Richard A. Goodling - "Rediscovering the Family" (May 14, 1967)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(firecracker pops) | 0:03 | |
(pipe organ music) | 0:05 | |
- | The Bible contains a number of passages | 0:28 |
which reassure parents. | 0:31 | |
Passages, such as the Fifth Commandment, | 0:34 | |
which emphasize on the parts of children, | 0:38 | |
obedience and honor, and respect. | 0:42 | |
The Bible also has a way of getting under our skin. | 0:47 | |
And so it is not surprising | 0:53 | |
that we find a number of parentally disturbing passages. | 0:56 | |
In "Matthew", for example, Jesus says, | 1:03 | |
"I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." | 1:07 | |
Or, "I have come to set a man against his father | 1:12 | |
and a daughter against her mother, | 1:16 | |
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, | 1:20 | |
and a man's clothes will be those of his own household." | 1:24 | |
I came across a cartoon recently | 1:29 | |
of a young man introducing his fiance to his mother. | 1:32 | |
And she greeted them at the door saying, | 1:37 | |
"How do you do? | 1:41 | |
My son has told me so much about you | 1:43 | |
that I feel I dislike you already." | 1:47 | |
However, we do not do justice | 1:53 | |
to this quotation from "Matthew" | 1:56 | |
if we take it out of context. | 1:59 | |
In the quotation, | 2:03 | |
Jesus emphasizes that blood relationships | 2:04 | |
are of secondary importance | 2:07 | |
to the relationship of discipleship. | 2:11 | |
He asserts that commitment to him | 2:15 | |
and his way of life is to be above every other tie, | 2:17 | |
even that of family. | 2:23 | |
So this passage, taken out of context, | 2:26 | |
may remind us of, | 2:29 | |
but cannot be taken to justify the antagonisms | 2:31 | |
within contemporary family which set member against member. | 2:36 | |
We do need to rediscover the family. | 2:43 | |
There is an awareness that the emotional health | 2:47 | |
of our nation depends upon | 2:50 | |
the emotional health of its families, | 2:52 | |
just as the personal maturity | 2:56 | |
is dependent upon the quality of family life. | 2:59 | |
The family is faced today | 3:06 | |
with loss of its geographical roots. | 3:07 | |
The average American family moves once every five years. | 3:12 | |
The hometown is no longer | 3:18 | |
the psychological anchor point | 3:20 | |
that it once was. | 3:23 | |
Many families consequently live | 3:26 | |
as if we're in a foreign land, | 3:28 | |
nostalgic for the mountains, | 3:31 | |
or the planes, or the shores of its home. | 3:34 | |
The family is faced today | 3:41 | |
with the loss of its interpersonal roots. | 3:42 | |
Frequent moves mean that people must repeatedly | 3:46 | |
give up friendships, | 3:50 | |
and are therefore reluctant | 3:52 | |
to establish strong ties. | 3:54 | |
Moves away from parents and grandparents | 3:58 | |
cut children off from family tradition | 4:01 | |
and family continuity. | 4:05 | |
The family is also faced today | 4:09 | |
with being cut off from its moral | 4:11 | |
and spiritual roots, | 4:13 | |
with transient church membership, | 4:15 | |
with an ever-widening gap between | 4:20 | |
the values of one generation and those of the next. | 4:22 | |
And with conflicting value systems | 4:27 | |
within any one generation. | 4:29 | |
This concern for the significance | 4:33 | |
of family relationships is shared | 4:36 | |
by our colleges and universities. | 4:39 | |
Charles Frankel in a publication entitled | 4:43 | |
"The College and the Student" | 4:47 | |
points out that the family | 4:50 | |
of a student normally regarded a college | 4:52 | |
as its surrogate. | 4:56 | |
Responsible, not only for the student's education, | 4:58 | |
but for his or her physical and moral security. | 5:03 | |
A large part of what the American college | 5:09 | |
has done is unintelligible | 5:12 | |
unless we recognize that it has served | 5:15 | |
and has been asked to serve as stand-in parents. | 5:20 | |
We need help to rediscover the family, | 5:27 | |
but before we can be helped, | 5:30 | |
we need to admit that something is wrong, | 5:33 | |
and it is not easy | 5:38 | |
to admit that all is not well in our families. | 5:39 | |
Harry Sullivan, an outstanding psychiatrist, | 5:43 | |
has written, "If a person tells me his home life is perfect, | 5:46 | |
I take off my glasses, | 5:52 | |
which means that I cannot see him, | 5:55 | |
and I gaze at him and say, extraordinary. | 5:58 | |
I then pass on to some other topic, | 6:04 | |
but I return to this later." | 6:07 | |
Now not every family has a skeleton in its closet. | 6:11 | |
Rather, it may be the routine | 6:16 | |
of the kitchen or the dinner table or the family room, | 6:19 | |
which shames us. | 6:22 | |
Small facets of our family life | 6:25 | |
which do not fit in with a picture that we want to give. | 6:28 | |
But in little ways, | 6:33 | |
our secrets get out, through the kindergarten child | 6:35 | |
who says that daddy makes mommy cry, | 6:39 | |
or through the children's friends | 6:45 | |
who stay overnight and hear our angry words. | 6:47 | |
Those with the highest ideals and the best education | 6:51 | |
are usually the ones most ashamed of their secret behavior, | 6:56 | |
because they are the ones who most expect | 7:00 | |
that they should be able to do better. | 7:04 | |
Sometimes it can be a lifting | 7:08 | |
of a considerable burden | 7:11 | |
to know that no family is faultless. | 7:13 | |
We all have our faults. | 7:17 | |
My colleague and I understood this | 7:20 | |
when he came by my office early on a Saturday morning | 7:23 | |
and said to me with tongue-in-cheek, | 7:27 | |
"Isn't it nice to be able to escape domestic tranquility?" | 7:31 | |
We erect walls | 7:39 | |
not only to keep outsiders from looking | 7:40 | |
in on our family life, | 7:43 | |
we erect walls among members of the family. | 7:45 | |
No man is a hero to his valet, | 7:51 | |
and few are heroes to others within the family. | 7:53 | |
They know us too well. | 7:57 | |
We grow afraid of those with whom we live most closely, | 8:00 | |
and upon whom we depend most deeply. | 8:05 | |
We do not often realize how afraid we are | 8:10 | |
of one another, parents afraid of their children, | 8:13 | |
children afraid of their parents, | 8:19 | |
husbands and wives afraid of each other, | 8:23 | |
children tyrannized their parents | 8:26 | |
with their punishing words, "I don't love you," | 8:28 | |
or the equally devastating indictment, "You don't love me." | 8:32 | |
Children are also afraid of their parents, | 8:36 | |
afraid they won't care, | 8:40 | |
afraid they won't support them, | 8:43 | |
afraid they won't keep their promises. | 8:44 | |
Husbands and wives are afraid of each other. | 8:48 | |
And each tries to hide the fear behind irritation | 8:51 | |
or cover up irritation | 8:55 | |
with exaggerated expressions of affection. | 8:57 | |
Sometimes we know that our anger hides fear, | 9:03 | |
and that fear points to hurt. | 9:09 | |
And the bitterest anger may hide the deepest hurt. | 9:13 | |
It indicates that we've been most hurt | 9:17 | |
by those we most need. | 9:19 | |
Now, every one of us has difficulty expressing his feelings, | 9:23 | |
and this difficulty robs the family | 9:27 | |
of some of life's most satisfying experiences. | 9:30 | |
We're particularly awkward | 9:33 | |
with our intimate feelings of tenderness and love. | 9:35 | |
To be an adult to a last means to be unemotional, | 9:40 | |
display of affection is all right for young lovers | 9:47 | |
who are not expected to know any better, | 9:51 | |
or made nance for whom everyone feels sorry. | 9:54 | |
And grandmothers who are usually harmless. | 9:59 | |
Paul Tournier in his book, | 10:05 | |
"The Meaning of Persons", | 10:06 | |
says how many married couples no longer know how | 10:08 | |
to tell each other quite simply that they love each other? | 10:13 | |
Even joy is smothered. | 10:17 | |
"Yesterday evening," he writes, | 10:19 | |
"A mother announced to me the engagement | 10:21 | |
of her daughter. | 10:23 | |
You approve of the young man, I ask. | 10:26 | |
Oh, absolutely. | 10:28 | |
Then I hope you flung your arms around her neck | 10:31 | |
and told her so. | 10:34 | |
No, I didn't dare to. | 10:36 | |
I told her it was getting late | 10:40 | |
and she had better go to bed | 10:41 | |
and that we would talk about it some other time. | 10:43 | |
We seemed so afraid | 10:47 | |
of what is most real and deepest within us, | 10:50 | |
yet as more than one psychotherapist has discovered, | 10:54 | |
if one can understand what is most real | 10:59 | |
within his own experience at the deepest personal level | 11:02 | |
of feeling and understanding, | 11:07 | |
it is likely that it is the very element which would, | 11:10 | |
if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. | 11:13 | |
But we leave unexpressed | 11:21 | |
and unshared our deepest feelings. | 11:23 | |
And the feelings we most regret leaving unexpressed | 11:27 | |
and unshared are those of love. | 11:30 | |
Grief seems most agonizing | 11:36 | |
for those who have lost someone | 11:38 | |
at a time when the last word spoken were those of anger. | 11:41 | |
We cling to so many relationships | 11:48 | |
in the past because some of our deepest feelings | 11:50 | |
were left unexpressed, unshared. | 11:53 | |
Bound as it were to past relationships, | 11:58 | |
we are unable to live freely in the present. | 12:01 | |
Jesus knew how difficult | 12:05 | |
yet how necessary it is to transfer loyalties, | 12:08 | |
to set aside past relationships of child and parent | 12:14 | |
if one is to be free to live as an adult. | 12:18 | |
To rediscover our own families, | 12:24 | |
we must, in the words of Saint Paul, | 12:27 | |
"Put away childish things." | 12:29 | |
Husbands and wives discover that they do not want | 12:33 | |
to give up the protection | 12:36 | |
which a mother or a father affords. | 12:38 | |
Adults discover that they do not want | 12:42 | |
to put away childish images, | 12:44 | |
but that they want to retain | 12:46 | |
the image of a dominating parent or an indulging parent, | 12:48 | |
or I protecting parent, or a tyrannical parent. | 12:54 | |
And parents discover that even if they put away | 12:58 | |
the childish relationships of earlier years, | 13:01 | |
yet they cling nevertheless to certain myths, | 13:05 | |
which prevent their children | 13:09 | |
from becoming parents to themselves. | 13:11 | |
There are three such myths, | 13:16 | |
which are particularly binding, | 13:17 | |
the myth of innocence forever, | 13:19 | |
the myth of obedience forever, | 13:22 | |
and the myth of intimacy forever. | 13:26 | |
The myth of innocence forever says | 13:30 | |
that children can be protected forever. | 13:33 | |
The same is to be a favorite myth | 13:36 | |
of parents who have found life difficult, even cruel, | 13:39 | |
so they want to raise hot house children, | 13:44 | |
but hot house children like hot house plants | 13:48 | |
must be sheltered forever. | 13:52 | |
The myth of innocence forever | 13:56 | |
is the myth of the Garden of Eden, | 13:58 | |
with Adam and Eve living within the bosom | 14:01 | |
of God with no cares, | 14:04 | |
but with no freedom and responsibility. | 14:06 | |
Thank heaven for the fall. | 14:11 | |
My fall was upward, not downward, | 14:15 | |
for it marked the movement towards freedom | 14:18 | |
and what is freedom except the capacity for choice? | 14:20 | |
And the movement toward responsibility, | 14:24 | |
for what is responsibility | 14:27 | |
except the ability to anticipate | 14:29 | |
and live with the consequences of one's choices? | 14:32 | |
The myth of obedience forever says | 14:38 | |
that children can be guided forever, | 14:40 | |
but only parents who expect to live forever | 14:43 | |
should have perfectly obedient children. | 14:46 | |
Disobedience is a normal part of childhood. | 14:50 | |
I do not mean disobedience as a persistent, angry, | 14:54 | |
destructive disregard for rules and regulations. | 14:58 | |
I mean disobedience | 15:03 | |
which represents the child's assertion | 15:04 | |
of his strength and individuality. | 15:07 | |
Grab an infant by the arm and hold him | 15:11 | |
so he cannot move and you will feel him struggle, | 15:13 | |
and rightfully so, against restraint. | 15:16 | |
And you will hear his cries of rage. | 15:20 | |
Hold on to him and keep him from going | 15:24 | |
where he is able to go, | 15:26 | |
and you will arouse his resentment and not his obedience. | 15:29 | |
Likewise, demands for obedience may overshadow | 15:34 | |
the more important lessons in personal responsibility. | 15:37 | |
Only the person who is free | 15:43 | |
to disobey his parents can become his own parent. | 15:45 | |
Psychologically, the passage referred | 15:52 | |
to earlier is sound, to become a parent | 15:54 | |
to yourself may mean you must be at odds | 15:57 | |
if you're a mother and father. | 16:00 | |
The myth of intimacy forever says | 16:04 | |
that we will never be separated from others. | 16:06 | |
The family is the place for the first experience | 16:10 | |
of intimacy. | 16:13 | |
Intimacy is the deepest human need, | 16:15 | |
the need to have a genuine, warm, | 16:19 | |
responsive relationship. | 16:23 | |
And what a thrill it is | 16:25 | |
to see the infant's first response | 16:28 | |
in affection to affection. | 16:30 | |
But parents cannot hold on to their children forever. | 16:35 | |
The child must widen his range | 16:39 | |
of intimacy to include other children and other adults. | 16:41 | |
And the intimacy gained in infancy | 16:45 | |
and childhood seems to be lost | 16:48 | |
for a time between parents and child in early adolescence. | 16:50 | |
Perhaps it is because parents' efforts | 16:57 | |
to discipline the adolescent for adulthood, | 17:00 | |
which is approaching rapidly, | 17:04 | |
leaves little room for intimacy. | 17:07 | |
Clean up your room, | 17:10 | |
do your homework. | 17:11 | |
Perhaps it is because adolescence is a time of rebellion | 17:13 | |
if individuality and uniqueness is to be protected. | 17:16 | |
Perhaps it is because adolescence | 17:21 | |
is a time for developing sexuality with its secrets. | 17:23 | |
But then intimacy is regained in dating, | 17:29 | |
and courtship and marriage, | 17:32 | |
when suddenly walls of isolation are broken down | 17:33 | |
and love is heightened by a new sense of shared experience. | 17:37 | |
And the intimacy lost with one's parents | 17:42 | |
may be regained through one's children | 17:48 | |
and their grandchildren. | 17:52 | |
How parents and husbands and wives | 17:56 | |
might envy the young adults' ability | 18:00 | |
and opportunity to fall in love. | 18:04 | |
Unfortunately, parents and husbands | 18:09 | |
and wives have arrived at two fatal assumptions. | 18:11 | |
One is that they know all there | 18:15 | |
is to know about one another, | 18:17 | |
there's nothing left to discover, | 18:20 | |
and many a married person imagines | 18:23 | |
that he knows all there is to know about his mate. | 18:25 | |
He has lost the loving curiosity | 18:29 | |
he had while he was still only engaged to be married. | 18:31 | |
The other fatal assumption | 18:36 | |
is that the decision to be married | 18:38 | |
was made once and for all. | 18:39 | |
So now married couples feel trapped. | 18:42 | |
The truth of the matter is that probably nine out | 18:47 | |
of 10 couples would make the same decision again, | 18:49 | |
and should be making that decision every day. | 18:55 | |
The decision to be married | 18:59 | |
is a process, | 19:01 | |
with repeated opportunities to propose and to accept. | 19:02 | |
But we're more apt to be heard saying no | 19:07 | |
in order to retaliate when we're hurt. | 19:10 | |
What we really want to say is yes. | 19:13 | |
Otis Maxfield, former pastor of First Community Church | 19:18 | |
in Columbus, Ohio, | 19:22 | |
and now director of the American Foundation | 19:23 | |
of Religion and Psychiatry tells | 19:27 | |
the case of a young married graduate student | 19:29 | |
who became disenchanted with his wife | 19:31 | |
and fell in love with another girl. | 19:34 | |
But the love affair soon blew up, | 19:37 | |
and the young man came to himself | 19:40 | |
and realized that his marital problem had at its basis | 19:42 | |
his conflicting needs for his wife | 19:48 | |
to be both a wife and a mother to him. | 19:50 | |
When he got in touch with his wife who had, in the meantime, | 19:54 | |
gone home to her parents, | 19:59 | |
she told him tearfully that she couldn't come back, | 20:01 | |
that it was all over. | 20:04 | |
And that furthermore, | 20:06 | |
having been terribly hurt and feeling quite helpless | 20:08 | |
and worthless, | 20:11 | |
she had had a casual affair with an older man | 20:13 | |
and was now four months pregnant. | 20:15 | |
Determined to save his marriage, | 20:19 | |
the young man took his wife with him | 20:21 | |
to the church counseling center. | 20:23 | |
And together they discovered that neither | 20:25 | |
of them was blameless, | 20:27 | |
that each had been disloyal to the other. | 20:30 | |
And that the love once possible was possible again. | 20:33 | |
When the baby was born, | 20:40 | |
the couple brought him to First Community Church | 20:42 | |
to be baptized. | 20:46 | |
The young man asked to offer the prayer | 20:48 | |
after the baptizing, | 20:52 | |
and three of the sentences used in the prayer stand out. | 20:55 | |
Dear Lord, we are so glad that in spite of our wickedness, | 21:02 | |
all of us have a possibility for goodness. | 21:07 | |
I'm so glad that parenthood | 21:12 | |
is a set of relationships, | 21:15 | |
more than the accident of flesh and blood. | 21:17 | |
I am so glad that love reveals | 21:23 | |
and does not conceal. | 21:27 | |
Perhaps these sentences from the young man's prayer | 21:31 | |
may help you rediscover your family. | 21:34 | |
Innocence forever is a myth. | 21:39 | |
Neither we nor others are perfect | 21:41 | |
or without fault. | 21:43 | |
Obedience forever is a myth. | 21:47 | |
We do not always love, honor, and cherish. | 21:49 | |
Intimacy, forever, is a myth. | 21:54 | |
We know the isolation of fear and anger. | 21:56 | |
But may those in our families hear us say quite simply, | 22:02 | |
I know we have our faults. | 22:08 | |
Forgive me as I forgive you. | 22:11 | |
I know we have our moments of fear and anger, | 22:15 | |
but let us know also our moments of love. | 22:18 | |
Dear Lord, we are so glad that in spite of our wickedness, | 22:34 | |
all of us have a possibility for goodness. | 22:38 | |
I'm so glad that parenthood | 22:43 | |
is a set of relationships more than the accident | 22:45 | |
of flesh and blood. | 22:48 | |
I am so glad that love reveals | 22:51 | |
and does not conceal. | 22:54 | |
And now may the trust, | 22:58 | |
which is faith abide, | 22:59 | |
may the anticipation which is hope abide. | 23:02 | |
May the affection which is love abide. | 23:06 | |
May these three abide in our families this day, and always. | 23:10 | |
(inspiring Gospel music) | 23:24 |
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