Mark 7:20 · World English Bible
Mark 7:20 Meaning He Said
He said, “That which proceeds out of the man, that defiles the man.
What does Mark 7:20 mean?
Nothing outside a mind has power to stain it. What seems to come at a person from the world was first held within and then cast out onto the world, so the thing feared abroad was made at home.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Mark 7:20 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Nothing outside a mind has power to stain it. What seems to come at a person from the world was first held within and then cast out onto the world, so the thing feared abroad was made at home. A mind afraid of its own guilt paints that guilt on everything it meets and then recoils, believing the threat arrived from elsewhere.
The correction is to look where the trouble actually lives. When a mind sees that it has been the author of what it condemns, it can lay the whole thing down, and finding no real defilement anywhere, it finds nothing to fear.
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Christian Psychology lens
Live Mark 7:20 today
- When you catch yourself describing someone as impossible, pause and ask whether the word belongs to them or to your mood. Try the day without that label.
- If you are carrying resentment toward someone in a group chat or at home, say one plain kind thing to them today. You will feel where the weight actually came from.
- Under real pressure, when it feels like everyone is against you, stop and ask what you are condemning in yourself and handing out to others. Put it down for an hour and see how the room looks.
What have I been fighting out there that I first made in here?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Take away the opinion that you are harmed, and the harm is gone. What wounds us is almost always our own verdict.
Dhammapada 1
Mind comes first, and everything else follows. Speak and act from a clear mind and ease follows you like your shadow.
Zhuangzi
A man terrified of his own shadow ran faster and faster to escape it, until he dropped from exhaustion. He only had to sit down in the shade: the thing chasing him was his own.
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