Proverbs 23:32 · World English Bible
Proverbs 23:32 Meaning In the End
In the end, it bites like a snake, and poisons like a viper.
What does Proverbs 23:32 mean?
Whatever the ego offers arrives sweet and turns on the one who took it. The comfort that promised escape leaves the mind more afraid than before, because guilt cannot soothe guilt; it can only bite.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 23:32 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Whatever the ego offers arrives sweet and turns on the one who took it. The comfort that promised escape leaves the mind more afraid than before, because guilt cannot soothe guilt; it can only bite. What looked outside like an enemy striking is the mind's own choice completing itself, the sting felt at the end of a bargain the mind made with fear.
The serpent has no venom of its own. It is the shape guilt takes when it comes home to the mind that sent it out, and it loses all its power the instant the mind refuses the bargain and chooses another teacher.
Serpent: guilt returning upon the mind that welcomed the ego's comfort, the projected wrong felt as a wound at the last Adder: the same sting seen a second time, the delayed pain that any bargain with fear finally delivers
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Live Proverbs 23:32 today
- Think of one thing you did last week that felt good at the time and bad by evening. Just see the shape of it, no verdict on yourself.
- When you are tempted to say the clever cutting thing to someone, imagine how it will sit in you an hour later, then choose from there.
- Under pressure today, when the shortcut offers itself, ask what it will cost tomorrow rather than what it saves right now.
What have I been calling comfort that leaves me worse off?
The same truth in other traditions
Dhammapada 5
What tastes like honey while the harm is small turns bitter the moment it ripens. The sweetness was never the whole of it.
Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita 18
Some pleasure is sweet at the start and poison at the end. The two belong to the same thing, just at different hours.
Buddhism · Karma
An action carries its result inside it from the beginning. Nothing comes back to us that we did not send out.
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