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Proverbs 26:21 · World English Bible

Proverbs 26:21 Meaning As Coals Are to Hot Embers

As coals are to hot embers, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindling strife.

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What does Proverbs 26:21 mean?

A mind set on contention is a mind looking for coals to add, eager to keep a quarrel alight because conflict lets it feel separate and therefore, to the ego, safe. The one who kindles is not making peace and failing; he is doing exactly what fear wants done, feeding a blaze that proves the world is against him so his own guilt seems to belong to someone else.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 26:21 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

A mind set on contention is a mind looking for coals to add, eager to keep a quarrel alight because conflict lets it feel separate and therefore, to the ego, safe. The one who kindles is not making peace and failing; he is doing exactly what fear wants done, feeding a blaze that proves the world is against him so his own guilt seems to belong to someone else.

But a fire needs a hand to keep laying on the wood. Let the mind refuse to be that hand and there is nothing to catch, and what looked like an unavoidable war is seen to have depended on a single choice all along.

Coals and wood: the grievances the mind keeps adding to a quarrel, fresh fuel laid on so the conflict never dies down Fire: the strife the ego prizes because a mind at war feels safely separate from what it fears within

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Live Proverbs 26:21 today

  1. When a reply is half typed and you can feel the heat in your chest, put the phone face down and let it sit for ten minutes. Most of the time you will come back and not want to send it.
  2. In the group chat or at dinner, when someone hands you the bait, let it pass without the one small correction you were planning. You can be right later, or never, and nothing will fall apart.
  3. In a tense meeting or a long email thread, stop restating the history of who did what. Say only what is needed for the next step, and let the old coals go cold.

What would end today if I simply stopped carrying wood to it?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 22

The one who does not contend leaves nothing for anyone to contend with. What has no edge cannot be caught on.

Buddhism · Dhammapada

Hatred has never once been ended by hatred. It ends only when someone stops answering it, and that is the one law that holds.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

Take away the judgment "I have been wronged" and the wrong itself is gone. The injury was never in the act, only in your agreement to be injured.

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