Biography

Dr. John Claypool is rector emeritus of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and theologian-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans. John is the author of many books and is one of America’s great preachers. “The Platinum Rule”

Several years ago I read a newspaper account that had two stories side by side that reflect the complexity of us human beings. One of the stories was heart warming; the other was heart rending.

The first story was about a blue-collar worker who was injured on the job. He had to spend some time in the hospital and piled up considerable medical bills. After he had gotten through that, he filed for Workmen’s Compensation and, in due time, was given a very generous settlement.

Now, this was a simple man. He didn’t have a bank account; he didn’t live in the world of checks and of statements. And therefore, what he decided to do was to get a neighbor to take him to a store where he was known to cash the check. It was about $3,000. His intention was to take the money and go to the hospital, go to the doctors, and settle his affairs in that way.

As the neighbor was taking him home after the check had been cashed, he offered to treat him to dinner. And so they stopped at a little restaurant and, unbeknown to the worker, the wallet with all of the insurance money slipped out of his pocket.

Well, the next morning, when he went to get his money to go settle his accounts, he couldn’t find it. He was distraught; he turned the house upside down. Then he called his neighbor and said, “Please look in your car to see if you can find it,” because he could not.

So the two of them began to anxiously retrace their steps of the day before. They went to the store where the checked was cashed but it was not to be found. Then they went back to the restaurant and he went to the manager and said very nervously, “Did you by chance find a billfold last night with lots of cash in it?”

And the manager said, “You know, in truth, we did. How much cash was in it?” The man told him down to the last penny.

The manager said, “Actually, our best and oldest waitress, Daisy, found this wallet last night down in one of the booths. She brought it over. It had no identification so we didn’t know who to call. I am so glad that you have come back.”

With that, he raced into the safe and handed the man over his billfold with every cent intact. When this happened, the worker was so absolutely relieved that he broke down and wept. They were tears of relief, tears of gratitude, tears of real joy.

When he got himself composed he said, “Could I speak to the waitress who did this?” The manager called a lady. Her name was Daisy, a simple country woman, a widow, a grandmother, a person who had to skimp and save all her life just to keep things together. She was a person for whom $3,000 is a windfall. It would have made a great difference. When he thanked her for what she had done she said, “You know, I never gave it a second thought. I was raised by the golden rule. I try to do for other people what I would like for them to do for me if the roles were reversed.”

She said, “If I had lost my money, I would hope that somebody would give it back and not steal it and, therefore, I didn’t even think about it. I am so glad that it is back in your hands.”

This is why I think we call it the Golden Rule, because when human beings treat each other that way, there is something golden. Everybody walked away from that interaction with a warm and good feeling. You see, Daisy had discovered by listening to her own life a kind of moral compass. That is, in determining what she would like for other people to do to her, she got a clue as to what she could do for other people. Needless to belabor the point, it is often true that when we will simply ask ourselves, “What do I like?” then we have some insight into how we should act toward other people.

Now, the converse of this is also true and that is when people don’t treat us the way Daisy treated that billfold. When they are unjust or dishonest, we resent that. We feel that we are being violated and that is where the other story that I read some time ago comes in.

This is an account of a woman who was shopping at a big mall. When she came out, her heart sank because somebody had backed into the side of her car. Both doors on the driver’s side were crushed; she felt like hundreds of dollars of damage had been done. But then her spirits lifted when she noticed a note under the windshield wiper, and she said, “Thank God, whoever did it is at least willing to be responsible.”

Well, she reached for the note and took it. On it were written the words, “I just backed into your car. The people who saw me do it are seeing me write this note. They think I am giving you my name and address; they are wrong.” And, no name. The woman’s spirits fell again.

Now, this is the abuse of power; this is a way for somebody to treat another that not even that man would have liked. They say that even a thief thinks robbery is wrong when he is being stolen from and anybody who has had that kind of treatment, that kind of violation of this inner-moral compass, knows that that hurts.

Therefore, I need not belabor the point that this whole world of ours would be immeasurably better if all of us could simply learn to listen to our own hearts, like Daisy, and then proceed to act toward others in the ways that our hearts tell us that we would like to be treated. The whole tone of our life together could be immeasurably raised if that simple and familiar moral axiom became the rule of our lives. I don’t think we will ever get beyond the need to let the golden rule become foundational.

However, it seems to me that there is another rule. It doesn’t contradict the golden rule. In fact, I would like to lay it along side this rule; in fact, maybe even say it is a rule that goes beyond the golden rule. I want to call it the platinum rule.

Now, those of you, unlike the blue collar worker, who do live in the world of credit cards, know that there is a Gold Card, and then a Platinum Card. The Platinum Card usually will do everything the Gold Card does and yet it has additional features to it. Well, I would like to suggest in addition to doing unto others what we would like to have them do to us, that we consider this platinum rule which is, “Do unto others as they would like to have done to them.”

I was first introduced to this idea in a book by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He told about a man who was about to come on to his fortieth birthday. His wife loved him very much, so she decided that she would secretly prepare a big surprise birthday party. She got a large room in a hotel; she booked a jazz combo that she liked very much. She got word to four hundred of their best friends to come at a certain time but not to tell him anything about it. She was able to pull off the whole thing.

The night of his birthday he was genuinely surprised as all of these people gathered to celebrate his life. By all reports it was a spectacular success. Everybody had a wonderful time. The hostess and the main honoree stayed until well after midnight. And when it was all over, they went home. They kicked off their shoes and the husband looked her deep in her eyes and thanked her for all the effort, for all the work she had done to make that night special.

He said, “I will always appreciate it.” But then he said, “I need to say one more thing to you. You are the one who has always loved big parties. You have always known that I was a person who liked small gatherings of people, quiet enough so that we could exchange ideas.” He said, “The party tonight was wonderful but it really was your kind of party and not my kind of party.”

You see, she had lived out the golden rule perfectly. She had done for her husband exactly what she would have liked for him to do for her but she had not listened to his heart. She had listened to her own life, but she hadn’t listened to the enthusiasms and individualities of his heart.

I would like to suggest that the Platinum Rule is when we go beyond just listening to the moral compass within ourselves, and dare to start listening to the other people with whom we are interacting, and be willing to see which one of their enthusiasms we can meet, how possibly we can do things that are according to their preferences and their needs. I would say that listening to another’s life is maybe a higher experience of love than just listening to your own life. Maybe this is the reason we were given two ears and not just one, an ear to listen to our own life and an ear to listen to the life of someone else.

As I thought about the Platinum Rule, I remembered the time that Jesus entered the village of Bethany. He went to the home of three people whose friendship he had long since enjoyed, a man named Lazarus, and two sisters, Martha and Mary. As soon as he arrived, as you may recall, the two sisters responded to Jesus very differently. Martha immediately went to the kitchen and began to do what she felt she would want somebody to do for her if she was a weary traveler, that is she began to prepare a big meal to give Jesus something that would really strengthen Him physically.

However, Mary the sister, somehow sensed that what Jesus needed more in that moment was not something to fill His stomach, but a place where He could unpack His heart. You see, Jesus at that time was on his way to Jerusalem. He was close to the end of His life. He had many worries on His mind; He had much that filled His heart and what He really needed was a place where He could have the chance to be with somebody. He didn’t need things done for Him as much as He needed the kind of empathy that would make it safe to unpack His heart. And so Mary listened to Jesus’ heart and, therefore, she went in and sat with Him quietly as He talked out His feelings. And, as you know the story, Martha came in quite upset.

I have some feminist friends who think that what she was really angry about was that Mary was stepping out of her role as a female and was daring to act like a man. Back in that culture, women’s place was often in the kitchen, the bedroom, taking care of the children, preparing the meals. Women weren’t considered intellectually or emotionally capable of carrying on conversations with males. Maybe her upset was that Mary was daring to act like a man. I think, though, the deeper note is that she did not realize that she was acting out the Golden Rule when what Jesus really needed was the Platinum Rule.

You may recall that Jesus responded to Martha by saying, “I really don’t need lots of dishes; I need persons with whom I can be. Therefore, Mary here has chosen the better part because she has perceived what it is that I need and I want. I would invite you, Martha, to come in and share in this same kind of enterprise.”

The thing I think is important about both the Golden Rule and the Platinum Rule is that both of these are within reach of everyone of us. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. You don’t have to have a great deal of wealth in order to use these two perceptive capacities that God has given you. If you will listen to your own life and discern what it is that you like and don’t like and the way people treat you, that is a wonderful moral compass as to how you are to relate to other people. But in addition to listening to your own life, I invite you to cultivate the capacity to listen to the life of another, to let their individualities, their enthusiasms, their needs also become something to which you respond lovingly.

Years ago when I lived in Texas, I got one of the famous Christmas catalogues from Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Those are known for their conspicuous consumption, but this year, I’ll never forget, on the front page there was the simple title, “A Perfect Gift” and then the definition was given, “A perfect gift is characterized by two things. It reflects the individuality of the giver and it corresponds to the desires of the recipient.” It said that the gift can be called perfect if, when it is opened, you hear someone say, “It was just like him, it was just like her, to give that and this is exactly what I have always wanted.”

A perfect gift involves both the listening into our own lives and the listening into the hearts of others. Everyone of us is capable of that kind of listening and that kind of loving.

Interview with John Claypool Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: John, your message centered so much on the phrase “listen to the moral compass,” not only in yourself but in others. The Golden Rule and the Platinum Rule that goes beyond, doesn’t that really have a good deal to do with intimacy in a relationship?

John Claypool: It does. And the willingness to suspend our own egocentricity and our own kind of living in a house of mirrors that reflects only ourselves and really letting the other person be, in their difference and in their otherness. Then, offer your life as a gift, hopefully, to help that person grow.

Talbot: Isn’t that really tough to achieve in a secular society that places a premium neither on the Golden Rule nor the Platinum Rule, but on self-interest and greed?

Claypool: It is hard, but I believe it offers a kind of joy and a kind of depth that we don’t get in our competitive society. In fact, in the two news stories I told, I imagine Daisy went home without the $3,000 feeling good, and the man who backed into the car and then did the cutesy maneuver, I’m guessing he went home feeling bad. So it depends on what you really want. Do you want to live in that deep humanness that is authentic or do you want to manipulate and try to get ahead at somebody else’s expense?

Talbot: I must ask you, John, about how you were able to integrate one of the toughest experiences in your life, the loss of your daughter when she was ten years old to leukemia. How did you manage to get through that and what was the role of your own spiritual faith in that?

Claypool: Well, it was one of the hardest stretches of road I have ever walked. I would have to say to you that though I went through many feelings and many phases, the night I realized that life is gift and that birth is windfall, that everything I am and every person that I ever touch is mine, not by entitlement, but by the generosity of the Great Mystery that God wanted me to be, wanted my little daughter

to be, and the concept of life as gift and the corresponding willingness to be grateful for whatever I have, rather than being angry about what I don’t have, probably helped more than anything else. I think every grieving person can choose either to stay fixated on what you have lost and be angry about it, or come to the place that you are grateful that those persons were ever given at all.

Reading a commentary of the story in Genesis where Abraham thought he was being asked to sacrifice Isaac, an interpreter said in a book I read that God was trying to find out if Abraham remembered where Isaac had come from, that Isaac was a gift and not a possession. It dawned on me that Laura Lue was in my life the way Isaac was in Abraham’s life. I am infinitely sad that she only lived for ten years and nothing will take that away, but I can never be angry because I never deserved Laura Lue in the first place, so I give thanks that she lived.

Talbot: You are conveying an underlying sense of affirmation that comes out of your profound sense of faith. Is it true that affirmation has to be part of it?

Claypool: Yes. And I see not just her life but my life as a gift. I didn’t do anything to be born into this world. I didn’t earn my way in; I didn’t maneuver. I awakened to a process of aliveness that was already in motion before I was conscious of it. And so I suppose it is the sense that life is gift and birth is windfall, and that everybody is in our lives out of great generosity.

Talbot: Who would be one of those individuals who has inspired you the most?

Claypool: Well, I suppose Frederick Buechner, a man who has been on this program, has been one of my great mentors. And my present wife, a lovely, southern lady named Ann, has taught me that you can take hard experiences and choose to grow rather than to be bitter. She has probably been the most important influence in calling me to gratitude.

Talbot: That sounds not only golden but platinum, as you say. Thank you, John Claypool.

http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/claypool_3630.htm