted and never tested, quietly setting the size of what he tries. The cost is not the pound; it is a lifetime spent defending a verdict about someone he never put to the test.
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Live Luke 19:21 today
- Write down what you assume your boss, your parent or your partner would say if you asked for the thing you want, and ask yourself when you last checked.
- Ask the person you are sure would say no, in plain words, and let their actual answer replace the one you have been carrying.
- When you are about to pick the safe option because of how someone might react, take the small risk once and watch what actually happens.
Whose reaction have you been predicting for years without ever testing it?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Epictetus
Epictetus said we are troubled by our opinions about things, not the things themselves. The master you imagine decides what you will dare, long before the real one speaks.
Buddhism
The Buddha described a man shot by an arrow who refuses treatment until every question is answered. Fear dressed as caution keeps a person still while the hour passes.
Tao Te Ching 71
To know that you do not know is strength. Holding a fixed opinion as knowledge is the sickness, and it closes off everything that opinion forbids.
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