Looking through the book of Proverbs you will notice quite a strong condemnation of pride (8:13, 11:2, etc.). This should probably be no surprise, as in the Catholic teaching pride is taught as the chief of all the capital sins, and yet Prov 17:6 (NIV) says that “… parents are the pride of their children”. Now I may have taken a little bit of liberty in this verse, as other translations use the word ‘glory’ which I would consider to be much less ambiguous. However this leads into my point. We tend to use the word pride for both joy and arrogance.
I know that I would say that I am proud of what my parents have done for me, but this couldn’t be further from the sin of pride. This is much closer to a joy and delight in the success of others. I think of myself as no better than others because of it, which would be sin, the expression is nothing other than delight in someone else.
Now this isn’t something terribly profound, more just food for thought, but when talking about pride I like to now think of it more as arrogance and take the other meaning as joy. ‘parents are the joy/glory of their children’.
Peace