Proverbs 20:20 · World English Bible
Proverbs 20:20 Meaning Whoever Curses His Father or His Mother
Whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in blackness of darkness.
What does Proverbs 20:20 mean?
When the mind curses the source it came from, it is really attacking its own beginning, and the darkness that follows is not a punishment sent from outside but the natural blindness of a mind that has refused its own light. To turn on father and mother is to turn on the origin of the self, and the ego does this whenever it insists it made itself alone and owes nothing to what gave it life.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 20:20 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
When the mind curses the source it came from, it is really attacking its own beginning, and the darkness that follows is not a punishment sent from outside but the natural blindness of a mind that has refused its own light. To turn on father and mother is to turn on the origin of the self, and the ego does this whenever it insists it made itself alone and owes nothing to what gave it life. The lamp goes out because the mind has covered it, not because love withdrew it.
The light was never truly extinguished. When the attack on one's own source is laid down, the same lamp is found still burning, waiting only for the mind to stop hiding it.
Father and mother: the source from which the mind arises, the beginning it either honors or attacks. Lamp: the light of awareness within, the inner seeing that guilt covers over but cannot destroy.
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Live Proverbs 20:20 today
- If your parents are hard for you, try holding one honest sentence today: this is where I came from, and some of what I have came through them. You do not have to make it pretty to say it.
- Send a message to someone who shaped you, a parent, a grandparent, an old teacher, and name one specific thing you got from them. One line is enough.
- When old family resentment flares at dinner or on the phone, let yourself feel it without putting it into a sentence that cuts. The flare passes faster than the words would.
What light in me have I been covering by staying angry at where I came from?
The same truth in other traditions
Confucianism
Respect for parents is treated as the root from which everything else grows, not because elders are flawless, but because a person who tears up their own root has nothing left to stand in.
Taoism
The Tao is called the mother of all things, and the sage who remembers where they came from moves easily; the one who insists on being self-made moves against the current.
Judaism
Honoring father and mother is counted among the weightiest of obligations, placed beside the duties owed to the holy itself.
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