“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts.”
– H.L. Mencken
Curious to me how often the purest justice – human and divine – is accomplished with humor ....
A few months ago, North Face – the outdoor clothing manufacturer –feeling particularly full of its own wokefulness, very publicly declined an order from Innovex Downhole Solutions to make holiday jackets for the company’s workers. Innovex deals in fossil fuels, and North Face wanted it known that they don’t make things for companies creating products that damage Mother Earth.
The self-satisfaction was short-lived, however, when energy companies began pointing out that pretty much every single product made and sold by North Face (part of the VF Corp conglomerate) includes oil- and gas-related fibers.
One oilfield company, Liberty, released a video exposing North Face’s hypocrisy, and thanking them for their substantial contributions in partnership with the oil and gas industry. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association even presented North Face with its first-ever "customer appreciation" award, in recognition of how much the company has invested in fossil fuels.
All of which left the would-be hyper-green company with a lot of egg on its (North) Face.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was a liberal historian renowned for his considerable productivity, his fawning admiration for John F. Kennedy, and his profound loathing for conservative writer / editor William F. Buckley. Once, during a television interview, he was asked about his antipathy for Mr. Buckley, and went a little overboard in expressing his sarcasm at the latter’s expense.
“He has a facility for rhetoric which I envy,” Schlesinger said, eyes rolling, voice dripping, “as well as a wit which I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate.” He snickered a bit at his own ironic contempt.
As it happened, Buckley saw that interview … on precisely the same day he received from his publisher a note requesting personal blurbs for the dustjacket of Buckley’s new book. You know: those little quotes from famous people assuring readers how really good the book’s writer is.
Buckley promptly included Schlesinger’s remarks as one of the blurbs, so that his book – which sold millions – carried with it, everywhere it went, what appeared to be an enthusiastic, admiring endorsement from Schlesinger … minus the eye rolls and sarcastic tone.
Years ago, my wife, then a third-grade teacher, was enjoying spring break. Her sister, visiting from out of town, wanted to see her classroom. My wife gave her the tour, then, readying to leave, realized she’d left her car keys locked in her Camry. She walked over to the school office to try and find a coat hanger and wiggle her way into the car, the old-fashioned way.
No need for that, a secretary assured her. Just call the nearest fire department: they have tools for that kind of thing. If they’re not busy dousing some local inferno, they’ll be happy to come pop your door open.
Before my wife could express her hesitations, the helpful woman had summoned the nearest firehouse brigade. My beloved – who puts exemplary effort into never, ever calling attention to herself – walked out to the parking lot and stood there, mortified and blushing ‘til her face was almost exactly the same color as the firetruck swinging into the school driveway.
I learned all this, of course, from my sister-in-law, who took enormous delight in her sibling’s discomfort and couldn’t wait to give me the scoop.
She found in me a more than appreciative audience. Hours after the firemen had handed over the keys, posed for pictures, waved, and driven away, my wife was still a human strawberry, grinding her teeth at her sister’s telling and filing hopeless protests at every giggling detail.
We were merciless. At dinner that evening in a 50’s diner, I paid the jukebox to play “Light My Fire,” “Ring Of Fire,” and “Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love.” My sis-in-law chortled, my wife squirmed, bit her tongue, called for a moratorium on fire puns. It was a great night.
Next day, and I was sitting in the den / makeshift studio of a fellow my work had hired out to make a video for us. We came up a tape short, and I thought maybe ‘d left it in the car. Ran out to grab it, only to find … the car locked. With my keys inside.
“No. Noooonononononono.”
I went back inside and asked the man if I could borrow a hanger.
“No need for that,” he said. “I’m a volunteer fireman. My station’s just around the corner. The guys ‘ll come help you out.”
“That’s realllly not necessary …”
“No problem at all,” he beamed, dialing the number.
I went home that night with flowers and candy and a pitiful tale to tell.
Don’t we wish all the unkindnesses and unfairnesses of life could be redeemed so cheerfully, so simply, so … justly? Alas, they are not. Or at least (perhaps more accurately) don’t appear to be.
“We always look for justice in this world, but there is no such thing as justice,” Oswald Chambers writes, in My Utmost For His Highest. “Jesus says – Never look for justice, but never cease to give it.”
One way we give it, surprisingly, is by keeping our sense of humor – something no less a gift of God, my mother worked hard to persuade me, than love, mercy, or compassion. Because in giving us humor, the good Lord is sharing with us a cheerful, cheering sense of His own eternal perspective.
“The wicked plots against the just,” David observes in Psalm 37, “and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, for He sees that his day is coming.”
Here’s to the Day, a-comin’ … to justice – pure, poetic, and funny … to a Lord who loves us enough to invite us to laugh along with Him.
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