The Deadly Sin
Pixabay I once corrected a now internationally famous Biblical scholar (he will remain nameless) when he misquoted this verse. It was mean of me—one of those temptations that I should have been able to resist, but chose not to! All that is neither here nor there as they say. The verse from Proverbs 16:18 is well-known: “ Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall .” This is an example of parallelism, where the second phrase is another way of saying the first phrase. In essence, though the verse was misquoted by my eminent friend, what he said was something like a contraction of the original. But aside from my secret (now not so secret) delight is getting “one up” on someone eons smarter than me, this verse reminds us of the very danger I succumbed to in taking pleasure in correcting him—pride. We often don’t recognize pride for what it is. We attach friendly meanings to it, but it is what it is. I found it interesting that my dictionary actually misquoted the ver...