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Proverbs 16:30 · World English Bible

Proverbs 16:30 Meaning One Who Winks His Eyes to Plot

One who winks his eyes to plot perversities, one who compresses his lips, is bent on evil.

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What does Proverbs 16:30 mean?

To close the eyes and plan harm is to describe how attack is born: the mind first shuts out the truth it does not want to see, and in that self-made darkness it invents a grievance. Nothing is done to it from outside.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 16:30 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

To close the eyes and plan harm is to describe how attack is born: the mind first shuts out the truth it does not want to see, and in that self-made darkness it invents a grievance. Nothing is done to it from outside. It designs the wrong within, then speaks and acts it into a world that appears to confirm the fear it began with.

Since the harm is made in a mind that closed itself, it is undone when the mind opens again. A mind willing to look, rather than to plot in the dark, finds there was no evil to bring to pass, only a shadow it had agreed not to question.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 16:30 today

  1. When you find yourself replaying an argument with the lights off, open your eyes and say plainly what you actually know happened, and where you started guessing at motives.
  2. Before you send the message you have been drafting in your head all afternoon, ask the person one real question instead. Let their answer, not your version, be the information.
  3. In a stressful moment, resist building the case. Keep looking at what is in front of you rather than at the story you are assembling about it.

What have I decided about someone with my eyes closed, that I have never once checked?

The same truth in other traditions

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

You can drop the thought that you have been wronged, and the sense of being wronged goes with it. The injury lived in the thought.

Buddhism

Whatever a person dwells on becomes the shape of their mind. Turn a resentment over long enough in the dark and you will meet it in the world.

Tao Te Ching

Clear water shows everything exactly as it is. Only the stirred and clouded pool invents shapes under its surface.

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