Does Christianity demand “niceness”? Benedictine Oblate Elizabeth Scalia writes that the question always brings her back to the Gospel of John and specifically to the calling of Nathaniel by Christ. Encouraged by his friends to meet the one “about whom Moses and the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth,” Nathaniel snarks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” My “nice” friends would be all over that. What a mean thing to say about someone he didn’t even know! What a hurtful and dismissive remark to the people of Nazareth, who are as good as anyone else and deserving of full respect. I concur, to a point. Depending on one’s leanings, that uncharitable snob, Nathaniel, was either an elitist one percenter or an aloof ninety-nine percenter, but either way, he wasn’t nice. Interestingly, Jesus didn’t seem to find Nathaniel’s demeanor too uncharitable for his company or even to mind his tossed-off derision. One can imagine him smiling and putting a friendly arm around Nathaniel’s shoulders as he responds, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” In a manner of speaking, he was saying Nathaniel was someone he could trust to speak the unwelcome word from time to time or, at the very least, not simply tell Jesus what he thought the rabbi wanted to hear. Jesus, it seemed, preferred someone who would speak a slightly edgy truth over someone who would be “nice” but dishonest. Being himself all Truth, dishonesty in the guise of niceness would not serve Christ then and does not serve us well in our faith journey today.