Opie's Charity: The Problem of Pride

This is an excerpt from my new book
Messages from Mayberry:
Spiritual Life Lessons from
My Favorite Episodes of 
The Andy Griffith Show
You can click on the image on the right to learn more. 

Opie’s Charity:

The Problem of Pride

This episode tells us the story of a community event that makes some people in Mayberry face a very profound issue.  The event is The Underprivileged Children’s Charity Drive.  The issue this event brings to the surface is pride. 

The character who first embodies this spirit of pride is Annabelle Silby.  Annabelle stops by the courthouse to talk to Andy about the charity drive and the part he will play in it.  Their conversation drifts into the subject of Annabelle’s late husband, Tom.  As we will soon learn, pride has led Annabelle to do some pretty peculiar things where her husband is concerned.  The same can happen to us.  Pride leads us to pretend instead of being real.  Annabelle isn’t really a grieving widow, as we will soon learn.  Pride leads us to deny what so obviously exists, like Annabelle’s husband Tom’s drinking problem. Pride leads us to live for what others think.  Annabelle put on an elaborate funeral to bury an empty casket, because she couldn’t stand the thought of people knowing Tom had run away.  Pride will use people, even the people we claim to love, to keep up good appearances.  Annabelle buried Tom, and any effort to find him and be reconciled to him, because of what people might think. 

            As the story develops a bit further, we learn even more bad things pride can do.  We meet Tom Silby, Annabelle’s supposedly deceased husband.  He’s not dead, as Annabelle has claimed.  Tom felt so pressured and controlled by Annabelle’s pride that, on a business trip to Charlottesville, he took off and was gone for two years.  Now he returns to Mayberry, missing his wife, and wondering how she’s doing.  What Tom doesn’t know is that his Annabelle, unable to face the public with the truth that her husband had run away, told everyone that Tom had been killed, run over by a street car in Charlottesville.  Andy is flabbergasted to see Tom because he hasn’t laid eyes on him, or at least his casket, since his funeral.  As Andy tries to figure out how someone can be “back” after being “gone,” he gets his best laugh of all at the thought that Annabelle had to pretend that Tom was dead in order to avoid the truth that her obsession with pride had driven her husband away. 

            How many Tom Silby’s have been driven away by someone else’s pride, sacrificed on the altar of what others might think, crushed by the pressure to be perfect?

            Annabelle’s grand deception, Tom’s “last party,” as he calls it, gives Andy a very unusual opportunity: to give a man a detailed review of his own funeral.  As we hear Tom Silby react to what was good and not so good about his funeral, we have the chance to do something very important for ourselves.  We need to step back from our lives and ask:

            What would my funeral be like?

            What would my family say?

            What would my friends remember?

            What am I living for?

            Am I living for what I believe will really matter when the chaff is blown away and the essence of my life is revealed?  

            There is great value in, as Andy says, “paying respects to ourselves.”

            Now, let’s walk out of the cemetery with Andy and Tom and get back to the Underprivileged Children's Fund and the problem of pride.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a very strong warning about giving in order to be seen and applauded by others,

(Matthew 6:1-4)"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

If you and I do good things in order to be seen, in order to be applauded, in order to prop up our pride, in order to calm our fears of what others think, then that is all that our giving will accomplish.  God marks it “paid in full.”  We receive no reward from Him and do little good for others. 

Andy has no trouble laughing at Annabelle and seeing that her only problem is too much pride and worrying about what other people think.  What he cannot see is how this same overbearing concern for public praise is damaging his relationship to Opie. 

The moment Andy hears that the school children are giving to the Underprivileged Children’s Fund, he asks Annabelle if Opie is among the top givers. There’s nothing wrong with wanting Opie to share with others.  But what is wrong is why Andy wants Opie to give. He wants to be sure he has bragging rights to one of the most generous children in town.

Do you notice that, in many ways, the more Andy loves the praise of others, the less he loves Opie? 

            He jumps to conclusions about what Opie’s doing with his money.  He assumes that because he doesn’t want to give publicly to this fund, Opie is spending his money selfishly. 

            Andy doesn’t listen to Opie.  The name “Charlotte” comes up several times in the episode, but Andy never explores who this little girl is, what her life is like or why others are making fun of her.  How ironic that, in his zeal for the Underprivileged Children's Fund, Andy totally overlooks one of the children in need, a child and a need Opie saw so clearly.

            He even loses faith in Opie.  He decides that he is just selfish and indulgent, a “playboy,” because he wants to follow his plan to buy something for Charlotte. 

            So Opie ends up in his room, banished from the supper table and far from his father’s heart.  Such is the bitter fruit of the spirit of pride. 

            Aunt Bee sees what has happened and names the “spirit of Annabelle” at work in Andy.  She calls him to make a big discovery.  What he sees so well in others, he can’t see in himself—he’s showing more love for the praise of others than he’s showing his own son.  When Andy sees the error of his ways, he calls Opie to the table for supper.  When Opie asks, “Do you like me again?” Andy begins to see how wrong he has been. 

            Then comes the moment of revelation.  Andy finally hears the truth about his son’s financial priorities.  Opie is saving his money, not to take Charlotte to the movies or buy her a toy, but to buy her a winter coat.  Hers is worn out and the other children make fun of her.  What Andy has just learned leads to a great exchange between father and son:

            “Opie, you never told me what the money was for.”

            “You never asked.”

            Andy didn’t ask because he wasn’t listening to Opie.  He was straining his ears to hear the applause of the town.  What mattered to Andy was the public’s perception of him and his family.  Opie didn’t care about being a celebrity in the Underprivileged Children's Fund.  He just wanted to meet the need of the one he loved, quietly buying a coat for Charlotte. 

            Jesus says that there will come a day when all of us will stand before Him as the judge of our lives.  To some he will say, “I needed clothes and you gave them to me.”  To others he will say, “I needed clothes and you didn’t help me.”  Neither group will realize that they ever bought a coat for Jesus.  But He will say to them, as He would say to all of us who struggle to keep the flies of pride out of the ointment of our giving,

            (Matthew 25:40, The Message) I’m telling you the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.

            The epilogue of this episode gives us one more powerful truth to ponder.  As Andy and Tom sit on the bench in front of the court house and whittle, Andy points out that Tom Silby talks as though he really is buried in the town cemetery, just as Annabelle had pretended for two years.  Tom says that, in one way, he is.  The old Tom, who felt pressured by his wife and dealt with his pain through drinking, is dead and buried.  The one who’s walking around is a new man.  Paul writes to the Romans,

          (Romans 6:4) We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in            order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the

         Father, we too may live a new life.

Neither Andy nor Annabelle could overcome a spirit of pride on their own.  Neither can we.  We need a new beginning.  We need a new way of living.  We need, through the power of God’s grace, which we know through faith in Jesus, to bury our old nature and rise to live a new kind of life; a life that gives a coat to a little girl with no need of public praise, a life that lives, not for the applause of people, but only for the applause of heaven.