Robert Schuller Interview (page: 5 / 6) Crystal Cathedral	Print Interview

You refer to your credential, the sense of a broken heart. What setbacks have you gone through along the way?

Robert Schuller: We're not talking about challenges now. We're not talking about physical pain.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I could talk about losing everything in a tornado, and escaping with your life, and I know what it's like to be homeless, and that's nothing. No big deal. I know what it's like to have my home burned, and all the papers, and I'm a student in college, living in a private house. I would fail an English course because of it, but that's no big deal. And, a daughter whose leg was amputated, when she was our athlete. She was 13 years old. That was a pretty big deal. My wife, having amputations of breasts because of cancer, that was a heavy deal. Or my having an accident and being 20 minutes from being DOA at the hospital in Amsterdam, having two brain surgeries in eight days. That was nothing, that was a piece of cake, because I didn't even know what was going on.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

That didn't hurt the heart. I'm talking about heartache, or heartbreak. I've had that. That's the biggest deal. That's doing what you know you have to do, being committed to integrity and excellence, and expecting that you'd be applauded for it. And instead, you are condemned for it. You are rejected by the organizations you respect the most, like family.

My family never did that, but my denomination did. I belong to the oldest denomination in the United States. I respect it. Take a history course of America, start in 1628, and you'll see it's small, but very significant, very proud and properly so. You'll see the Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, the great names that belong to this denomination, the Dutch families of America.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My denomination shunned me when they heard I was preaching in a drive-in theater. That was rather embarrassing. Then, it wasn't long and I began preaching a theology centered around self esteem. I was attacked by this. They would have accused me of heresy, but I was too good a theologian. I did not commit a heresy, and they knew it. I did nothing that was heretical. So, when they couldn't accuse me -- because I was too well educated, frankly -- I was shunned.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Up until my work, I think, the history of theology would say that Christian theology taught that sin is a free choice that we make to rebel against God. And, I did not accept that. It did not make sense. I said, "Why would intelligent people -- educated people, smart people -- rebel against a God that we say, loves us? It doesn't make sense." So that led me to a theology of self esteem and more arrows in the back. You can tell who the leader is; he's got the arrows in the back.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

This hurt. It hurt until only six days before I taped this interview with you. Six days ago was the highlight of my life. The theological school that had shunned me, that attacked me, six days ago conferred upon me an honor that they had never in their 126 years conferred upon any graduate. I received the first Distinguished Alumnus award. It made me cry. I was right, and finally they see it. I think I'm shaping Christianity. Jesus treated people beautifully. The church hasn't always treated people beautifully. "I'll love you if... I'll love you when... I'll love you after..." And that's not Christianity. Authentic Christianity says, God says, "I'll love you." Period.

Was this the seminary that you had gone to, that gave you the award?

Robert Schuller: The award came from the seminary that I graduated from 47 years ago, Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

Apart from what you've just said, how would you describe the contribution you've made to your field?

Robert Schuller: I think it is trying to purge the faith of its negative factors. I think the unbelieving world, or the secular world, have been very unfair in their criticism. When they attack Christianity for its hypocrisy, they forget something very important. We have chosen, as our mission statement, to reach out and gather to ourselves, into our circle of friendship, the worst people in the world. Remarkable. We spend billions of dollars to go to the bad people, hoping we can turn them into good people. We go for the sinners. So don't say we're a lot of hypocrites. We've got a lot of hypocrites, of course we do, what would you expect if you went for the bad people?

You've said the cross is a minus turned into a plus.

Robert Schuller: Yes. I think that's what faith is, trying to take the minuses and turn them into pluses. We try to take bad people and turn them into good people, try and take negative people and turn them into positive people. We're trying to take selfish people and make them unselfish people. That was the focus of Judaism, and that's where Jesus came from, and where he belonged. As I say, he turned his scars into stars.

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