Saturday, June 16, 2018

day no. 14,481: partiality can go both ways

Leviticus 19:15
You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

Injustice is almost exclusively thought of in terms of the latter. Our script defaults to a rich, influential person getting away with murder because they are rich and influential. And that certainly is in view here. That is injustice. But so is being partial to the poor. To assume that poverty is closer to verity is to make an equally unjust determination, only in the opposite of the typical direction. The poor are no less sinful in essence than the rich, although they have less access and opportunity than the rich. Either way, justice is a matter of principle, not of socioeconomic position per se. 

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