So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XII

In the autumn of 1979 after wandering around the edges of involvement and commitment I decided to move into a Way Home. A Way Home was a group of PFAL graduates who, while working secular jobs or attending school, opened their home to host Twig fellowships and run Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) classes. The assumption was that living with other "believers" would encourage a more godly, biblical lifestyle. 

As mentioned in a previous installment, in 1979 the structure of control that came with the proliferation of Way Corps graduates had not yet arrived in New York City or Long Island. Leadership tended to spring up organically and attendance at meetings and involvement in general was far from compulsory. In the "ministry year" August 1978-August 1979 there had been a Way Home located in Queens Village, a few neighborhoods north of my home in Rosedale, a quick 15 minute drive up the Cross island Parkway. As the Way year transitioned into 1979-1980 after the 1979 Rock of Ages the previous occupants of the Queens Village Way Home were scattering to the winds - going out as a WOW, entering the Way Corps training, or simply moving to a different neighborhood. The local Way leadership wanted to continue to have a Way Home at this location and invited four of us, all relatively newly graduated from PFAL, to live there for the next year. Bernie B, who had taken the PFAL class with me in March 1978 was appointed as the leader; Wanda M and Beverly F rounded out the group. At first, things went relatively smoothly. I was working as a clerk for a stock broker in Manhattan and attending night school. We ran fellowships several times a week and participated in "branch" (grouping of Twig fellowships in a geographic area) and "area" (grouping of several branches) and "limb" (the entire state) events. I was living a fairly normal life, but was able to feel superior to my family and old friends by participating in this program. A few months later, normalcy was upended.

One winter morning, Beverly attempted to call in sick to work and found that our phone was not working and had to walk a few blocks to a phone booth to call the phone company. She was informed that our phone service had been cut off due to unpaid bills. She called me at work and after a few more calls we found out that none of our utilities had been paid! We were in danger of having our electricity and heat shut off, and possibly evicted. Beverly contacted Wanda and the three of us waited at home to confront Bernie about the finances.

Our arrangement was that we would each contribute one fourth of monthly expenses and that Bernie would have the responsibility of paying the bills. What was really happening was that Bernie, who was out of work, would pretend to leave for work in the morning and spend the day at a local bar, spending the money that the three of us gave him for bills on booze. So we were now several months behind on our rent and utilities. Wanda, Beverly and I were ready to throw him out that night, but our branch leader, Sam P, convinced us to be forgiving and give him the opportunity to redeem himself and pay back all that he owed. Going forward, I would be the house treasurer, but Bernie would be responsible to cover all the back bills. I don't know why we thought this would work, but pressure from leadership didn't give us much choice. This was the first of many red flags in my time in The Way. In an ordinary roommate situation, Bernie would have been out on his ass without any further discussion, but in The Way, the leaders were to be obeyed. Supposedly God would protect us and "honor our believing" if we followed our leaders without question. Here's how that worked out: about a month later we discovered that Bernie was paying the back bills with rubber checks. This time we didn't wait for any input from Sam—we kicked him out without any further discussion. 

Sam was not happy with us. We were "reproved" for our "hard-heartedness" and Bernie was allowed to sub-lease the basement apartment in another Way Home. He eventually was thrown out of there for nonpayment of financial obligations. 

We managed to scrape together enough money to cover the back bills and avoid being evicted, but not before our heat was cut off in the middle of December. This particular neighborhood's homes were heated by oil. A truck would come around regularly and filled the oil tanks which fueled the heater. Since they weren't paid we had no oil. I have a not-so-happy memory of Wanda, Beverly and I sitting in the living room bundled up in coats, hats, gloves and blankets, eating take-out pizza. While I don't believe in the efficacy of prayer any longer, during our no-heat interlude, I received what appeared to be an answer to prayer. It was Hanukkah, the Jewish observance that involves a story of the oil for the temple lamps lasting eight days, even though there was only enough oil for one day. We prayed, loudly and somewhat obnoxiously, and then went downstairs to fire up the furnace. Even though we were certain we had no oil left, it started and we had enough oil for 8 days, when the next oil delivery came. Maybe it was a miracle!

In the aftermath of this incident, Wanda never let go of her anger and withdrew from involvement in The Way, which was problematic since this was a Way Home. She eventually moved out. State leadership got involved and decided that I would be transferred to another Way Home in the Richmond Hill neighborhood in the central part of Queens. Beverly would remain in Queens Village and was joined by several other women. 

This incident should have given me a heads-up to what a cluster fuck The Way was. The allegedly infallible leadership had missed the boat, not once, but twice. They pushed us to give him a second chance, which he bungled, not to mention their decision to put him in a leadership position in the first place. This was supposed to be an experience that allowed and encouraged me to grow spiritually, but it turned out to be a nightmare. I should have bailed out then and there, but what I did was double down on my commitment to The Way. I rationalized that what I needed to do was increase my commitment. Part of this was that I was unwilling to admit that I was wrong. It would have been humiliating to admit that the experiment failed and go back to live with my parents, I had no other options for roommates, and it was financially unfeasible for me to live alone.  I had rationalized that, despite the problems, I was involved in something bigger than myself and the benefits of having "the truth" outweighed the piddling personality issues. 

So, in early 1980 I moved from Queens Village to the Richmond Hill Way Home for the next phase of my Way sojourn.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Workin' Man - Part XII - Paying Off the Pile of Debt and More Newspaper Delivery

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

Over the course of five or six years, in order to pay off $20,000 in credit card debt, I had a succession of part-time jobs in addition to my main job. The first position was as a night stocker at the Cornhusker Super Saver while I was still a manager at The Omaha World-Herald. I worked four nights a week, 9:00pm-2:00am, 20 hours/week. When I came in at 9:00, my first task was go around to all displays and organize them so that the forklift crew could start filling them as soon as they arrived at 10:00. Usually the delivery truck came in at 10:00. Another stocker and I would unload the truck and then start "stringing" the aisles, i.e. taking the stock from the pallets and setting it on the floor in front of the shelf where it would ultimately be placed. Once this was done the manager would assign me to either work with the forklift crew filling displays or to work one of the aisles. Since I was only scheduled until 2:00 it would either be a smaller aisle, or I'd work with another employee to stock their aisle. I was 40 years old, and by far the oldest one on the crew and was frequently mistaken for a manager. It was pretty routine work, but I wasn't getting much sleep. The most exciting things that ever happened was the occasional run-in with a shoplifter (company policy hadn't yet banned physical contact). The worst that happened was getting buried in a pile of bodies one night when several stockers tackled a shoplifter who I was chasing. Ouch! 

Back at the World-Herald, my disenchantment with the bonus and salary situation led me to start exploring my options. A new store had just been built in Lincoln, resulting in multiple management openings, including the Grocery Manager at the Super Saver at 48th & O. The Grocery Manager was in charge of what we called "Center Store" the food aisles of cans and boxes, as well non-food items like detergent and paper towels. The Grocery Manager was considered next in line behind the Store Director and Assistant Store Director. I was hired for the position after an interview with George Hill, the Store Director. Of course, now I couldn't keep my part-time job with Super Saver, so I agreed to stay on with the Omaha World-Herald part-time. 

My new part-time position was as an assistant to my replacement. I was doing some of the same things, repairing racks, tracking single copy sales and collecting from the racks on weekends. But it didn't last very long. One reason was that my schedule at my new grocery job was not 6am - 2pm as I thought it would be, but 6am - 4pm. (9 hours work + an hour for lunch), so I couldn't get to the newspaper office until late. The other reason was that the new State Circulation Manager, who set up his office in Lincoln, unlike Omaha, as his predecessors did, was cleaning house of holdovers and filling positions with his own people. I was told I was being laid off because we "had too many part-timers", but they soon replaced me and the others they "laid off" with cronies of the new big boss. 

I still needed a second job, so I took a job as a telemarketer. They weren't very picky about who they hired. I found out later that in a group of 20 new hires, 5 or 6 would leave on break during the first night of training. When night two of training started another half dozen wouldn't show up. After one shift working the phones for real, 5 newbies would be left. Only 2 or 3 would end up staying around. It was hire in bulk and see who sticks with it. The place was open Monday-Saturday, from 8:30am-9:00pm. I'd work an 8-hour shift on Thursday, my day off from the grocery store, and 4-hour shifts, 5:00-9:00pm on week nights. I had a  rotating weekend off at the grocery store, so I would work a full shift on my one Saturday a month off. 

Telemarketing is a hard job. There's a lot of rejection—think about how often you hang up on cold calls. But there are sales. Think about it, there would have to be, or why would companies keep doing it? I was very skeptical about my ability to make any sales, since part of our sales spiel involved getting the potential sale's bank account number and social security number. I thought that surely no one would be that stupid to give that information out. I thought wrong. Most of the phone crew managed to average two sales per hour. There were a lot of hang ups and rejections, but as long as we consistently achieved our goal of two sales per hour, everything was fine. Back then minimum wage was $5.15/hour. We were paid $8.00/hour to start, plus commission. If you averaged 1 sale/hour, you received $1.00/sale. If you averaged 2 sales/hour, your commission went up to $2.50/sale. If you managed managed to average 3 sales/hour you received $4.00/sale. Once you closed the sale a third-party verifier would get on the line and confirm your sale to eliminate the possibility of cheating. 

We sold several different products. Our main one was called Auto Savings Discount Club (ASDC) which had nothings to do with autos or savings, and wasn't a discount or a club. (It later changed its name to American Savings Discount Club) What it turned out to be was getting people with bad credit to sign up for a limited line of credit for a fee. After paying the fee a member could draw on this line of credit to pay bills in an emergency—paid back at interest of course. Eventually the FCC closed them down—they were preying on people with poor credit and it turned out they weren't even giving them access to the lines of credit. 

We also did some political polling. The first time was for Jon Corzine, who was running for Senator in the New Jersey Democratic primary. Most of the people we called would ask whether he was Democrat or Republican, and when I responded that he was a Democrat would assert that they were voting for him because they always voted for Democrats.  My explanation that it was the primary, and that they were all Democrats, fell on deaf ears and I eventually just gave up trying to explain. The one that was really interesting was when we did polling for a New York City Council candidate. First we would call and ask some questions about which issues were most important, once we had the answers we would call back in a month, emphasizing all the issues in which our candidate agreed with the voter we were calling, ignoring the areas of disagreement. A different script would pop up for each voter, depending on how they had answered the questions during the previous call. Tricky bastards, those pollsters. 

Before the place was shut down, I got very good at selling ASDC. The trick was to cycle through the "no's" as quickly as possible. This meant getting a sense for who was either too dense to understand what you were selling or too smart to fall for it, in addition to those were just going to string you along for fun. Once you knew you had one of these people on the line you had to get off the phone as soon as possible and get ready for the next one. Since telemarketing success depends in large part in reaching a lot of people, the key to making sales is to not waste time with the people who aren't interested. I developed an ability to detect early in the call who I should push it with and who I should give up on quickly. Getting those who I knew were a lost cause off the phone enabled me to reach more people and therefore get more sales. This was against company policy, which had a script for you to follow that needed a "no" three distinct times before you could move on. We had a quality assurance monitor who would listen to our calls and write us up if we deviated from the script. But those of us who brought in a lot of sales were eventually left alone. 

One of the recurring reasons to drop a call was when the person we were calling wasn't home. We were supposed to then try to sell to whoever answered the phone, as long as they were an adult. This never worked. We'd ask for "Bob Smith", and be told that Bob wasn't home. According to the script we were to say that we could make the offer to them—Mrs. Smith, or Bob Smith's brother, whoever—and proceed with the script. The problem—every single time—was that no matter how well you thought the call was going, no matter how much it seemed like a sale, when you swooped in for the close they would invariably say "Bob's not home". Why bother? 

I used to get a kick out of people who were conflicted about what we were selling, but didn't want to come right out and say that they weren't interested. We'd get to the close and have to ask them for their bank account information.

Me: I'll just need your bank account number

Prospect: I don't know it

Me: All you have to do is look on the bottom of your checks, the first nine digits is the routing number...

Prospect: My checkbook is in my car

Me: Okay, I'll wait while you go out to your car and get it

Prospect: I don't know where my car is

Me: What?

Prospect: My brother has it

Me: *Click*

I don't know if people really kept their checkbooks in their cars, or they just thought it sounded like a plausible excuse, but in the two years I was there I heard this dozens of times. 

I mentioned earlier that my work schedule at my main job rotated my days off once a month. The telemarketing company required a request in advance to change the schedule, but they tired of me requested a change every month and decided to just let me come in whenever I felt like it. Many weeks I just worked until I made my goal for sales for the week. After I had been on the phones for around two years I was getting a divorce. After missing a few shifts to find a place to live I stopped in to the phone bank, only to find out we were shutting down because ASDC, our biggest client, was being shut down by the FCC, and the money they owed us was frozen. We eventually got paid. Once again I needed a part-time job.

By this time I was an assistant store director at the Cornhusker Super Saver, I wasn't having any success finding a second shift job, so I ended up taking a Lincoln Journal Star seven-day motor route. My territory was the southwest corner of Lancaster County—west of Highway 77 and south of Highway 33, including the towns of Sprague and Hallam. I'd start around 2:00am and deliver papers until around 6:00; head home, shower and start work at Super Saver at 7:00. Gas was around $1.60/gallon. I was making over $900/month after paying for gas and replacing the occasional tire. I ran this route from November 2001 through May 2002. It's not generally known that paper carriers are classified as independent contractors. You can't call in sick or take a day off unless you can find someone to substitute for you. So I worked sick and never took a day off. I paid for gas and tires myself. A problem with being an independent contractor is that you don't receive a paycheck, you receive a check representing your net profit, with no tax or social security taken out. This means that you're likely to have to pay the IRS in April, rather than receiving a refund as most people do. I didn't report my paper route income and ended up having to pay the back taxes plus penalty and interest when the IRS figured it out. Ouch. 

In 2002 I planned on taking a trip to New York to visit family, stopping along the way to see friends. I planned on being gone for around two weeks, but could not find anyone to cover for me, so I had to quit. I still needed a second job. That Autumn I was contracted to deliver the Tuesday afternoon Star Express, a free paper put out by the Lincoln Journal Star. This was a lot easier that the rural route and it was only one day a week! And it was in the daylight! After a year or so the Star Express was discontinued. The Journal Star started a program where all non-subscribers would receive a paper every Wednesday morning. 

By this time I had long since paid off my debt, but was keeping the route to help make ends meet. I was making $200/month, which was the same amount that I was paying in child support for my last minor child. Once I was no longer paying child support I decided that I no longer needed the extra income and quit the last in a long succession of second jobs.

Managers Part XII - Minimizing Your Boss-Imposed Time

Most people, no matter how high they are on the company organizational chart, have a boss. Even CEOs have a board of directors. Managers are generally looked upon as people who get to tell others what to do, which is somewhat true, but they also have others telling them what to do. The five levels of freedom apply to the manager in his role as managEE as well as in his role as managER. In the role as manager, the goal is to get subordinates as high as possible on the freedom scale in order to minimize the theoretically nonexistent subordinate-imposed time. Minimize, or even eliminate that theoretical ghost and you're left with the three valid demands on a manager's time: boss-imposed time, system-imposed time and self-imposed time.

Unless your goal is to get fired, you cannot evade boss-imposed time. In most companies there is a hierarchy, and the person above you in the hierarchy gets to tell you what to do. The starting point is the type of manager that your immediate supervisor is. Is your manager a professional manager, i.e. one who understands the principles of managing management time, including the five levels of freedom?  Or do you work for a micro-manager? Or perhaps even a hands-off manager? An example of a manager who manages at Level One would be one who gathers all of his subordinate managers together at the beginning of the day and hands out assignments. These assignments might include a to-do list and would definitely involve the managers' manager checking everyone's work at the end of the day, or maybe even at several points during the day. No one is ever given a chance to make a decision. A Level Two boss might operate in a similar fashion, but would dispense with the meeting, expecting all the managers to come to him and ask what they should do that day. 

In reality, no boss acts like this all of the time. Some might, in some areas of their oversight, hand out assignments, especially in the training phase of a new manager's career; or they might tolerate an inexperienced manager asking how to handle a situation. In my own management career, there have been times when my own supervisor acted as a Level One manager, telling me to undertake a task that had not been on my own self-to-do-list. Examples might include starting a new sales initiative, changing priorities in some area or just indulging the boss' whim. However, most managers do most of their managing at a Level Three or above, typically at a Level Four. At a Level Three, your boss is still micro-managing, i.e. still requiring a stamp of approval at every step. If your manager is not on-site, this is obviously a difficult situation. Level Four, where you make all your own decisions, but reporting after the fact, is typical for most management decisions. Level Five, where reporting is done only at regular intervals, is rare, except with very routine tasks. The reality is that most managers will have some areas where they will allow you free rein and others where they keep you on a tight leash, and most where you're somewhere in the middle.

So, how do you minimize that boss-imposed time? You have to manage your boss. How do you do that? That depends on the primary mode of management that your boss employs. If it's Level One or Two, honestly, you've got a lot to overcome. You've got one of those bosses who believe that it's the manager's job to "work hard" and to have his fingers in every pie. You've got one of those managers who believes "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself". You've got one of those managers who views his subordinate managers merely as higher-paid grunts. Making your own decisions, or even suggesting actions, might be interpreted as insubordination. On the other hand, the manager who lets you operate at Level Five all the time probably doesn't exist in the wild! 

Managers who habitually manage from Level Four or Five can be categorized as "hands-off" managers. This isn't always a good thing. Very rarely can everything be put in these top levels. A true hands-off manager is often just lazy and doesn't want to actually manage, just sit back as a figurehead. Most managers are going to be in the Level Two - Level Four range, with occasional forays into Levels One & Five, depending on the task. To use a grocery store as an example, your daily & weekly ordering might be Level Four, or even Level Five, something your manager has no reason to get involved in. Your holiday displays and ordering might be in Level Three, where you make the decision on what displays to build and what to order, but he gets to weigh in and make the final decision. Staffing might be Level Two, you ask him what to do about hiring. Once in a while there might be a Level One moment, your boss gives you an assignment in area that you had not considered.

Managing your boss in most cases involves anticipating what decisions he would have made before he makes them, and building a track record of making good decisions. If your boss' comfort level is Level Three, the way to get to a regular Level Four is for her to agree with most of the decisions that you run by her, and this requires that you know what your boss' priorities are and what she thinks is important. Eventually she will realize that every decision that you run by her succeeds spectacularly and will move you into Level Four. When you're at Level Two the role of anticipation is even greater, since your boss is expecting you to ask what to do; having a solution ready is a sneaky way to get yourself up to Level Three. The only to be slapped back down to Level Two is to be told to stop having ideas, which is very unlikely. Moving from a Level Four to a Level Five is in some ways the easiest - you already have the freedom to make decisions without clearing them with the boss, all you have to do is to negotiate the gap between reports!

The point of all of this is that there is one person who is responsible for the Level at which your manager manages you...it's you. It's not your boss' responsibility to make your life easier, it's your job to take the initiative. The reality is that you're never going to eliminate boss-imposed time, but by careful managing of your manager, you can minimize it and increase your self-imposed time.

Start at the beginning: Part I

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XI (Those Pesky Heretics)

This particular post will be less about what's in The Bible and more about how third and fourth century (and later) theologians attempted to reconcile the inconsistencies and contradictions about Jesus' nature in The Bible. 

By the Second Century it had already been an  established belief among the vast majority of Christians that Jesus was God. But in what sense was he God? That's where the debates and the branding of other theologians as heretics comes in. The Gospels, in some places, also make very clear that Jesus was a man, but in what sense was he human? How did his humanity and divinity coexist in one person? Was he half God and half man? Was he God who just appeared to be a man? Was he a man who was "promoted" to Godhood? I want to make clear that the Gospels and Epistles do not make any of this clear. And the answers that eventually led to the doctrine of The Trinity were by no means self-evident. Assumptions made by theologians were just as often based on what they thought was common sense or to avoid infelicitous outcomes. Here are a few of the possible "solutions" to the nature of Jesus that eventually were later deemed heresies:

• Adoptionism stated that Jesus did not pre-exist before his birth but was "adopted" as the Son of God at his Baptism (or resurrection, or Ascension)  due to his perfect, sinless life. His reward was resurrection and adoption into "the Godhead". This was put to rest around 200CE, but it seems to me that it has solid scriptural basis. 
• Docetism adherents believed that Jesus only appeared to have a physical human form. They believed that matter was inherently evil and therefore God couldn't have had a physical body. 
• Apollinarianism stated that, although Jesus had a physical, human body, his "nature", or mind, was wholly divine.
• Arianism has been latched onto by modern day non-Trinitarians to support their belief that the early Christians were not Trinitarians. Arius didn't teach that Jesus was not God, but that Jesus, God the Son, was created first by God the Father and that the rest of the universe was then created by the Son. The main difference between Arianism and the version of Trinitarianism that the majority of theologians were adhering to was that the Trinitarians believed that the Son and the Father were "co-eternal", i.e. there was never a time when the Son did not exist, while the Arians taught that the Father pre-existed the Son. This dispute was what spurred the Council of Nicaea. Arians for hundreds of years constituted the majority of Christians outside of Rome and Byzantium. It effectively died out when Charlemagne accepted Catholic Christianity. 
• Nestorianism was a branch of early Christianity wherein their founder Nestorius taught that Mary gave birth only to Jesus' human nature. They argued about the term "Mother of God", preferring the title "Mother of Christ".  Nestorius' followers fled persecution relocating to the Persian Empire where they further developed the idea that Jesus, although one person, had both a human and a divine nature.  Nestorians flourished under the Persians and Nestorian churches continued to exist even after the Muslim conquest of Persia. 
• Monophysites believed that Jesus had only one nature - that his humanity was absorbed by his divine nature. They were the majority in the border regions of the Eastern Roman Empire and had competing bishops and patriarchs when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and the surrounding area. 
• Monothelitism was a response to Monophysitism, holding that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, but one "will" - divine. 
• Sabellianism teaches that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same, but are different modes or expressions of a unitary God.

Despite these theories being labelled as heresies, they were usually put forth by theologians, within the mainstream at the time, as good faith efforts to untangle inconsistencies and contradictions. None of this involved large scale adding or subtracting to the canon of scripture, what we know as The Bible, although there are some minor insertions, like the Trinitarian formula in the epistle of  I John. All these various stabs at consistency were interpretations of what had already been written. 

Eventually the doctrine of The Trinity emerged with the earlier understandings later being branded as heretical. In it Jesus is described as fully God and fully human as regards both his nature and his will, not half God/half human, not a human who was "promoted" to God. As "God the Son" he existed for as long as God the Father existed and was somehow begotten while having always been begotten. The three "persons" of The Trinity are all equally God, yet distinct. It's complicated, and I doubt that many Christians understand the explanations that their theologians came up with. 

Non-Christians and non-Trinitarian Christians sometimes mock the belief, wondering who Jesus was talking to when he prayed to God, among other things. But do any supernatural religious beliefs make any sense? 

Start at the beginning: Part I

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part X (Short Musings On How Jesus Became God)

In the previous installment I touched upon the change in focus forced upon the followers of Jesus when he was killed, rather than becoming the God-anointed conqueror. As I have pointed out previously, the New Testament is not one seamless narrative, but the work of multiple authors that differ not only in perspective, but were penned at different points in time. Because of this one can see an evolution in the way Jesus' nature was viewed by his followers. 

One of the titles bestowed upon Jesus was "Son of God". While now we interpret that literally—son, a child, a first generation descendent—but the phrase had long held a figurative meaning by Jesus' time. In Genesis and Job the term "Sons of God" apparently refers to angels. The King of Israel is "The Son of God" as is the nation of Israel itself at times. The earliest traditions that were enshrined in the Gospels indicate that Jesus became the Son of God. Initially it was theorized that upon his supposed resurrection he was made the Son of God as a reward for his faithfulness to God. Later the theology changed with the honor being bestowed on him at his baptism; still later at his birth as seen in Matthew and ultimately, as claimed in John, he was viewed as the pre-existing Son of God even before his birth.  Running parallel to the evolving timeline of the sonship of Jesus there was a steady change in what being "The Son of God" meant. It went from being a great honor, like the ancient kings received, to a semi-divine status like an angel, to divine status in the same category as God, to being equal with God in authority, to being identical with God. A lot of Christological ink has been spilled trying to make sense of how Jesus could be both God and man. (I recommend How Jesus Became God by Dr. Bart Ehrman for the long version with citations and appropriately placed commas). 

Of course, since these incremental changes in perception are all recorded in different places in the Gospels and Epistles, what we are left with is a lot of inconsistencies. I'll leave it to another installment to review some of the attempts by theologians to resolve these inconsistencies, but I'll change lanes for a bit to discuss why there are even any inconsistencies to address.

There is a misconception, not only among Christians, but among society in general, that Christianity was a united entity with recognized leaders and organization from Jesus' death onwards. The Catholics maintain that this entity "The Church" was led by Peter the Apostle and his successors, later known as The Popes. The Eastern Orthodox disagreed about the primacy of the Bishops of Rome (the popes) but otherwise agreed that there was a continuity from Jesus to his apostles, to their followers and on to their day. Protestants and other offshoots mostly attempted to reform The Church or return it to its First century roots, but didn't dispute the commonly held belief of a united early church. Even among modern day skeptics there is a belief that a monolithic early Christian Church "edited" The Bible so it would reflect their prejudices and/or political leanings. In fact it was a chaotic collection of competing versions of Christianity with central control only emerging gradually. 

There was no group tasked with maintaining the integrity of the different Gospels, epistles and tracts being copied and recopied and spread around. Nothing prevented copyists, who were usually not professional scribes, from making errors in transcription or from making intentional alterations. This was in addition to the divergent points of view contained in the original writings. Pseudonymity (signing the name of another, more prominent name to one's own writing) was common since acceptance of a Gospel was based almost exclusively on who supposedly wrote it, not whether it made any sense. Several of the epistles attributed to Paul were almost certainly not written by him, including Ephesians, Colossians and both epistles to Timothy. There is no evidence that any of the four canonical Gospels were written by the men whose names are on them. Different regions had their favorites and several writings that are now considered apocryphal were once considered on par with what is now considered scripture. By the time there was a central authority that could have decided what was scripture and what wasn't, all that they did decide was which books would be included in the official canon of scripture without any attempt to harmonize among the various books. An exception to this was Marcion. The leader of an alternate strain of Christianity, Marcion was the first to put together a "canon" of scripture. His "New Testament" included the Gospel of Luke and the (heavily edited) epistles of Paul. It was mainly as a response to him that the group that became the Catholic Church compiled its own list, which we still have today. 

It was only after this point that theologians began to attempt to harmonize the various fragments and make sense of the competing narratives, focusing mainly on the nature of Jesus, eventually formulating the doctrine of The Trinity.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XI

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part IX (Who Is This Jesus Guy Anyway?)

One of the core tenets mainstream Christianity is that Jesus Christ is God. But one of the things that you can definitely depend on among Christians and non-Christians alike is that no one really understands what that means and anyone who thinks that they understand undoubtedly understands it differently than the theologians who put the doctrine together piece by piece over the course of a couple of centuries. What? Theologians "put it together"! It's right there in The Bible, isn't it? Except that it isn't. There are statements where it seems clear that Jesus is God, some that merely seem to suggest it and some that flat out contradict the idea. Early Christians had to reconcile the contradictions and they way they did it was to create the idea of the Trinity, which nowhere appears in the Bible. 

The reasons that contradictions even exist was that there were disagreements among earlier Christians regarding who Jesus was. Different Gospel writers had different viewpoints, were writing to different audiences, and had different levels of understanding. Add to that the role of generations of copyists inserting their own ideas into the Gospels, "correcting" passages that were unclear, or just contradicted what they believed was the truth. 

The New Testament is not a puzzle, with pieces strewn across the writings of various authors that can be pieced together to come up with the truth, despite being treated that way in Bible studies all across the world. The various authors all had their own points of view which they laid out in their writings with no intention of harmonizing their theology with that of other writers.  And the different writings often were at variance with each other. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. Any group of people, present at the same event, will remember the details differently. With the Gospels we don't even have different eye witnesses disagreeing, we have authors who put together their narratives based on a couple of generations of oral traditions, legendary accretions and myth building. Outside of the "works" based messages attributed to Jesus, as well as his predictions of a coming apocalypse, I believe that anything in The Bible purporting to describe the purpose of his death or his divine nature was added to the record by later followers in order to make sense of events that manifestly didn't make sense. 

Why did Jesus have to die? Was it as the perfect sacrifice to erase the collective sin of mankind inherited from Adam and Eve? Was it to "pay the price" for sin? Was it to prove that he was a true prophet, since Israel usually killed its prophets? Was it so he could be resurrected in order to defeat death? Was is to be an example to mankind to show how he was willing to go as far as to be killed in order to do God's will? You can find hints of all these theories in The Bible, including in Old Testament passages that are reinterpreted to supposedly prophesy his birth, life, death and purported resurrection. My view is that Jesus didn't think he was going to killed, he thought God would usher in the end of the world with Jesus himself playing a key role (yes I know there are verses suggesting he knew - I'm reasonably sure these were words put in his mouth by later tradition). It's obvious even from the Gospels that his followers did not expect that he would be killed and that he would be a  conquering military leader. His followers must have been shocked at how things turned out.

We've seen how, even in modern times, predictions failing to come through seldom dissuade the committed from their path of belief. How many "prophets", even in our lifetime, have predicted the end of the world, or, even in the realm of politics, that Donald Trump would be restored to the presidency sometime in 2021. Explanations need to be made to fit the new reality into the old predictions.

I'll look at the evolving perception within Christianity regarding Jesus' nature in the next installment. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part X

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VIII (Why I Believe - Or Disbelieve - As I Do)

You may have noticed that these posts are not scholarly works. I don't go into exhaustive detail or cite sources. Other people have done a much better job than I have ever done in putting together a coherent view of The Bible from the point of view of someone who doesn't consider it God's Word. I heartily recommend the works of Dr. Bart Ehrman who has written such works as Misquoting Jesus, Lost Christianities, Heaven and Hell, and How Jesus Became God among many others. 

Before I continue with my opinions of The Bible, especially the Gospels and Epistles, from an agnostic viewpoint, let me give you a brief tour of how my opinion of The Bible has changed in my lifetime. The blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult" covers most of this ground:  So, You Want To Join A Cult

I grew up in an Irish-Catholic family on the very edge of New York City in a neighborhood that was overwhelmingly Catholic, mostly Irish and Italian. There were a few Protestant churches, and there was a significant Jewish presence, but Catholicism was very much the default in this neighborhood, dominated by two Catholic parishes, St. Pius X and St. Claire's. We went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic grade school. As was usual with lay Catholics, at least in that era, we didn't trouble to much about doctrine or theology and left that stuff to the priests. I was familiar with the broad outlines of the Gospels and the major themes of the Old Testament, but really didn't know much about the details of religion at all. It was like the air - it was just there.

In my teens I visited some local Protestant churches. While I noticed some differences in the services, the broad outline was the same, or at least seemed that way. More to satisfy my curiosity than anything else I studied non-Christian religions, but it was simply an intellectual study and never really took. 

When I was fourteen I worked as a clerk in a financial firm in the financial district of lower Manhattan. On my lunch break I encountered a variety of street corner preachers who clustered around the Federal Building across from the New York Stock Exchange and began to hear about some of the beliefs of Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity such as "the rapture" and the concept of becoming "born again", which we Catholics never heard about. Still no changes in my overall belief system, but I was starting to entertain some serious challenges to my worldview. During my freshman year of college I encountered The Way.  Eventually I became convinced that this group was a cult, not so much due to their beliefs, but because of their practices. Their theology was for the most part similar to the strain of Evangelical Protestantism known as dispensationalism. Their claim to fame in theological terms was that, unlike almost all Christians, they did not believe that The Bible supports the belief that Jesus was God. A slightly less controversial position (although not unheard of) was that upon death you did not proceed to heaven or hell (or purgatory for Catholics) but were in a kind of sleep until the "return of Christ". 

What attracted me to this group was that they appeared methodical in their study of The Bible and were able to cite specific verses to support all of their beliefs. I was with this group from 1978-2001, with a hiatus in the 90's and was very much a true believer. I believed that The Bible, in its original texts, was divinely inspired by God. The Way taught that, utilizing certain commonsense methods, one could easily determine God's will. The Bible, they taught, interpreted itself, all you had to do was read it without preconceived notions. 

In 2000 the (married) top leader had been expelled after conducting an affair with a married woman that she alleged was nonconsensual. This caused me to question, not The Bible itself, but some of the things that this particular leader had been teaching that, to put it mildly, were "out there" in the context of what the group's main teachings were. I reasoned that someone who didn't have the sense to keep his pants on couldn't expect anyone to trust his interpretation of scripture. I compiled a long list of things where the leader's teachings were at odds with what the founder of The Way had taught. My questioning got me kicked out of the group. 

I became aware of many offshoots from the original group that had split off during the leadership crisis that accompanied the founder's death in the late 80's. Despite all of them using the same "keys to interpretation" in their understanding of The Bible they were coming up with wildly differing conclusions. I started to see that even the founder's theology didn't really stand up to the self-interpreting Bible model and that his own conclusions were his own and not necessarily the only possible conclusions to be made utilizing the "keys to interpretation". I briefly considered returning to mainstream Christianity, but it didn't take long to see that no one had a reliable grasp of "The Truth" and even though most denominations believed that they were right and everyone else was wrong, they were all using the same Bible to come to different conclusions. 

It was at that point that I determined that there was no objective reason to elevate The Bible and Christianity over any other system of belief. This didn't mean that I had decided that it was definitely wrong, but that there wasn't any reason to assume that it was necessarily right either. I wasn't mad at God (something I was accused of), I just wasn't convinced that he existed, and if he did, at least not necessarily in the form that Christianity claimed he did. 

This is the path that I have walked that got me to the point where I see The Bible as just another book. At best a collection of books and letters and essays and pamphlets outlining men's opinions about God, the world, Jesus and morality. Not a perfect, handed-down-from-heaven, infallible, document. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part IX

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XI

In August 1979, I was on the cusp of a major change in my life. I was about to ratchet up my Way involvement by moving into a Way Home, but what was going on in the wider Way World?

In an earlier installment I laid out why, in my view, people stayed in cults:

1. What the cult is telling you, on some level, seems to make sense
2. You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself
3. Outside pressure serves only to confirm the "us against them" narrative the cult has been promoting
4. The perceived benefits outweigh any problems
5. People don't like to admit that they're wrong

The second item listed, "You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself", can be looked at in two ways. One view is that you feel that you're on a mission, that you're actually accomplishing something; the other aspect is a veneer of legitimacy. One way to look like you're legitimate is to build up an organization. 

In the early days of of The Way, Wierwille ran a shoestring operation. Starting in 1953 he taught his Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) classes, ran Sunday services at his home and had a loose network of people who were interested in what he had to say. He left the church where he was pastor and incorporated as "The Way" in 1957 *. Through the late fifties and most of the sixties The Way continued as a purely local phenomenon in Northwest Ohio. Few would have ever heard of Wierwille and The Way if things had continued on this path. In Part IV I discussed some of the steps in The Way's expansion. 

 In the late sixties there was an explosion of new religious groups, as well as many young people who, dissatisfied with the status quo, gathered together in informal groups, teaching each other the gospel and attempting to live communally as they imagined the legendary early Christians did. One of these groups, running an ad hoc Christian charitable organization and group home in San Francisco, attracted Wierwille's attention. He travelled to San Francisco and met with them. Eventually they formed a partnership: they provided the youth and the energy, he provided the organized theology. It was at this point that things took off. The people from the San Francisco group home started spreading Wierwille's take on Christianity with an enthusiasm that had not been present when PFAL was just another self-improvement class, albeit Bible-based. Two affiliated independent organizations sprung up, The Way West in California and The Way East in Upstate New York. These groups coordinated the running of PFAL classes in their areas and served as a loose connection to Wierwille. Drawing upon the pool of enthusiastic PFAL graduates, Wierwille established an outreach program, the World Over the World (WOW) Ambassadors and a leadership training program, The Way Corps, the formation of the latter could be considered the foundation of cultishness in The Way. 

The first Way Corps group came together in 1969, but was disbanded after some unspecified failure. A second group came to Ohio in 1970 and became the core of Wierwille's committed followers. Early in the seventies, Wierwille, backed by some of his Way Corps, staged a takeover of both The Way West and The Way East, folding their organizations into the framework of The Way Inc, now styled The Way International. Initially graduates of The Way Corps either worked in various capacities at "International Headquarters" (Wierwille's farm), or went out "in the field" to oversee areas that were seeing a lot of new PFAL grads. Occasionally Way Corps graduates engaged in secular pursuits in addition to their Way responsibilities. The Bible fellowships, later known as "twigs" largely operated independently. Each year, the number of people entering Way Corps training grew, from a dozen in each of the first two groups, to around 600 in the sixth group. Property was purchased in Emporia Kansas and Rome City Indiana to facilitate the growing number of Corps trainees. 

The growing number of new people, and the increasing scope of the Way Corps training required a business structure. Money was pouring in from tithes, and class fees, and expenses for their properties, publications and the framework required for training hundreds of people increased as well. The number of staff members increased. Parallel to the business side, a hierarchy on the spiritual side sprung up. Twig leaders reported to Branch leaders, who in turn reported to Area or Limb (state) leaders, who answered to a regional overseer and ultimately to the Trunk (national) leader. 

Numerical growth of Way Corps grads meant that more local fellowships were being run by Way Corps rather than local people with leadership skills. In the early seventies, the increase in the number of PFAL grads and the spread of local fellowships resulted in things being pretty independent on the local level. There might be a Corps grad as a state or regional coordinator, but regular folks were for the most part rising up to coordinate fellowships and branches without any formal training. As Way Corps grads began to filter down to area and branch levels, and finally to twig (local) fellowship levels, the level of centralized control changed the nature of the local Bible fellowships. The nature of that control I will address in a later installment, but suffice it to say that the framework for control was steadily building and was largely in place by the late seventies.

The Way, in around ten years, had accomplished two things: they had built their little operation into a truly international, worldwide, organization and had extended their influence and control directly into people's lives through the Way Corps. The former gave it the patina of respectability, and the latter gave it a lever to influence the everyday life of its adherents. The Way had hit this dual pinnacle right around the time I got involved. It's organization and hierarchy indicated to me that it wasn't a fly-by-night assemblage of do-gooders, but a structured group that had put down roots. I felt safe getting involved in it. 

By this time I had been drawn in by several factors. What I was being told made sense, at least to me;  the outside pressure served to confirm the "us against them" narrative; and I felt like I belonged to something greater than myself, both in a sense of accomplishment and belonging to an established organization. In later years I would come to believe that the perceived benefits outweigh any problems, but in the upcoming year I would become one of the people who don't like to admit that they're wrong.

 And that pattern of ignoring red flags would continue for a long, long time. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XII

* The Way hagiography later retconned the founding of The Way as October 1942, when Wierwille started a local radio program

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VII (The New Testament - A Collection of Religious Pamphlets)

There's a lot different ways that people look at The Bible. There's the view that it's inerrant and infallible. That view can be applied to the originals (which no longer exist) or can be extended to the modern texts. Typically those who hold the "inerrant and infallible" position believe that there are translation errors that once corrected will reveal what was in the original. It can be viewed as allegorical and metaphorical. It can be  viewed literally. It can be viewed as containing historical accuracy, or that the historical sections are not as important as the theological lessons being taught. Protestants say they believe in sola scriptura, scripture alone, while Catholics believe that the scriptures must be mediated by Church leaders. Various churches claim to understand what The Bible really means and encourage or browbeat others to "just read The Bible" as if its message was self-evident. 

For a book that so many believe is self-explanatory and will reveal its truths if you simply read it, there are certainly a myriad of opinions about what it actually means, not to mention disagreements about what it actually says. "True believers" will accuse those who interpret it differently of simply being wrong, or more pointedly, as "not Christians" or even being inspired by Satan. They look to an mythical idyllic time, written down in The Acts of The Apostles, where there was a clear, bright line between the truth and lies, between orthodoxy and heresy. When the difference between those who "opposed Paul" or those who the early church branded as heretics and those who adhered to The Bible was as clear as day. 

Except back in those days there was no Bible.

Yes, parts of what became the New Testament were circulating around, and the Tanakh, in its original Hebrew as well as the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, was long established, but the concept of a unified collection of writings that would be consider scripture on par with the Jewish scriptures was an idea whose time had not yet arrived. In addition, there was broad disagreement among Christians regarding a whole range of beliefs about the nature of Jesus, about what his death and resurrection accomplished, about how Christians should behave, whether non-Jews could become Christians, the afterlife, the resurrection, the Kingdom of God and anything else that you can imagine. All of those people were Christians and they all believed that they were following the teachings handed down from Jesus through his apostles. But nothing written down and there was no central authority to ensure there was uniformity of belief. Even in the documents that eventually made it into the Bible there are indications, sometimes quite explicit, that not all Christians believed or taught the same thing. 

It was this disagreement that caused, not only contradictions and variances between the different books of the New Testament but contradictions and variances within some of the books.  Keep in mind that there was no central authority as we understand it today for many decades—plenty of time for competing opinions to grow roots and accumulate adherents. The belief that Jesus' teachings were passed down unchanged from him to his apostles to their followers in an unbroken chain is a myth. We know for certain of several distinct "Christianities" that existed in the early centuries after Jesus that were eventually defeated or subsumed by what became the Catholic Church. Even then there were arguments among the leaders and theologians of a supposedly united church. These differences, and the majority response to them, contributed to what became "canon of scripture". If you know what to look for you can see where certain passages were written as a response to these "other Christianities", as well as changes to the text for similar reasons. 

Major early divisions among Christians included Ebionites, who believed that a convert to Christianity must follow Jewish Law and practice; Marcionites, a sect that viewed the God of the Old Testament as a different and inferior God than the God of Jesus in the New Testament; and various types of Gnostics. Marcionite Churches competed successfully with Orthodox/Catholic Churches, lasting at least into the fifth century with its ideas surviving in various forms for centuries longer. Divisions even within what became Catholic Christianity centered around the nature of Jesus. Was he a mortal man? Was he actually raised physically from the dead? Or was it a "spiritual" resurrection? Was he God? If so, in what sense was he God? (I'll be addressing the permutations of Christology in another post). These disagreements manifested themselves in the contradictions in the New Testament. 

An article of faith among many people is that at some point in the history of Christianity certain books, or selections within books, were "taken out" of The Bible. Each of the books that eventually made it into the Bible, as well as the many that did not, all had their separate history. The authors of each book each had their own spin on what Jesus' message was, what stories confirmed that message, as well as Jesus' nature, salvation, sin, you name it. Since they were spread by believers manually writing out each manuscript, errors crept in. Some deviation from the originals occurred simply due to human error, some due to the copyist making changes by "correcting" what they thought were previous errors, and others due to intentional changes made in order to insert the copyist's opinion in the text. 

Eventually the leaders of the faction that became the Catholic Church*  decided that they needed an approved list of books that would make up the "canon of scripture". It went through several permutations before assuming the form we have today in the fourth century.** A number of books that had been in circulation were not included in the newly formed Bible, many of them are lost to history, but some survived in whole or in part. So, while no books were removed, definite decisions were made regarding what would be included. 

One way I look at the books of the New Testament, in addition to being biographies and pastoral letters, is similar to political pamphlets, pushing their own agenda and refuting those of their opponents. The minority, or losing, theologies were branded heresies and their writings (mostly) destroyed. History is written by the victors. In the case of Christianity, the victors were the faction that became the Catholic Church. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part VIII

* The churches known as "orthodox" at this time were not separate from the Catholic Church centered in Rome

** There were a number of books in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that were included as part of Catholic Bibles, these apocryphal, or deuterocanonical, books were not included in Protestant Bibles post-Reformation.

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VI (So, Just When IS The End of The World Scheduled?)

A quick look at the New Testament and we see that it starts with the four Gospels, followed by The Acts of The Apostles, then the Epistles of Paul, a few other epistles and the big scary Book of Revelation. But the books were not written in the same order as the events that they chronicle. The first book written was I Thessalonians, dated 15-20 years after Jesus' ministry. Galatians, I & II Corinthians, Romans, Philemon and Philippians were all written before the very first Gospel was written, 35-40 years after Jesus' time. All this information from Paul was being passed around before anyone thought that anything resembling a biography of Jesus would be a good idea.  

In a previous post I mentioned that I thought that it was likely that Jesus existed, not that everything said about him was true, but that a person on whom the Gospels was based existed. I believe that the existence of Paul is even more of an historical certainty - unlike Jesus we have contemporary documents - actually written (or at least dictated) by Paul. At some point I'll discuss the conclusion by many Biblical scholars that not everything attributed to Paul was actually written by him. 

One of the most striking differences between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christianity that Paul writes about is that Jesus, according to his biographers, was mostly concerned with how people acted, while Paul was mostly focussed on what people believed about Jesus. 

As discussed previously, it is my view that Jesus was an Apocalyptic Prophet, i.e. he was preaching that the world as we knew it was soon to end, brought about by God's intervention. God would then establish his kingdom in which Jesus believed that he would be a key figure. He preached that to "enter the kingdom" one had to completely reject the things of the world, including riches, personal attachments and even family. People's actions were of paramount importance. Jesus believed that this would happen soon. 

But that didn't happen. 

One of the subjects covered in I Thessalonians, a letter from Paul to the church in Thessalonica, was the details of Jesus' future return. People among his followers had died and other Christians were worried that maybe Jesus wasn't coming back as promised. Those still among the living were concerned that their loved ones had missed out on the establishment of the kingdom of God. And that that, if they weren't alive when it came about, they themselves wouldn't make it into the brave new world. It's important to note that beliefs about the afterlife have evolved over the centuries. Resurrection in the Judea of this era was more of a national resurrection, i.e. Israel would be reestablished a kingdom. Ideas about how this would affect individuals, i.e. an end days judgement and resurrection of people depended on what sect you identified with. Sadducees, for example, did not believe in a resurrection of individuals at all. 

At this point in Church history, none of the writings that would come to be included in the canon of scripture had been written yet, let alone available for people to read. So there wasn't yet a doctrinal standard to which they could refer to for answers. Paul tells them not to worry about it, when the resurrection takes place, the dead will rise first. This is the first attempt in canon to explain away the discrepancy between what Jesus said and what was happening (or not happening). Jesus was pretty clear that The End would take place within the lifetime of his generation; Paul is, like so many "prophets" after him, trying to explain why what had been so confidently predicted wasn't happening. But at this point Paul still believes that the resurrection will take place pretty soon. He's just calming down those who are worried that they'll die before the good stuff happens. Eventually he changes his mind. 

Paul was human, just like everyone else. As he got older and his own death stared him in the face, he wasn't so sure. In the Epistle to the Philippians, he writes: "To live is Christ and to die is gain" and in II Corinthians "..would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" indicating that a Christian would be in the presence of Jesus Christ upon death. He wouldn't be the first person to change their mind about death as their own approached. But I Thessalonians is still in the Bible, with the description of the dead rising and the living levitating into the sky. An agnostic like myself views that as a contradiction. Some Christians hold to one and ignore the other, others explain away the version of afterlife that they don't like. Still others combine the two, with Christians being temporarily in the presence of God after death and being raised up bodily later to be judged. 

But still, 2000 years later, Christians are still waiting for Jesus to come back and get them, and he still fails to do so.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part VII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part V (The Milieu of the Gospels and Apocalypticism)

It is important to first understand the society during Biblical times. 

Around the eighth century BCE, according to the Tanakh, the Jewish people were divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Around 720 BCE Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and deported most of the inhabitants while subjugating the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal kingdom. Around 150 years later the Neo-Babylonian Empire defeated Judah and there ceased to be an independent Jewish state until the brief interregnum of the Hasmonaeans. At the time of Jesus the Romans had taken over Judea via the client kingdom of the Herod family. Many Jews were extremely unhappy with being under the thumb of yet another foreign nation, especially after independence was still within living memory. 

The religious environment was tied closely to the political. After centuries of military defeats and rule by foreigners, after the destruction of their temple, and things generally just not going their way, a fatalistic view took hold: apocalypticism. The apocalyptic view was that it was futile to try to change the world through human efforts; that the world itself was under the power of evil and that the only way things were going to change was if God directly intervened and overthrew the existing order and ushered in a "Kingdom of God".  There were various strains of apocalypticism during this time, with characters such as "The Son of Man" and "The Messiah", references to reestablishing the Davidic monarchy and descriptions of what the "End of Days" would be like. This was the milieu in which Jesus lived and preached. If you read the Gospels like an historian it's fairly obvious that this is what Jesus preached as well. 

If you focus on the actions that Jesus told people that they needed to do to gain the "Kingdom of Heaven" (or "Kingdom of God", or sometimes simply "The Kingdom") it was very clear that it was the actions, and not believing in him, or accepting him, that got you into the Kingdom. I'm aware that there are sections that focus on believing in order to attain eternal life. A good case can be made that the later Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, represent a later development among the Christian Church, and were not what the historical Jesus taught. What Jesus taught was that pretty soon, within the lifetime of those he was preaching to, God would intervene in the world, throw down the kingdoms of the world, and establish God's kingdom on Earth. His comments about rejecting family, rejecting worldly goods, and especially riches makes sense in this context. It made no sense to to plan for the long term because he didn't think there would be a long term. He wasn't out to make the world a better place, because he didn't think "the world" was going to be around long enough to be made better. He gave instructions to his followers to change their ways so that they would make the cut when the Godly New World Order came to pass. Anyone who didn't straighten up and fly right would be outside gnashing their teeth before getting vaporized by destroying fire. 

Did I mention that he thought that this would happen soon?

This doesn't mean that loving your neighbor and living the way Jesus told people to live isn't a good thing, but the reason Jesus gave for living that way turned out to be mistaken. God didn't overthrow the kingdoms of the world and establish his kingdom within Jesus' generation...or ever. Jesus was wrong.

Oops.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part VI

Workin' Man - Part XI - Consultants, Management Time and The Answer Man, Oh My

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

I have learned over the decades to be extremely suspicious of consultants. They generally don't know as much as they think that they do, they make extravagant promises and make sure to feed you enough information to keep you interested and willing to keep bringing them back. I don't recall the name of this consultant, but what he was pitching was process improvement. In general I think process improvement is a good idea. In short, what it involves is looking at your the way you do things for anything that is superfluous and analyzing the steps and handoffs involved. Are there steps that are unnecessary or don't add value? Is it generating paper that doesn't go anywhere? Are unnecessary people involved? 

The program started off with a weekend retreat at Mahoney State Park attended by representatives from all of the company's divisions. We were supposed to hash out a plan to implement a process improvement program, based on guidance from the consultant. What we came up with was a grass roots, from the bottom up, methodology for  implementing change in the company. According to the plan, a core group of people would go around to all the departments, interview the staff, and map out the processes involved in their jobs. Once this was all done, a team of any four people could implement a change to any department after putting together a detailed plan. Coaches, who had undergone training by the consultant, who be available to guide and advise the change teams. So far do good. Or so we thought. 

The problems started right away. The unionized sections of the company refused to participate. Other areas like the reporters didn't have a specific procedure that they followed, at least not one that could be reduced to simple steps. I was one of the coaches, and stayed busy training teams on how to implement change according to the program. But more problems cropped up when teams that had no real understanding of how divisions of the company worked were making changes to those divisions without the permission, or even the input, of the affected managers. I don't remember anything actually getting done. Ever. Eventually the Publisher (newspaper-speak for CEO) got tired of the whole thing and fired the consultant. My skepticism of consultants continues to this day. 

I was one of those people who volunteered for everything. And got volunteered for everything. One of the more fun things that I signed up for was being on staff for the Omaha World-Herald carrier newsletter. Every month I wrote an article called "The Answer Man". My non de plume was Dlarehd L. Rowahamo - which is Omaha World-Herald spelled backwards. The premise was that Dlarehd was either from another planet, or perhaps another dimension or timeline, and didn't quite understand what was going on. He constantly got things backwards, but ended up covering things that needed to be covered, like sales contests and changes in subscription price, in a humorous manner. The first few issues were a battle to stop the editors from spell checking me, since I made up a lot of words! 

I was once involved in a seminar where the facilitator was trying to demonstrate the value of consensus in putting together a mission statement, rather than simply a vote of the majority. My thinking was that the bigger the group, the less likely it is that consensus could be achieved. So during this consensus building exercise, I decided that I would be a contrarian and refuse to agree to the nascent consensus. The moderator tried to negotiate with me, but I dug in my heels and wouldn't agree to anything. Was I being a jerk? Absolutely, but I also effectively debunked his idea of the inevitability of consensus. I believe they abandoned consensus and decided to outvote me! 

One of the things I learned participating in all of those committees was that there is an ideal number of people on a committee. Too few and you get groupthink; too many and you never come to a conclusion. Once a committee gets too big the best thing that can be done is break it up into subcommittees. Have that subcommittee do the work of crafting a plan, then present it to the larger group and have them vote on it. 

There were a lot of other projects and committees that I volunteered for, but despite all the work I was putting into these activities that were adjacent to my regular job description, they weren't really valued by management. Every year State Circulation had an annual meeting where awards were given out for outstanding achievement. There were cash awards given out in conjunction with these recognitions as well. One particular year I was sure I'd be recognized for something like team player, (for which there was an award) or for all the committees I was recruited for. Every award, like every other year, went to the sales reps whose sales went up the most. I had an epiphany. I realized that I was spending hours upon hours every week on projects that simply weren't valued and resulted in no reward or even recognition. Not even a pat on the back. The next day I resigned from every single committee and program that I was involved in and spent my time on the things that would bring me recognition, and more importantly, more money!

The most interesting thing I was involved in was an 18-month management training course. At least part of it was interesting. Honestly I can't remember most of what they covered, but we would be at training two-three days a week a couple of times a month. One class that stood out was one where we were supposed learn how to let go of our stress and to relax by means of guided meditation. I didn't get much out of it, but one of my fellow trainees fell asleep and was snoring loudly. I guess he was relaxed!

 The part that I learned the most from, and have carried to this day, was a week-long class called Managing Management Time. I had taken my share of time management courses before, including one that was a thinly disguised front for a company selling pocket calendars. (This was well before the days when everyone had a multi-purpose supercomputer in their pocket) Managing Management Time was a theory of management that I had never heard before. The premise was that management was a skill like any other, and separate from the skills of the people that were being managed, the ranks of whom the manager had presumably arrived from. The time management tips were really corollaries to spending your time as a manager, not just another one of the guys. One of the main nuggets of wisdom was the saying "The job of a manger is not to do things, but to get things done.  The course covered a lot of the management fallacies. One was the "Pride of Craft" fallacy, where a new manager was so attached to her pre-management job, that she would spend a large portion of her work week doing the job that she had just been promoted out of. This was in addition to all the new management responsibilities. This was why many new managers end up working 60-70 hour weeks! Other topics included the responsibility of a manager to train his subordinates to do their jobs independently, instead of micromanaging them; and knowing what things were actually her responsibility - knowing who the "monkey" belonged to! A piece of practical advice included procrastination: if nobody follows up on that task you were given, it probably wasn't that important! The main nugget of wisdom was that there was management time and vocational time. As managers we were being paid to manage, not to do the tasks that we were paying other people to do. Your subordinates might think you were a cool guy for getting your hands dirty working side by side with them, and occasionally that might serve as a morale builder, but it wasn't your job. I still have the book from this class on my bookshelf and have applied the principles consistently over the years. 

As I mentioned in the previous installment, after my demotion, my old manager Dave was once again my manager. He was much easier to work with this time around. Maybe he had mellowed with experience. Maybe he was thankful he had a veteran like myself on his team. Whatever the reason, it was considerably better this time around. After I had been back in my old district for a while, Dave decided to make a change. Dodge County, which included the city of Fremont, had recently been detached from its district in Region 4 and added to our region. Fremont had two busy distributorships as well as a number of large motor routes, both seven-day and Sunday only, as well as routes in all of the smaller towns. Dave asked me if I would consider taking over that district, along with a decent raise. I agreed. On my first Sunday in the county Dave and I both were out delivering papers in a blizzard! I also had my first visit to South Dakota when I was assigned to convert all the vending machines in the  South Dakota border counties to new settings after a price change. 

Outside of Dodge County, things were changing in State Circulation. A lot of the managers who had been in charge were leaving the company. The last several State Circulation Managers had risen through the ranks within the newspaper, but one by one they were being promoted into Metro, transferred to one of our subsidiaries, or leaving the company altogether. The new State Manager was from outside the company and had already brought in a few of his friends from his previous newspaper as Region Managers. Like many new executives, he was keen to shake things up and make changes. He and Dave did not get along. The friction got so bad that Dave eventually resigned. It was funny - after Dave left a lot of the other sales reps asked me if I was worried since "my buddy" had left, not realizing that Dave and I were far from "buddies"! 

Jerry, the new Region Manager had come from our competitor, The Lincoln Journal-Star. He convinced me to transfer districts again, this time back to the Lincoln Office as the Single Copy Manager. (Single Copy encompassed all sales other than home delivery, i.e. vending machines, stores and school sales) This time around I also had some responsibility for single copy throughout all regions of the state.  This involved putting together an inventory of every rack in the state (outside of the Omaha metro area) and ordering and delivering new racks when needed. I conducting training classes on rack repair and changing pricing mechanisms. It was amazing how many sales reps had no idea where the racks were in their districts or in what shape they were in. In dealing with the Region Manager and his sales reps in the Western Nebraska Region I also got a taste of how small town Nebraskans viewed people from the urban areas - with barely concealed disdain. I remember trying to get an address for a storage facility in Kearney so I could deliver some new racks and being told that this wasn't the big city, we don't have addresses out here. (Spoiler: there was an address)

Around this time, in order to pay off my credit card debt I took a part-time job working the night stocking crew at the Super Saver on Cornhusker Highway. I'll discuss that job more in a future article. I got the job because one of the guys who worked on my crew at Food 4 Less was a manager there. He introduced me to his Store Director whose only question was "Can you work nights?" - I was hired. 

As Single Copy Manager I was always looking for ways to sell more papers. I hustled around town looking for new locations for racks, and worked on maximizing the number of papers in each location, paying attention to sales and returns. On Husker Football Game Days we rented a parking stall at the old Greyhound Station and parked a pickup truck there full of papers. We sold a paper-spirit card combo for the price of a paper (then 25¢) which counted as paid circulation. The big win was when I convinced downtown restaurants to commit to paying for hundreds of papers at a reduced rate that I would give away at the stadium with a map to the restaurant stapled to the sports section. We did this for every Lincoln sporting event and it was a great success. My circulation numbers skyrocketed. Since increased circulation was one of the things that our bonus was based on, I was making some extra money!

Like at many places, when you succeed, you're expected to keep succeeding. In an industry where a 2% increase was almost unheard of (I used to say exceeding 2% will result in a temple being built, devoted to your worship) I achieved a 20% annual increase in paid circulation. The company set my goal the following year for another 20%. I achieved a only 10% increase (still, 30% greater than 2 years previously) but received no bonus, even though sales reps with 1% and 2% increases did. I was extremely unhappy. By this time, there was a new State Circulation Manager (again), this time a transplant from the Lincoln Journal Star who Jerry didn't get along with, so I got a new, new boss, a guy named Kevin. Kevin was able to get me a salary increase, (no bonus recalculation though) but I thought it was a case of too little, too late, and resigned to take a management job with Super Saver. This meant that I needed to quit my part-time job with Super Saver and get a new part-time job to pay off my debt. I took a part-time job with the Omaha World-Herald!

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part IV (Inconsistencies)

In the first installment of "An Agnostic's Look at The Bible" I discussed the proposition that the Gospels were historical documents and how this position would surprise many people. The counter-argument that there are no contemporary references to Jesus, or that the Gospels were written 40-70 years after his ministry, or that there are contradictions, or that the writers had an agenda is somewhat irrelevant. Not because we should accept everything that's in the New Testament at face value, but that the problems that skeptics often identify are not uncommon. Many of our historical records were written well after the events that they describe and are often written at the behest of a ruler who wanted his bona fides polished up a bit. But looking at the Bible the way an historian would enables us to sift through it and take a reasonable stab at what really happened. Or if it happened at all. 

To view The Bible as an historical document, or more accurately, as a collection of historical documents, one must reject the assumption that it is perfect and internally consistent. A theologian, or a believer, will attempt to harmonize contradictory sections. For example, all the Gospels describes two criminals crucified with Jesus. In two Gospels, both revile Jesus as they are dying; while in another Gospel, only one does so, while the second does not. One explanation that I have seen suggests that there were actually four crucified with him in two pairs. In one pair both reviled him, in the second pair, only one. A similar "solution" explains why the various descriptions of Peter's three denials differ so much from each other - easy! SIX denials! In no Gospel are there more than two criminals or three denials mentioned, yet in order to make them fit we are to believe that "what really happened" can only be deduced by taking bits and pieces from different sources. It becomes more problematic when the discrepancies are between doctrinal extremes, like when Jesus declares that no man has seen God at any time and in another place that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father. I'll be writing about the evolution of the Trinity in a later edition - a textbook example of attempts at harmonization gone wild!

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that even after the Gospels were written they were subject to copyists' errors. Some were honest mistakes, but others (this really surprises some people) were the result of attempts to make the scriptures fit the predominant theology of the day. How to find out what was originally written, and even if what was originally written reflects what the historical Jesus really said or did is not a job for the fainthearted. The fact that the first Gospel that is included in The Bible, Mark, was written around forty years after the events that it purportedly describes suggests that the author got his information either from other written sources, or from oral traditions. Assume that the basics of the Gospel accounts are true, i.e. Jesus was an itinerant preacher who attracted a following, offended the authorities and was executed, and that some of his followers at least believed that he rose from the dead. If so it is natural that both stories and legends would be passed along by his followers and that no contemporary written records would have been made since his earliest followers were likely illiterate. It was only later, as Christianity spread due to the missionary efforts of Paul and others, that the desire to create written records arose. 

After Mark, others wrote their versions of the life and mission of Jesus. Three others were included in the New Testament, two of them, Matthew and Luke without a doubt used Mark as source material. There is consensus that they both used a second source, which Biblical scholars call "Q", as well. The Gospel of John seems to have developed independently of the other three. Others survived but are viewed as apocryphal and still others have been lost and no trace of them survives. If we do not assume, as a believer would, that the four Gospels were inspired by God, and are therefore inerrant and consistent with each other, then it would be natural to expect inconsistencies and discrepancies, or even errors. 

Histories, while usually written by the winners, will also reflect the differing priorities and agendas of the writers and their intended audience. A modern history book about the American Civil War written by a Confederate sympathizer would look different than one written by a proponent of Critical Race Theory. Even in 2025 what happened on January 6, 2021 is described in wildly different terms depending on one's political orientation. It should be no surprise therefore when individual books of The Bible do not agree with one another. They have been written by different people who may have had different ideas about who Jesus was, what his ministry was about, what was the purpose of his death. There are passages in the Gospels that seem to have the purpose of addressing or debunking positions that differ from the author's. Every book has its own agenda, which seeks to advance the author's view of what is orthodox and what is heretical. 

We should expect differences, not be surprised by them.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part V