"Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again, 'The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile'." [1 Corinthians 3:18-20]
One of my favorite movie lines of all time comes from the great Jimmy Steward classic, Harvey, when his character, Elwood P. Dowd, says, "In this life, you can either by oh-so smart, or oh-so pleasant. Well, for years, I was smart... and I recommend pleasant."
That has always struck me as solid advice, but there is a cost to accepting it and living by it. After all, in the story of Harvey, Stewart's character is the one everyone else thinks is crazy for being able to see a six-foot-tall rabbit who wears clothes like a human (and who goes at least some of the time by the name Harvey). All the other characters are dead-certain they are the sane ones, but they are also largely miserable, incapable of wonder, and playing different versions of the same game of trying to impress people. Whether they're trying to climb the social ladder into high society, vying for respect and accolades in their profession, or just want to look respectable to their neighbors, they're all pretty dour people who can't seem to get out of their own little worlds to look around at what kind of spectacular things might be going on all around them. In other words, all the other "sane" characters are following the conventional wisdom for how to be successful in life: get ahead in your career, impress your peers, and make a name for yourself in your field. They are all "smart" as the world sees smart, and they are also, by and large, pretty unpleasant.
Sometimes the cost of being "oh-so pleasant"--or perhaps to give it a little more bite, of being "the ones who love well"--is that everyone else stares at you like you are a fool for doing it, for seeing the world differently, and for not playing the game like everyone else. Sometimes, to be the presence of kindness and compassion means everyone else thinks you are crazy, and sometimes telling people such kindness for all comes from your faith in God will sound as absurd to them as saying you see a six-foot-tall rabbit at your side.
Of course, the big punch-line by the end of the story (seventy-year-old movie spoiler alert here) is that Harvey turns out to be very much real, even though his existence sounds like utter nonsense. There is just a touch of magic by the end of the story, when one or two other characters come to meet Harvey and discover that he has been real all along. Not everyone will be able to accept that such miracles have been leaning on lamposts at the corner of 18th and Fairfax, but enough people come to see Harvey by the end that the audience is left discovering that Elwood P. Dowd has been the only sensible one all along... exactly because he has been willing to look and act out of touch with what everyone else considers "smart."
In a way, to be the people of Jesus in this world full of rat-racing, image-obssessed self-absorption is to be like Jimmy Stewart's character Elwood. We are people convinced we see Jesus--not just in churches, but alive and well and moving in the world around us--and who have made the decision (even if we are not great at living it sometimes) to be "oh-so pleasant" rather than making ourselves "oh-so smart" on the world's terms. That is to say, we have made the choice to love as Jesus embodies it for us, even if it looks foolish to others. We have made the choice--and we keep choosing it again every day--to look out for the interests of others rather than just our own, to give our time and energy to others even if it won't get us anything, to take the time to listen and look around at the world in front of us even if we don't make a dime from doing it it. We keep choosing to love even when that costs us bigger profits and it doesn't make "good financial sense," and even when the loud voices around us shout how we have to look out for "Me and My Group First." And we don't have to get all fussy or have a persecution complex when others look at us like we are out of our minds, because we understand--of course, choosing to love in a world full of self-interest sounds foolish. We are just prepared to risk looking foolish by the world's terms, because we are done playing the games of trying to impress anybody.
And when you are done with that old rat race, not only are you truly free, but you discover you are freed for loving others, and discovering the goodness to be found in listening to them where they are at, sharing their stories, and seeing Christ present in the conversation. You discover, in a manner of speaking, that it is far better to be oh-so pleasant than oh-so smart on the world's terms.
Today, what will it look like for us to make that same choice--the choice to love rather than to impress? I suspect it will be something amazing.
Lord God, give us the courage to live in ways that look out of step to the world's kind of logic, so that we can be in step with your way of love.
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