Proverbs 28:21 · World English Bible
Proverbs 28:21 Meaning To Show Partiality Is Not Good
To show partiality is not good; yet a man will do wrong for a piece of bread.
What does Proverbs 28:21 mean?
To weigh one person against another, favoring here and dismissing there, is the mind judging by appearances, and this is the very habit that keeps it asleep. Where it sees separate persons of unequal worth, it has already forgotten that the same innocence lives in each, and judgment of this kind is guilt looking outward, sorting the world into those it will accept and those it will condemn.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 28:21 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
To weigh one person against another, favoring here and dismissing there, is the mind judging by appearances, and this is the very habit that keeps it asleep. Where it sees separate persons of unequal worth, it has already forgotten that the same innocence lives in each, and judgment of this kind is guilt looking outward, sorting the world into those it will accept and those it will condemn.
A mind schooled in such judging will betray truth for almost nothing, for once worth is measured by appearance it can be bought by the smallest gain. The correction is to look past the differing faces to the one innocence they share, for the moment the mind stops ranking persons, there is no longer anyone it needs to wrong.
A piece of bread: the smallest gain, the trifling price for which a mind trained to judge by appearances will abandon truth
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Live Proverbs 28:21 today
- Think of someone you quietly file as unimportant, the person who cleans your building, a name you leave at the bottom of your inbox, and let yourself picture their day. Then answer them the way you would answer someone you were impressed by.
- In your next group conversation, give the same attention to the quietest person as to the one with the most status in the room. Watch what you learn that you would have missed.
- When you are tempted to shade the truth to stay liked by someone useful, say the plain thing instead. The small gain is almost never worth what you trade for it.
Who have I been ranking, and what would change if I stopped?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Metta practice
Goodwill is extended the same way to the friend, the stranger and the difficult person, with no ranking between them. The practice is precisely the refusal to sort.
Sufism · Rumi
The many lamps are different but the light in each is one light. Looking at the clay instead of the flame is how we end up quarreling.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Every person you meet shares the same origin and the same reason as you do, which makes contempt for any of them a kind of self-contradiction. The one who annoys you is kin.
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