On the stage of life where persons act, the Bible cuts through the nonsense: “God is no respecter of persons.” Why so? Should we also not respect persons? A little etymology helps here. Person is derived from the Latin persona: a part in a drama, assumed character, originally "a mask, a false face.”
Jesus often rebuked profiling, or the judging of persons, by mixing with the socially marginalized, the hated tax collector, the scorned prostitute, the despised Samaritan, etc. He praised the Roman Centurion for having more faith than could be found in all of Israel, quite a rebuke to the Jews!
It was a very hard pill to swallow for the Christian Jews to accept that Gentiles could be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost just as they! Their pretension of being morally superior was shattered. Jew or Greek, rich or poor, educated or not, famous or not, group member or not. The stage where persons act was being overturned by this new Christianity.
So what’s the big deal about the natural tendency to evaluate a person? When we respect a person, we pass judgement upon that person based upon how they are pretending, how the world judges them. We are deaf to what our conscience says, deaf to any spiritual sense that might be telling us what is really going on with the individual in question. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the adoration of the celebrity who appears to be on top of the world but is actually the most wretchedly unhappy, lonely person on earth!
Is pretending (wearing a mask, a false face) so bad when we are trying to make a good impression? Yes. It is a position of weakness, a fear of inadequacy. Worst of all it is dishonest and therefore forfeits divine help! How many storylines are based upon the sorry end of the character who pretends to be what he is not!
This brings us to the crux of the matter. If profiling and pretending are off limits, what are we left with? We look to Jesus, the great Exemplar who clearly stated that he spoke and acted as it was given to him by the Father. Jesus was not there to judge people, or to please them, but to please the Father, to strive to do His will. He operated from the standpoint of the God-principle where personal opinion has no place.
So instead of profiling, we ought to listen for guidance. What is the need here, to say or do? - or to silently bless them and move on - above all, not to judge them but leave judging to Someone who knows a lot more than we.
Instead of pretending, our axiom should be: “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We do much better to follow Jesus’ example and to be concerned with pleasing a good God, the rock-solid Principle, than a person who may be indulging in their own pretension.
In short, we ought to exit the stage of life where persons act in denial of the presence and power of God, and enter our God-given reality:
“As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible. When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness.”
Listen to the larger context from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.