Proverbs 17:20 · World English Bible
Proverbs 17:20 Meaning One Who Has a Perverse Heart Doesn’t
One who has a perverse heart doesn’t find prosperity, and one who has a deceitful tongue falls into trouble.
What does Proverbs 17:20 mean?
A heart turned away from its Source cannot find the good, not because the good is withheld but because a mind set on separation is looking in the one direction where love was never kept. What it calls searching is a refusal, and it wanders as long as it insists the answer lies anywhere but home.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 17:20 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A heart turned away from its Source cannot find the good, not because the good is withheld but because a mind set on separation is looking in the one direction where love was never kept. What it calls searching is a refusal, and it wanders as long as it insists the answer lies anywhere but home.
The twisted word that follows is guilt made audible, an attack sent outward to place the burden on someone else. Yet every accusation returns to the one who speaks it, for a mind can only meet the world it has first decided to see. Turn the heart back toward love, and the good it despaired of finding was there the whole time.
Heart: the deep place where the mind chooses its teacher, either turned toward love or turned away toward fear Tongue: the mind's power to bless or to condemn, the instrument through which its inner judgment is thrown into the world
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Proverbs 17:20 today
- When you open your phone out of restlessness and keep scrolling for something that never arrives, close it and sit still for one minute. The thing you were reaching for is not in there.
- Before you hit send on the message with the sharp line in it, cut the sharp line and send the rest. You lose nothing, and it does not come back around to you later.
- When a day goes wrong and you want to find who ruined it, pause and ask what you have been telling yourself since morning. The weather is often inside.
If the good I keep looking for were already here, what would I stop searching for today?
The same truth in other traditions
Sufism · Rumi
What you are searching for has been searching for you, and the long road out was the road back. You were looking everywhere but where you stood.
Hinduism · Upanishads
What is sought as a far-off treasure is the self that is already here. The seeking itself is what hides it.
Buddhism · Dhammapada
We are made of what we think, and the word that follows a harmed mind drags trouble after it. Speak from peace and peace follows you like a shadow.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Proverbs 17 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