One of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest all-time movies is from The Jerk. The protagonist , Navin R. Johnson, played by Steve Martin, gets into an argument with his wife (played by Bernadette Peters) and tells her “Well I’m going to go then. I don’t need any of this, this stuff and I don’t need you.” As he leaves the room he eyes an ashtray and says “except this ashtray.” As he plots his course out of the room he picks up several more exceptions (including a chair) until his hands are completely full. What makes this scene particularly funny is not that Johnson is acting like a jerk, but that it makes all of us look like jerks. Creating our own list of exceptions to what we truly need is at the root of most of our unhappiness. That is why it takes a truly wise man like St. Thomas to tell us that there are really only two things we need to make us happy, neither of which is a chair or an ashtray. In the midst of describing the perfect political regime in his treatise On Kingship, the Angelic Doctor reminds the reader that only virtuous action and “a sufficiency of material goods, the use of which is necessary for virtuous action” are needed for a good life.
The reason for the first one, virtuous action, is rather easy to grasp. Only the man who is capable of truly governing himself has the power to use his freedom to pursue goodness, truth and beauty. The virtuous man is a free man. The vicious man is a slave—to his pride, his vanity and his passions. Enslaved to the egotistical trinity, he is easily drudged to other men. Profound unhappiness ensues.
Becoming a Jerk?
But even if we get the first one right, there is always a risk that we will get the second one wrong. It is the second one that keeps us from becoming jerks. Given that the good life consists in virtue, then everything else is evaluated by its capacity to foster the life of virtue. To be fair, St. Thomas does not say this exactly. Absent the rare man who has the capacity to practice heroic virtue, most men truly need material support to become virtuous. These things include food, water, clothing, and shelter for the man and those in his care. In St. Thomas’ day and age the scant material condition of many men made it extremely difficult to become virtuous. He thought that it was the King’s job to foster an environment in which men were able to obtain these things with relative ease. That is his point.
But there is an important corollary to what the Dumb Ox is saying. What St. Thomas did not envision however was a time when material conditions had changed so drastically that a “regular” man’s virtue would be threatened because of an excess of material goods. We live in such an age where the material comforts of even the poorest are beyond the wealthiest aristocrats of earlier ages. Virtue now is threatened not so much by a lack of needs, but because of an excess power to obtain our wants.
We might be tempted to a knee-jerk reaction and think that the response is to only focus on those things we absolutely need. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with wanting things we do not absolutely need. It is not a matter of either/or. A rich life includes wants as well as needs. The problem is that the jerk wanders about grabbing what he can. He wants things for the wrong reason. What are the wrong reasons? All of them, save one, that the thing helps him in some way to live a life of virtue. Virtue causes in us the habit of wanting the right things.
True Wisdom of the Saints
The wisdom of St. Thomas is perennial. He has given us a rule to live by in both lack and plenty. In this age of plenty there are many Christians struggling not to get caught up in the economic materialism of the age. This rule guides us in deciding what we will buy and what we won’t. It keeps us from falling prey to the trappings of the world that are meant to lull us to sleep. And, most importantly, it gives us a rule to pass along to our children. Life is about wanting the right things for the right reasons and avoiding becoming a jerk.
St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises introduces the concept of indifference which serves as a perfect complement to St. Thomas’ principle. We should, according to the saint, be indifferent to the means that God uses to make us holy. All that we care about is that a thing is making us holy. Everything else in this world is just a means—instruments used for our growth. When they cease to serve that purpose, we let them go. Lacking something? Thank divine Providence because your need for virtue is being filled in that lack. It is this holy indifference that also keeps us from becoming attached to things we already have. St. Paul likewise tells the Philippians that this indifference is a key to unlocking joy: “Now I rejoice in the Lord exceedingly, that now at length your thought for me hath flourished again, as you did also think; but you were busied. I speak not as it were for want. For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content therewith. I know both how to be brought low, and I know how to abound: (everywhere, and in all things I am instructed) both to be full, and to be hungry; both to abound, and to suffer need” (Phil 4:10-13)
The Gatekeeper said that only those who live out the evangelical command of poverty can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And herein lies the great value in the teachings of the three saints—it gives us a means to live a life contrary to the anti-poverty of the age. Might it take heroic virtue to turn away from the excess material pleasures our world offers? Perhaps. One of the conditions of sainthood is heroic virtue. And in the end, that leaves us with a true either/or; either we will be saints or we will be jerks. Don’t be a jerk.