Living an Invisible Principle

In the movie Harvey, Elwood (played by Jimmy Stewart) offers something worth quoting.  In fact, he says, "Quote me."  He says that his mother long ago said to him that, in this world, he needed to be, "Oh so smart" or "Oh so pleasant."  Elwood said that for years he was "smart," but that he recommended being pleasant.  "You my quote me," he added.  (The first clip below presents the scene.)

I think of the movie as a depiction of what it's like to live by an invisible principle (represented by the invisible rabbit Harvey): the Good.

This principle (of the good) is a fundamental option for each of us.  We can be "smart," i.e., cunning and self-interested, or we can be "pleasant," i.e., courteous and self-deprecating.  Only the latter attitude lets the good, i.e., Harvey, appear. For Elwood, living this invisible principle made Harvey real for him.  By the end of the movie others were beginning to "see" Harvey as well.  Along the way Elwood faced plenty of opposition.

The problem is that living a good life invites a negative response from those for whom the good is a threat.  "Let us beset the good one. . ." Wisdom 2:12-20; Jn 15:18-19.  As Germain Grisez noted in his book Christian Moral Principles (Ch.22, q. G, sec. 10 [p. 541in hardcover book])::

Anyone who truly lives a good life will be hated, [since] one of original sin's effects is to take away the moral motivation of genuine human community and make moral goodness costly.  Jesus, by dying as he did, presents us with a telling example, probably the most horrifying possible, of the situation of a good person in this sinful world. 

Elwood ended up in an insane asylum.  And in the two real life examples shown below (Thomas More and Sophie Scholl), both were beheaded!

I ask myself, do I have the courage to live the invisible principle of the good, so to make it visible in the world?  It's a serious question because here's how Grisez (Ibid, ch.23, q. D, sec. 4) sees the options:

[C]hildren of God continue to live in a sinful and largely unredeemed world, where ultimately there are only three choices: to join the world, and so abandon Jesus; to seek either to destroy evil or wholly segregate oneself from it, and so betray him by becoming a zealot or a Pharisee; or to try to convert the world with the love of Jesus, and so share in his fate. One will share his fate because not all of the sinful world accepts salvation, and that part which rejects it hates Jesus and his followers (see Jn 15.16–18; 16.1–4). “For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Pt 2.20–21).

 Only in life will the answer (and possibly Harvey!) be revealed. (Let's hope and pray he is!)