Another Red Letter Day at the Bailey Building and Loan

Someday they will make a movie about a lad who dared to dream he would placekick for the Green Bay Packers only to fail.

If so, I am ready for the part. Actually, I hope they never make this movie as such films are almost always unrelievedly bleak and failure is bleak, but not universally so. How do you tell your story when your plot goes awry?

When in doubt, I turn first to the Bible, but a close second is It’s a Wonderful Life. This habit may not be good for me, but it is my way. This film, not just for Christmas anymore, is full of wisdom and I try to attend.

There is a marvelous scene where things have gone from bad to Great Depression at the family business where the response is to note: “It is another red letter day at the Bailey Building and Loan.” Red letter days, like red letter words in the Bible, are special. They are holidays and are (supposed to be) happy or at least notable. The sarcasm is a relief in a movie that veers toward the sentimental only to pull back with such marvelous lines.

By the end of the film, the Bailey Building and Loan still exists, is still doing good, but like any institution dedicated to “high ideals” (“So called!” Potter,)  the business is frequently almost failing.

Advice to look on the bright side of life is not very helpful at the start of the Great Depression. The Depression was, my grandparents assured me, quite depressing. As far as a Depression went, there was nothing good about it unless being hungry, unemployed, or frightened were situations one enjoyed. Nor have I have ever been impressed with the advice I was given when I broke my arm: “Cheer up! You might have broken two arms.”

Well, yes, but my broken arm still hurt.

So I think we begin by admitting that the plotlines of our life are not in our control, often do not make sense in our point of view, and frequently fall into the traps and plans of the local Potter. After all, Potter ends the film five thousand dollars richer and still running most of Bedford Falls. If the goal is to put Potter out of business, we often fail. The Potters of this age are often wiser (in this age) than the Baileys of the age to come.

Despair is not warranted if we have kept our ideals. The Person writing the script of the cosmos has Eternity in His view and if letting Potter win the money game is best for creation in the long term (if odious in the short term), then so it will be. This is quite reasonable and yet it also hurts. My short-term pain is not taken away by my long-term hope of justice.

God longs to hear our honest complaints. We can cry out to Him at Martini’s (go George!) and He will listen. God is not insecure and so does not mind our accusations hurled in His direction. Any pious fraud who says God does should go read Job. In this book of the Bible, the people who spout platitudes in the face of “Potter bearing down hard” are rebuked by God.

Atheism in the face of this complaint is not very helpful, either. First, pretending there is no God flies in the face of best reason and it is never good to be unreasonable. Second, removing all hope for eventual justice when we lose is not particularly comforting either. If the winning Potters of this age (we are looking at you Putin) are never going to face justice, then it is even harder to resist bowing the knee to Potter or becoming hopeless. Finally, my experience says the atheist Bailey ends up ranting against God anyway.

In the face of injustice an atheist  says, “Damn,”  . . . as if damnation could happen to evil.

Frank Capra had it right (as usual). The just man is happier because he can have true friends, not paid companions. Most of all, he has peace in his own heart for not betraying the Ideals that no person can really escape. The man who picks to worship a god, be it money, fame, or power, is most unfortunate if his god rewards him. The man whose idol fails him may see the futility of idols, but the “lucky” man whose idol blesses him, fritters away his chance at happiness.

So why are we sometimes (like George) miserable even when we pursue our ideals?

Our souls, like God, long for true justice. It is hard to see Potter prosper and Bert and Ernie (the cop and the taxi driver, not the muppets) struggle. We are right to protest, we are right to try to change things, but we are wrong if we think all if it can be worked out in the seventy years or so we have.  The long arc of history does point to the Good, the Truth, and Beauty, but Saint Augustine was right: it is not going to be manifest to us in this lifetime. Perhaps we might see it over centuries, a little, but even then, all of human history is so small in the light of cosmic time, let alone God’s eternity.

Faith is the assurance, after reason is applied, that our hope in justice is not misplaced. This knowledge comforts a bit, but it does not remove the pain. The undeserved pain of failure, of another “great” day at our own Bailey Building and Loan, remains. We can choose to acknowledge it, live through it, and hope for the triumph of justice or we can despair.

Despair doesn’t “help” either. Getting sadder is just sadder. Self-medicating through happy talk is foolish. It is still Lent.

The Bible gets this balance even better than Capra (!) when it allows the Psalmist or the prophet to complain, but then to say:

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.

I can close my eyes after such a set of verses and hear the ringing of the bells of paradise welcoming all the Baileys to the home of our Friend. That will be the reddest of red letter days.