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Proverbs 30:13 · World English Bible

Proverbs 30:13 Meaning There Is a Generation

There is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes! Their eyelids are lifted up.

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What does Proverbs 30:13 mean?

Pride is the posture of a mind looking down, and a mind that looks down has already decided it is separate and superior. The lifted eyelid is the small distance the ego opens between itself and everyone it surveys, for it must place others beneath it in order to feel like a self at all.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 30:13 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Pride is the posture of a mind looking down, and a mind that looks down has already decided it is separate and superior. The lifted eyelid is the small distance the ego opens between itself and everyone it surveys, for it must place others beneath it in order to feel like a self at all. This looking down is not strength. It is fear wearing the mask of height, guarding a loneliness it dares not name.

The eyes come level the moment the mind chooses another teacher. Seen without contempt, every other person becomes an equal, and the height that felt so safe turns out to be the very thing that kept love out.

Eyes: the mind's way of looking upon others, here raised to measure and rank them rather than to join with them Eyelids: the thin veil the ego lifts to set itself above, the small barrier of superiority that holds everyone at a distance

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 30:13 today

  1. Scroll your feed and catch the small flicker of superiority when it arrives, then let it pass without clicking anything. You do not have to be better than a stranger today.
  2. Talk to the person serving your coffee or bagging your groceries as if they could easily be your friend. Ask one real question and actually wait for the answer.
  3. In the meeting where you are clearly the one who knows more, let someone less certain finish their thought without correcting them mid-sentence. See what they get to when nobody interrupts.

Who have I been quietly placing beneath me, and what am I afraid would happen if we stood level?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 8

Water takes the lowest place and nourishes everything from there. Greatness that has to be above others is not greatness.

Buddhism

Measuring yourself as better than, worse than, or equal to another is the same disease in three costumes. Each one keeps you separate from the person in front of you.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

The same nature that moves in you moves in the person you are looking down on. Contempt is only forgetting that you are made of the same material.

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

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