Mark 10:5 · World English Bible
Mark 10:5 Meaning But Jesus Said to Them
But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.
What does Mark 10:5 mean?
Every rule and permission written to manage separation is a concession to a mind that has hardened itself against love. The law that allows a wound to be made lawful was not truth speaking; it was fear given a form gentle enough for a frightened mind to bear.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Mark 10:5 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Every rule and permission written to manage separation is a concession to a mind that has hardened itself against love. The law that allows a wound to be made lawful was not truth speaking; it was fear given a form gentle enough for a frightened mind to bear. A heart made hard by guilt cannot receive what it most needs, so it is met where it is and given a smaller mercy in the meantime.
The hardness is the ego's defense, the shell drawn around a mind that believes it must protect itself from love as though love could cost it something. Correction does not condemn this hardness. It waits, softening what fear once froze, until the mind no longer needs a rule to stand in for the joining it was afraid to choose.
Heart: the center of the mind where love is either welcomed or refused, the place that can harden in fear or open in willingness.
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Mark 10:5 today
- Find the one rule you have made for yourself out of old hurt, I don't text first, I don't ask for things, I don't let people in that far. Break it once today, gently.
- With the person you keep at arm's length, drop one degree of the armor. Answer the message you have been leaving on read, or say the warm thing you usually swallow.
- When someone gets under your skin today and you feel yourself going cold and formal, stay human instead. Keep your voice soft even while you hold your ground.
What have I hardened against, and what is it actually costing me to keep that shell?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 76
What is stiff and rigid belongs to death, what is soft and yielding belongs to life. The hard tree snaps in the wind, the supple one bends and stands.
Buddhism · on anger
Holding resentment is like gripping a hot coal to throw at someone. The armor we build against being hurt is itself the burning.
Stoicism · Epictetus
It is not things that disturb us but our judgments about them. The defense we mount is against a verdict of our own making, never against the world.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Mark 10 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store