Proverbs 6:17

This verse is part of a larger passage in Proverbs 6:16-19, where the writer lists seven things God deeply detests — not just dislikes, but finds genuinely abhorrent. This verse names the first three: "haughty eyes" describes a posture of contempt and superiority, looking down on others as lesser. "A lying tongue" refers to deliberate deception. "Hands that shed innocent blood" describes violence against people who don't deserve it. Together these three form a kind of escalating pattern: pride in the heart, dishonesty in speech, destruction in action. The list reads like a diagnostic of what most deeply breaks human trust and tears communities apart.

God, show me where contempt lives in me — the subtle ways I look past people or quietly rank myself above them. Strip away the pride I've dressed up as confidence or discernment. Teach me to see people the way you see them. Amen.

We grade sins on a curve without realizing it. Lying to avoid an awkward conversation — minor. Giving someone a slow, contemptuous once-over because we've already decided they don't matter — barely registers. We save the heavy words for headlines: murderers, tyrants, the obviously monstrous. But here, "haughty eyes" — that quiet dismissal you give someone before they've said a word — sits in the same list as shedding innocent blood. That's uncomfortable. God's moral radar is calibrated differently than ours, and it starts with something we do before breakfast. Pride is listed first, and not by accident. Haughty eyes are what make lying easier — if others aren't quite fully real to you, deceiving them costs less. They're what make violence possible — "innocent blood" starts when someone decides the other person isn't really innocent. The sins that destroy communities almost always have the same root: a quiet, barely-examined belief that I matter more. What would it look like to go through just today deliberately looking for the dignity in people you'd normally overlook — the ones you've already sorted into the "lesser" category without quite realizing you did it?