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Proverbs 10:32 · World English Bible

Proverbs 10:32 Meaning The Lips of the Righteous Know What

The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked is perverse.

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What does Proverbs 10:32 mean?

The words a mind offers reveal which teacher it has chosen to hear. When love is the guide, what comes out is acceptable because it blesses, seeking the innocence in another rather than a fault to name.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 10:32 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The words a mind offers reveal which teacher it has chosen to hear. When love is the guide, what comes out is acceptable because it blesses, seeking the innocence in another rather than a fault to name. The froward mouth is only fear speaking, casting its own guilt outward as accusation, so that the speaker feels emptied of a burden he never truly loses by throwing it.

Every phrase either joins or attacks, and the choice is made before a single word is formed, in the quiet turn of the mind toward one teacher or the other.

Lips of the righteous: the mind that has chosen love as its teacher, giving voice only to what blesses and joins Mouth of the wicked: the mind still ruled by fear, using speech to push its own guilt onto another

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 10:32 today

  1. Before you reply to the email that annoyed you, think of one decent reason the person wrote it that way. Then answer the person you just imagined.
  2. At dinner or in the car, hand someone a small piece of credit out loud. You pick the lens through which they see themselves for the rest of the evening.
  3. When you are stuck in traffic or last in the grocery line and blame starts looking for a target, feel it rise and let it pass without giving it a name to land on.

When I speak today, am I trying to join someone or to hand them something of mine?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · right speech

Speak only what is true, kind, and timely, and what brings people together rather than splitting them apart. If words fail that, silence is the better offering.

Judaism · Pirkei Avot

Judge every person toward the side of innocence. Where the facts allow two readings, choose the one that does not condemn.

Stoicism · Epictetus

People act from what they believe is good, even when they are wrong. Seeing that keeps you from treating a mistake as an insult aimed at you.

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