Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.
Interpretation
We often make others feel guilty without helping them overcome that guilt, and it's essential to acknowledge this behavior and strive for change.
This quote by Tony Campolo highlights the human tendency to impose guilt on others while neglecting to support them in overcoming that emotion. It calls for self-reflection and indicates a need for change in our behavior towards others; instead of fostering feelings of guilt, we should aim to provide understanding and forgiveness, acknowledging our role in the emotional struggles of those around us.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth and relationships, this quote can highlight the importance of supporting others rather than making them feel guilty.
When in fact we live in a society that makes life hell for gays and lesbians, this community has got to stand up and say, ‘We’re on your side as you struggle for dignity,’ and, ‘Yes, we will defy anybody who says otherwise, even if we have to go to Disneyland to prove it.’
Your past is important but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.
There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.
Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change.
I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.
Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.
Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. . . . Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.
Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?
The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.
The self is our life's goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality.
Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.
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