Luke 16:8 · World English Bible
His lord commended the dishonest manager because he had done wisely, for the children of this world are, in their own generation, wiser than the children of the light.
The person who wants only to be good pushes away everything grasping and cunning in himself. He calls that part dishonest and disowns it.
From the Psychoanalysis reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
The person who wants only to be good pushes away everything grasping and cunning in himself. He calls that part dishonest and disowns it. But it does not vanish. It sinks out of sight and takes his practical intelligence with it, so he faces the world unarmed and is easily used.
The clever manager stands for exactly that buried side. The master praises him because survival needs the very shrewdness that pure goodness throws away. The children of the world can act because they still own their instincts. The good must take that discarded cleverness back, or they stay helpless.
Psychoanalysis lens
Where has being the agreeable one cost me something I was pretending not to want?
He mocked the man so upright he was useless, and praised the crooked tree that survived the woodcutter precisely because it was no good for timber. Usefulness and virtue are not the same thing.
Arjuna wants to be good by refusing to fight, and is told that his refusal is not virtue but a failure of nerve dressed up as principle. He has to act in the world as it actually is.
He reminded himself that he was not there to float above human affairs but to work inside them, dealing with liars and schemers without becoming naive or bitter. Clear eyes are part of being good, not opposed to it.
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Psychoanalysis