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Proverbs 8:7 · World English Bible

Proverbs 8:7 Meaning For My Mouth Speaks Truth

For my mouth speaks truth. Wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

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What does Proverbs 8:7 mean?

There is a voice in the mind that cannot lie, because it has no investment in separation. Fear needs the lie that the self is guilty and the world is dangerous, for that is the only ground it stands on.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 8:7 through 2 lenses

The same verse, read by 2 traditions.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

There is a voice in the mind that cannot lie, because it has no investment in separation. Fear needs the lie that the self is guilty and the world is dangerous, for that is the only ground it stands on. Love has no such need, so when it speaks there is nothing false to defend and nothing to attack.

What this voice will not say is the accusation, against the self or against another, for that is the ego's whole speech and love does not share its tongue. A mind that turns here is not being scolded into goodness. It is being told plainly what was always so: that it was never the sinner fear insisted it must be.

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ESOTERIC

Esoteric

Wisdom sounds itself through the lips, the outward expression of what stands true within, and where that channel is clean only truth can pass; distortion is repellent to it, unable to keep company with a mouth given wholly to what is real. The lips here belong to Wisdom personified, so the saying describes a faculty in a person tuned so exactly to truth that falsehood finds no opening in it.

The drought in mankind has made such clear speech precious, and the signs pressed into the fields are read the same way, as a divine bread meant to be taken in as wisdom. What is spoken from a true inner center carries only truth; corruption cannot travel through it.

Lips: the outward expression of the inner truth, the channel through which clean wisdom passes.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 8:7 today

  1. Catch the running self-criticism today and ask whether it is actually describing reality or just rehearsing an old accusation. You are allowed to stop repeating it.
  2. When a group chat starts building a case against someone who is not there, do not add the piece you have. You can be warm and still decline to prosecute.
  3. Under pressure, when the quick instinct is to shift blame or find who is at fault, stay with what is true about the situation and leave the verdict out of it. Problems get solved faster without a defendant.

Who have I been quietly accusing today, including myself?

The same truth in other traditions

Taoism · Tao Te Ching

The way holds nothing back and defends nothing, because it wants nothing. Having no stake, it has no need to distort.

Buddhism

A mind without grasping has no reason to lie. Deception grows out of something we are trying to protect.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

The honest person has no need of a mask. He can say what he thinks because he is not guarding a position.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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