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 Tony Campolo "Richer Relationships" Program #3022 First air date February 22, 1987 |
Biography
The Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo is Professor of
Sociology at Eastern College, St. David's Pennsylvania. He spends
considerable time dealing with the challenges that face the poor in our
inner-cities and the poor in the Third World nations around the world.
He is also the author of many challenging books and the loving pastor of
an inter-racial, inner-city church in West Philadelphia. [Biographical
information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
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Good Minutes.
"Richer Relationships"
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French
journalist, came to this country in the early part of the 1800s. He came
in order to answer one question — What is the nature of the American
people? He saw us as a great people and he wanted to know what we are
all about. He looked for our greatness and he found it, I think. He
found it in a perfect balance between our strong emphasis on being
individualists and, on the other hand, our strong commitment of duty to
other people. He saw that to be good. We need to be both committed to
expressing who we are and what we are and being honest. On the other
hand, if we are going to be good people, we have a duty to everyone
around us and we must be willing at times to sacrifice our individuality
and our selfhood for the sake of others. He saw that individualism is
very much a part of where we are. We are a self-expressive people. We
are a people, he saw, who like to do their own things, who are into
being honest, being self-expressive, being self-fulfilled, being
self-actualized. Everybody’s into being himself or herself — and that’s
what America is about.
But he saw that there are two institutions that counterbalanced that —
that kept it from getting out of hand — because individualism and
self-expression can get out of hand. And those two institutions were the
family and the church. “The family and the church”, he said, “taught
people a deep sense of responsibility, a deep sense of concern for
others.” The church and the family taught people to sacrifice themselves
and to sacrifice even self-expression if it would help others who were
loved.
But something terrible has happened in America. A recent sociologist by
the name of Robert Bellah, and some of his associates at the University
of Southern California, re-examined the American culture in the order of
de Tocqueville, and they said what has happened is this: The church and
the family are institutions which are no longer communicating a sense of
responsibility, obligation and duty to people. The Church and the family
have themselves become institutions teaching people self-expression,
self-actualization, self-gratification.
Every time I talk to couples that are getting married I ask, “What do
you think marriage is all about?”
And they say something like this, “It’s a kind of symbiotic relationship
in which each of us is finding personal fulfillment in the other, and
we’re coming into this marriage because each is a believer that we can
find personal enhancement in this.”
I saw a poem that was used in a marriage ceremony lately that I
attended. I don’t know whether you've been to these ceremonies where
everybody writes their own vows, I don’t know if you’re into that but it
kind of makes me want to “puke”, but maybe it’s your thing, I don’t
know. But in this one the guy and the girl said together:
I am I and you are you —
It’s that kind of philosophy that has permeated our culture. That
everybody in this culture seems to more and more be buying into a sense
that — “I have a right to express myself and I find that if obligations
to others interfere with that then tough!”
And if we meet that’s beautiful.
I’m not here to meet your expectations,
You’re not here to meet my expectations.
I’m scared to death about the marriage institution falling apart. People
get divorced without any sense of duty to these people. I have a friend
— 25 years married — her husband came home one day and said, “This
marriage is not fulfilling me. This marriage is not actualizing me. This
marriage is not giving to me the psychic gratification that I need so
I’m leaving.” I mean, this woman shot 25 years on this guy. Put him
through Medical School. Sweat blood to make him everything that he is
today, and he’s walking out because he isn’t “self-fulfilled within the
context of the relationship”. You know, I don’t want to be nasty, but
people like that kind of make me sick because they have no sense of
obligation. They have no sense of duty.
People say, “You’re not suggesting that parents should stay together for
the sake of the kids are you?” I mean what happens to kids when the
parents are not fulfilled, one with the other, what happens to kids?
Well, it’s not the best situation to be sure, but let me tell you, it’s
a lot better than a kid having to live through a divorce. Sociologists
all during the 60s made up phony studies, and now we know that they are
phony, saying that divorce really isn’t traumatic on children. We now
know that nothing blows a kid’s life apart more than a divorce. I don’t
know why the church didn’t declare that. Why did it take a movie called,
“Kramer vs. Kramer” to communicate the message? It scares me that the
church no longer teaches responsibility, and the family is no longer a
responsible entity.
You’re saying, “Are you suggesting, Campolo, that parents should stay
together for the sake of their kids, even when the marriage is not
fulfilling? And if so, why?”
And my answer is very simple, “Because the Bible says to do it and the
Bible is right!”
Did I sound nasty? I didn’t mean to. I’m just angry over a society where
so many people hurt because persons, in an effort to express themselves
and to fulfill their own individual actualization and human potential,
are willing to bring havoc into the lives of others without any deep
sense of obligation or duty. It’s a big word — obligation. It’s a big
word — duty. But we seem to have escaped them.
I remember when I was a young pastor, I was always saying that if you’re
over the hill you ought to be moving faster, but it just doesn’t seem to
work for me. You say, “How do you know you're old, I mean, at what age
do you say you’re an old person?” My response is simple. I say you’re
old when you go to a wedding and the bride’s mother looks better than
the bride. I’ve done that. I see the young woman going down the aisle
and I say, “Kids are getting married these days.” If you’re 50 you know
what I mean. And then the mother comes down and I say, “Foxy, very
foxy.” And you know that you are over the hill.
I remember living with this elderly widow who was taking care of me when
I was a young pastor, 23 years of age, and a man in the town left his
wife and kids. I remember Aunt Lou saying, “I don’t understand it. She
put three piping hot meals on that table every day. Those kids were
neatly cleaned and dressed every day and she kept an immaculate house.”
Well, obviously, there’s much more to marriage than that, but this has
to be said: The woman did perform the duty and duty is worth something.
I worry about the elderly in our society. We don’t know what to do with
the elderly and you know why? Because most of us younger people do not
have any deep sense of obligation, we do not have any deep sense of duty
towards elderly people.
I’m worried about marriage because marriage is poured into a
psychotherapeutic mold. I had a couple go for marriage counseling. It
was horrible. I thought that the marriage counselor was going to help
them. But the marriage counselor was not committed to preserving the
marriage. The marriage counselor, following a therapeutic model, was
only concerned about whether or not the individuals were happy, and if
they were happy in the marriage, good, and if they would be happy
outside the marriage then they should divorce. I contend that de
Tocqueville was right. That when we do not see marriage as an
obligation, a responsibility to be lived out, under the will of God, we
have made a very serious mistake and we are undercutting the very nature
of a wholesome personality.
Good relationships depend on us being dutiful people. Good relationships
mean that in a relationship we are honest and we express ourselves and
we let people know who and what we are. But at the same time we
recognize that we have a duty, we have a responsibility to other people.
I have to deal with young people. I am amazed that kids all across this
country do not feel that they have any sense of duty, any sense of
obligation to their parents. Whenever I speak to college kids, I always
ask a simple question, “When was the last time you called your Mom? When
was the last time you called your Dad? When was the last time you wrote
home?” They act like they don’t owe them anything. They act like they
are not obligated. And the truth of the matter is that the Bible is
clear. “Honor thy Father and thy Mother.” The truth of the matter is
this: That on the one hand, we must be self-actualized people, on the
other hand, we must recognize that we have duties to people and we must
fulfill those duties if we are to be decent as fathers, as wives, as
children.
Now, I am concerned about the church as well. People go to church these
days and they leave churches, they go to other churches. When I ask them
why they changed churches they say things like, “Well, the church just
isn’t meeting my needs.” If I hear that one more time I’m going to
scream. “The church isn’t meeting my needs.” Oh, poor little you. It’s
not meeting your needs.
The church at its best is not an assemblage of people who come together
to get mass therapy. The church at its best is an assemblage of people
who have been called together, not so much to get their own needs met,
but to form a community that meets the needs of others. And that’s what
I want to ask. Are you, through the church, committed to meeting the
needs of others? People say, “I don’t need the church.” Of course you
don’t need the church! But the church needs you if it is to fulfill its
mission in the world.
I have to say this, that I’m concerned about the church losing its sense
of obligation and duty. I have a friend who is a pastor. He’s up in New
York and the church is dying because its an inner-city church and the
people are moving out of the community that previously attended the
church. And the way my buddy makes a living is very simple, he does
funerals. You know, when the funeral directors can’t get anybody else to
take the funerals, they call my friend. He makes 75 bucks for each of
them and that’s not bad for dropping people in the ground. So what
happened is, he got this funeral one day, and when he got there it was
an AIDS victim. The guy had died of AIDS. And in the room were 25
homosexual men. They sat down and he went through the service and at the
end of the service they got in their automobiles and made the procession
that went over to New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel and there they
buried the man.
As my friend began to move away from the grave, having said the things
that needed to be said and prayed the prayers that needed to be prayed,
he looked back and he realized that none of these homosexual men had
moved. He turned around and he said, “Is there anything that I can do
for you?”
One of them said, “Yes, there is something you can do. When I came to
this funeral, I was hoping that you would read the 23rd Psalm. You
didn’t read the 23rd Psalm. Would you read the 23rd Psalm before you
leave?” My friend read the 23rd Psalm.
Another one said, “There’s a part in the book of John, I think it's in
John 3, uh , 16. It talks about God loving the world. Could you read
that portion of Scripture for us?” And he did.
Finally one said, “There’s a passage in the book of Romans, I think it’s
the 8th chapter of Romans, where it says nothing can separate us from
the love of God.” Here’s this homosexual man saying, “Would you read
that part of the Bible where it says nothing can separate us from the
love of God? Neither height nor depth nor principalities would you read
that part?”
My friend said, “I stood there at the graveside reading scripture to 25
homosexual men for almost an hour.” The story overwhelms me because it
illustrates that these men feel alienated from the church, and they feel
alienated from the church because the church fails to see that it has a
responsibility, that it has a duty, it has an obligation that it is not
fulfilling to the hurting peoples of this world. Are you fulfilling your
obligation? Are you fulfilling your duty to others?
Christianity brings these two things together — duty and individuality.
The good news of the Gospel is this: Jesus teaches us that the way to
become personally fulfilled as a human being is not by escaping duty to
others, but quite to the contrary, we become fulfilled and actualized
people as we live out our duty to other people. That’s the way it goes
and we must learn that others, and the opportunity to serve others, is
what gives us a chance to become the people that are fulfilled, complete
and joyful.
My heroine these days has to be Mother Teresa. There’s a woman that has
become fulfilled and actualized and full of joy, not by escaping duty,
but by committing herself to meeting the needs of the needs of the world
as the church should. I mean, how do you think Mother Teresa wakes up in
the morning? Bothered because she has this duty to perform? Does she
feel that the duty is a heavy thing? I mean, what does she do, wake up
and say, “Well, here goes, another lousy day on the streets of
Calcutta?” I mean, is that what she does? Or does Mother Teresa wake up
in the morning and rush out onto the streets to meet the poor and the
oppressed, to lift up the hurting and the dying. She says, “It’s easy
for me to serve people, because every time I look into the face of a
human being I see the face of Jesus looking back at me.” Now that’s not
bad. That’s not bad theology at all.
I am convinced that the same Jesus who went to Calvary and died for my
sin; the same Jesus who is resurrected from the grave and is coming
back; that same Jesus waits, mystically and miraculously, and is on the
other side of every human being that I encounter. And if by the grace of
God I have the eyes to see, I can look into that person’s face, and when
I look into that person’s face, if I look deeply enough I will not only
see that person, but I will see Jesus staring at me through that person.
That’s what makes it so easy to serve.
Let me put it this way: If I were to lift somebody out of the gutter and
take him home, and give him a shower, and clean him up, and give him a
meal, and put him in my bed to sleep, I might be noble. I might ask, “am
I noble enough to do this?” But if, on the other hand, I picked up
somebody out of the gutter and looked in their face, and saw Jesus
staring back at me, I would not ask, “am I noble?”, I would ask, “am I
worthy?” It’s an honor, it’s a privilege to perform duties. When you
serve people you serve Jesus Christ himself.
I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania some years ago and the
students were all there in the front row and we were talking about
social problems. And I got on the subject of prostitution. And I said,
“What would Jesus have said to a prostitute?”
And one student in the front row, who was an atheist, said, “Jesus never
met a prostitute.”
I very quickly reached into my pocket and pulled out my New Testament
and said, “He did and I want to show you what he said to prostitutes.”
And the student yelled back at me, and he said, “Jesus never met a
prostitute.”
I said, “I’m going to show you. I'm going to prove it to you.”
He said, “Dr., you’re not listening to me.” He said, “When Mary
Magdalene encountered Jesus do you think Jesus saw a prostitute? When he
looked at Mary Magdalene do you think he saw a prostitute? Is that who
you think he saw?”
Well, I don’t mind having my theology corrected, I just hate it when its
an atheist that does it. The kid was absolutely right. Jesus never saw a
prostitute, that’s what made it so easy for him to serve people, because
he didn’t see what other people saw. He saw the sacred, he saw the holy,
he saw the glorious. And in so doing he was able to make serving others
a glorious thing. And he teaches us. “Inasmuch as you do it unto the
least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do it unto me.”
If you are going to have good relationships at work, at home, at church,
you’ve got to understand two things. On the one hand, you’ve got to be
the individualist who expresses who you are and what you are. Good
relationships are never built on phoniness. On the other hand, every
encounter is an encouragement to perform a duty and to live out an
obligation.
I was on a train leaving Victoria Station in London. And as we left the
station I looked across from me in the little compartment and there were
two guys there. It wasn’t long out of the station before one of them
began to tremble, one of them began to shake. He had an epileptic
seizure. He rolled off the seat onto the floor, shaking and shuddering.
I was frightened. His friend reached down and picked him up and put him
back on the seat. The man continued to tremble and then, all of a
sudden, the shaking stopped. His friend put his coat over the man as
though the coat was a blanket, wiped some beads of perspiration from his
brow, and then turned to me and said, “Please forgive us.”
I said, “Hey, nothing to be forgiven. I myself was trembling.”
He said, “We were in Vietnam together. He’s an Englishman and I’m an
American. We were wounded. I lost my leg.” He pulled up his trousers and
showed me his artificial leg. He said, “My friend here had half of his
chest blown away by a hand grenade. The M.A.S.H. helicopter that had
come to pick us up was blown out of the sky and I was sure that we were
going to die. It was then that my friend got up — to tell the truth,
mister, I don’t know how he got up,” he said to me, “But he got up. And
then what was even more wild is he grabbed me by the shirt and he began
to drag me through the jungle. Every step he took he screamed in pain.
Every step he took he screamed in agony. And I told him to let me die
because if he tried to get me out we’d both die, and he said, ‘Harry, if
you die in the jungle, I’m going to die with you.’ And he got me out of
the jungle. Two years ago I found out he had this problem so I sold what
I had in New York, I closed down my apartment and I came over here to
take care of him. Because the doctor’s say somebody’s got to be with him
all the time.” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “That’s our story.”
I said, “Hey, Mister. Not only don’t you have to apologize, I want to
thank you.” I said, “I make my living by telling stories and you gave me
one of the most powerful ones I've ever heard.”
And then he said this, he said, “Hey, don’t be impressed — don’t be
impressed,” he said. He said, “You don’t understand. After what he did
for me, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him.”
Now there’s a great line. “After what he did for me, there isn’t
anything I wouldn’t do for him.” The Bible says this: Jesus died on the
cross. You know what that means? It means that you owe. You owe! You’re
not your own, you have been bought with a price. You owe Jesus. You owe
others. You owe God.
Let me ask you — have you kept your promises? For good relationships are
built on keeping promises. When did you make promises? To your wife
remember the promises. To your children -remember the promises. When you
dedicated your child at the church, you made promises, at the wedding
you made promises. Perhaps religiously you made promises. I know when I
made mine it was at a youth retreat — it was at a conference. It was at
the top of a hill, I think it was after the 50th verse of Kum-Ba-Ya. I
started to cry and I committed my life to Jesus. And I promised that I
would live for him.
When was the last time you made a promise, and did you keep the promise?
There probably aren’t any of you out there who hasn’t at one time or
another made a promise to God. Your promise — did you keep the promise?
Are you living for the Lord? Are you living out his will? Are you
fulfilling your obligations to those around you? It’s alright to be an
individualist and express yourself but remember — you’ve got duties,
too.
Good relationships are always built on this: a brilliant balance of
honesty and self-expression on the one hand, and a deep sense of duty
and obligation to those you are dealing with on the other. This is the
will of God. It’s easy to fulfill your sense of duty to others if you
can sense the presence of Jesus in them.