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Proverbs 11:20 · World English Bible

Proverbs 11:20 Meaning Those Who Are Perverse in Heart Are

Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination to Yahweh, but those whose ways are blameless are his delight.

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What does Proverbs 11:20 mean?

A mind turned away from its Source lives in the belief that it is other than what created it, and this twist is the whole of what feels wrong within. What seems like the displeasure of a distant judge is only the ache of a mind holding itself apart from its own Love.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 11:20 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

A mind turned away from its Source lives in the belief that it is other than what created it, and this twist is the whole of what feels wrong within. What seems like the displeasure of a distant judge is only the ache of a mind holding itself apart from its own Love. The upright are not the morally superior but those who have let the crookedness be straightened, who no longer defend the separation and so remember that they were never cast out.

There is no God who recoils from His children. There is only a Love that waits, and a mind that either bends toward it or away, and finds its whole condition in that single choice.

Heart: the deep center of the mind where the choice for love or for separation is made, the place a life is aimed. LORD: the memory of the Source the mind never truly left, the Love that holds no charge against its own.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 11:20 today

  1. Sometime today, in the car before you go in, sit with the low feeling you usually try to fix and ask whether it is really guilt about yourself. Then stop defending and let it soften, without a plan to improve.
  2. With someone you live or work with, drop one small position you have been holding, the thing you keep being right about. Say something simple like, you may be right about that, and feel what unclenches in your own chest.
  3. When a message lands that makes you feel small or caught out, do not build the reply that protects you. Wait a minute, then answer as if you were already fine, because the ache was never about them.

Where am I still holding myself apart from the love that is not actually withholding anything?

The same truth in other traditions

Sufism · Rumi

The ache you feel is the reed cut from the reed bed, crying for the place it came from. The longing itself is proof you were never truly separate.

Upanishads

The self you are looking for is already the ground you are standing on. Nothing has ever been lost, only overlooked.

Zen

You are like someone searching the whole house for the glasses already on their face. No one is withholding anything from you.

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