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Proverbs 17:6 · World English Bible

Proverbs 17:6 Meaning Children’s Children Are the Crown of Old

Children’s children are the crown of old men; the glory of children are their parents.

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What does Proverbs 17:6 mean?

What passes from one generation to the next is not blood but the way of seeing a mind hands on, and love is the only inheritance that crowns the giver. A mind grown wise in forgiveness sees its gentleness reflected and extended in every thought that flows from it, and this is its true glory, for what it gives away it recognizes at last as its own.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 17:6 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

What passes from one generation to the next is not blood but the way of seeing a mind hands on, and love is the only inheritance that crowns the giver. A mind grown wise in forgiveness sees its gentleness reflected and extended in every thought that flows from it, and this is its true glory, for what it gives away it recognizes at last as its own.

The old and the young here are not ages but the teacher and the taught within one mind, joined so completely that the strength of the one becomes the honor of the other, and love given returns as the very thing that adorns the one who gave.

Old men: the part of the mind matured in wisdom and forgiveness, the teacher within whose gift crowns those it extends to Children: the thoughts and extensions of a mind, what love produces and sends onward, reflecting the giver back to itself Fathers: the loving source within from which a mind's better seeing descends, the origin whose glory the extended thought reveals

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 17:6 today

  1. Text or call the older person who shaped how you see things and tell them the specific thing you got from them. Not a thank you in general, the actual thing.
  2. With someone younger than you today, a kid, a new hire, a younger sibling, let them see you handle one small frustration well. That is the part they will keep.
  3. When you are short on patience and a family member needs you to explain something for the third time, explain it again in the voice you would want used on you. That voice is what gets passed along.

What way of seeing did someone hand me, and who is currently learning it from watching me?

The same truth in other traditions

Confucius · Analects

What the elders carry in their bearing is what the young absorb without being taught. The example is the whole inheritance.

Tao Te Ching

Water shapes the valley it runs through, and the valley is how you know the water passed. What you give takes the form of those who received it.

Buddhism · Metta practice

Goodwill sent out does not leave you poorer. It comes back as the atmosphere you live in.

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

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