Proper 18

“Nice guys finish last.”

This impressive universal truth is usually credited to the late, great baseball manager Leo Durocher.

Little did he know that this little piece of dugout wisdom would later be applied to everything from the diamond to the dating scene, from ball games to bar scenes. Just ask any of the millions of “nice guys” who find themselves at home alone on Saturday night while women who say they’re looking for a nice guy are on a bar stool chatting it up with bad boys.

Even the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that for every woman who says she just wants a nice guy, there are 17.5 flinging themselves at not-so-nice guys.

Granted, this is not true of all women. But it’s true enough. The phenomenon has spawned newspaper articles and pop psychology analysis. Experts refer to it as the Nice Guy Conundrum. While a nice guy may have a lot of gal pals, when it comes to romance he’s “just friends,” which is dating-speak for “loser.” The nicer a guy is, it seems, the more likely his love life plays like a bad horror movie – Village of the Dumped.

So what’s the deal? Why do some women go after bad guys when there are plenty of nice guys to go around?

Perhaps it’s because the bad guys are better equipped. Some suggest that their boorish behavior is precisely what appeals to a woman’s need to nurture. Heidi Muller, “relationship correspondent” for askmen.com, supports this theory. “In case men haven’t noticed, women love playing the role of the relationship therapist. That’s right: Some women would do anything just to have the chance to get others to pour out their troubles, while they attribute most problems to an Oedipal pre-adolescent complex. Most women love to know that they’re the ones who discovered the solution to their boyfriends’ problems and, in turn, healed them (so to speak). To do this, they need a troubled soul to lie down on that leather couch; the jerk boyfriend.”

In Christian parlance, this phenomenon is often referred to as “missionary dating.”

It’s their own passive, “whatever you say, dear” approach that’s a real turnoff to potential mates, and it can even transcend other areas of life. Fact is, in the world of the birds and the bees, the bees don’t buzz around beige flowers. It’s no wonder that Nice Guys finish last – they’re too boring for anyone to notice they were in the game in the first place.

But let’s stop talking about nice guys and start talking about nice people. Nice guys  – people – needn’t be naughty in order to be noticed.

In today’s Old Testament lesson, the writer of Proverbs rehabilitates the nice person by suggesting that “niceness,” read goodness or righteousness, is precisely what God is seeking in a person, and the writer goes on to define what that means. Actually, nowhere in the Bible are the people of God called to be “nice.” Webster defines the word “nice” variously as “agreeable, passive, socially acceptable.” We’re not to be passive, agreeable, and accommodating to the attentions and affections of the world, but we are to be known by:

• our passionate generosity to those in need (22:9)

• our advocacy for the poor (v. 22)

• our willingness to follow God’s wisdom instead of the popular wisdom of the world (v. 5).

In other words, we’re called to be fully integrated, and integrated wholly, people.
And no one exemplifies full integration in the Scriptures more than Jesus himself. If you read the Gospels carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus is not following the “nice guy” paradigm – he’s anything but passive. He’s – 

• constantly in conflict with popular opinion

• concerned only about God’s approval

• compassionate toward the physical and spiritual needs of people

• courageous, never playing the victim (even on the cross)

What attracted people to Jesus was not a “meek and mild” niceness, but a fully focused mission and message.

Philip Yancey puts it well: “How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers?”

It’s that “good name” of the Proverbs text, and the character of Jesus that we claim for ourselves as Christians, and it’s his voice that calls us to go beyond the Nice Guy Conundrum. We can never settle for simply being “nice” people in “nice” churches. More than any other factor, it’s this “niceness” that has threatened to make the church unattractive, boring and irrelevant to a world desperately looking for love in a whole lot of other places.

What’s really attractive to the rest of the world, boys and girls, guys and gals, is passion  – knowing who you are and what you’re about. If the world is going to be “made disciples” it will largely be because we, Christ’s disciples, exhibit passion and not passivity about our mission. We’re called to be in mission to the world, to challenge social structures, call for justice, work for peace, feed the hungry, invite the stranger, clothe the naked.

If we’re truly following Christ, then being nice to one another or just having a passive “faith” isn’t enough. The writer of James makes it clear: “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do” (James 2:18b, NIV).

In these days of war, terrorism, and general uneasiness, it seems odd to talk about an epidemic of over-niceness, but it’s at times like these that Christians need to move beyond passivity and tap into the passion of Christ, who seeks to save a lost world. It was God’s passion for all of us that brought Christ into the world, the passion of Christ that made demons quake, the dead rise and the blind see, and passionate love that overcame death itself. It’s passion that finds its full expression in the mission and focus of those who are fully devoted to Christ.

John Wesley’s instructions to his lay preachers expressed this kind of passion: “You have nothing to do but save souls … therefore, spend and be spent in this work.”

What are you passionate about? Where are you serving, following the passion of Christ? Are you using your gifts to serve others with the passion of a disciple of Christ?

Leo Durocher had a passion. It was for winning. In 1947, he was managing the Brooklyn Dodgers during spring training and general manager Branch Rickey scheduled a grapefruit league game with a minor-league team that featured Jackie Robinson, who that year would become the first African-American to play in the major leagues. Rickey hoped that when his players saw Robinson’s talents, they’d call for his promotion to the majors.

The opposite happened. Some of the team kept silent, fearing for their jobs or those of their friends. The more vocal and prejudiced Dodgers actively protested against playing alongside a black man.

Leo the Lip, in a passionate clubhouse speech, squashed their mutiny. “I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black or if he has stripes like a zebra. I’m the manager and I say he plays.”

The Dodgers won the pennant that year, and Robinson was named Rookie of the Year.
Nice people finish last.

Passionate people, Proverbs people, committed people, servant people, integrated people finish first. If it’s true in baseball and in love, you can bet it’s true for the people of God.