So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIII

These days, while still leaving open the possibility of the supernatural, I'm pretty skeptical. I operate in a mildly religious philosophical framework, but am well aware that I might be wrong. But back in the seventies and eighties I was a believer. I believed that there was a God who was intimately involved in human affairs. I believed in miracles. I believed in miraculous healing. I spoke in tongues. I prayed and fully expected to get results. 

I grew up in a Christian family in a majority Catholic neighborhood and although we all prayed and believed in God, I have to say that growing up we didn't expect results with the surety and confidence that we did in The Way. I recall a conversation with my father, one of the most observant, religious people that I knew, explaining how I really believed this stuff, and how his facial expression expressed skepticism. The Catholicism of my youth, like that of many Americans contained the caveat that God might say "no" to your prayers, a hedge against lack of results.

The Way had a different approach to hedging against lack of results: The Law of Believing. 

The Way differentiated between "faith" and "believing", even though both words were translated from the same koine Greek word, πίστις (pistis). Although their definition of "faith" was never entirely clear, it was vaguely defined as "an inside job", something accomplished by God within you, while "believing" was an action that you took. You actively believed what God, via the Bible, said, and you acted upon that belief. For example, if the Bible said that you could be healed of disease, then you believed that promise and reaped the result of believing it. Perhaps you've spotted the hedge?

Of course the problem was that it all depended on whether or not you were really believing, and in the circular logic employed by so much of religion, if you got the desired result then that proved that you must have been believing—if you didn't get the desired result it couldn't be God's fault, you must not have been believing. This doctrine claimed that anyone who suffered from chronic illness, financial difficulty or any kind of problems simply wasn't believing. 

The initial doctrine describing how believing was defined as believing what was written in the Bible morphed into several related practices. One was the tendency for Way people to say that they were "believing for" something, sometimes something as insignificant as a parking space, as if parking spaces were promised in The Bible. The other was the increasing tendency to view whatever "leadership" said or did as blessed by God, so if something bad happened to a leader, or they just didn't get a desired result, it wasn't that they "weren't believing"—they were being attacked by The Adversary (Wayspeak for The Devil). In the early eighties I ran a PFAL class—all of the students subsequently. I was berated for my lack of believing, but the wife of the state leader had the same thing happen to her and it was explained away as The Adversary attacking her godly stand on The Word. 

The Way taught that fear was the opposite of believing. 

Like I mentioned in Part XII, I transferred from the Queens Village Way Home to a different Way Home in the Richmond Hill neighborhood after some incidents that should have caused me to question the whole foundation of The Way, but instead had the opposite affect of causing me to double down on my Way commitment. During the next six months a combination of more red flags and what looked like genuine miracles pushed me even further into Way-World. The red flags perversely convincing me that a deeper commitment on my part would be the solution to eliminating these speed bumps in my life. The apparent signs, miracles and wonders further convinced me that it was all real. 

Start from the beginning

Part I

Part XIII - Grocery Guy

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 

 After working part-time at the Cornhusker Super Saver as a stocker for around six months I noticed a lot of postings for management positions on the bulletin board in the break room. The plethora of opportunities was due to a new store opening at South 27th and Pine Lake Road. I decided to apply for the Grocery Manager slot at the 48th & O Super Saver. I thought my previous experience working as a manager at Food 4 Less and my recent time working on the Night Crew would help me get my foot in the door. I did indeed get my foot in the door and my foot stayed in the B&R Stores door, the parent company of Super Saver, for just under 17 years. 

I started as Grocery Manager for Store #4 of B&R Stores, the original Super Saver in August 1999. I got a little bit of training by Jeff, my predecessor. I would come in at 6:00am and learn how to put in a grocery order. I'd then go back to The Omaha World-Herald office to finish up my two weeks notice there and train my replacement . Other than that, it was figure it out as I went along. My second week there I was told that I was going to be on my own as the manager-in-charge for second shift on a Friday night. The Store Director and Assistant Store Director would be leaving at 5:00pm, and I would be on my own until the Night Manager arrived at 9:00pm. I had no idea what I was doing, or even where anything was. Fortunately most of the action was handled by the Front End shift supervisor, who oversaw the cashiers. A team of grocery clerks brought the shopping carts in, cleaned the bathrooms and kept the aisles and displays full. When I asked George, the Store Director, if I was going to get any training, he told me that I'd figure it out. I was the evening supervisor 1pm-10pm every Friday. The only manager in the store for 5 hours.

Friday nights were where I learned a lot about managing, not just the tasks, like ordering, but keeping all the balls in the air, dealing with angry customers, keeping all the clerks busy, making sure the Deli and the Bakery and the Meat department crews were all doing their jobs. One night, as I was making my rounds, I saw our evening janitor, Bill, gathering up trash to take out to the dumpster. Or that's what I thought he was doing. As I observed him, I saw that he was hiding items of produce under the trash bags, very carefully constructing what looked like a cart full of trash, but was really full of items that he was stealing. I called the police and had him ticketed for shoplifting. He ended up getting the charges dropped because the cop screwed up the paperwork. He had the gall to ask for his job back. He did not get it. 

I mentioned in my reminisces about my part time job with The Omaha World-Herald that my hours were different than what I thought they would be. I knew that I would be working at least one weekend day, but was surprised to learn the rest of the schedule expectations. A salaried manager was expected to work, not 40, but a minimum of 45 hours each week. Most days I was scheduled to work 6am - 3pm, with an hour for lunch, plus a half day on Wednesday, although "half day" was a misnomer. A half shift should have been 4 hours, so theoretically I should have been leaving at 10:00am, but we had a managers meeting from 9-10am, and since it was ad day, I unfailingly had vendors looking for me when I came out of the meeting. Noon was a more common time to leave. Fridays was 1-10pm without a lunch, since all the other managers left by 5:00pm. I had Sundays off.  Fortunately, shortly after I was hired we were given the choice of working 5 days or 5 ¹/₂  days, so my schedule changed to 6am - 4pm, with Thursday and Sunday off. 

Periodically our supplier, which at the time was Fleming Foods, would host a "Food Show". This was a gathering of vendors, who would promote their products, and give us an opportunity to buy quantity at lower prices. They also had an ad schedule; we had the opportunity to order our ad items in advance. An experienced grocery manager would have had a pretty good idea how much of a given product he could sell at a particular price, and order accordingly. I, on the other hand, had no idea what I was doing. I'm pretty sure my orders bore no relationship to what we could potentially sell. It was possible to check the computer database to see what had sold the last time a specific product was in the ad, but this computer was inaccessible at the Food Show. One vendor, who was known as a weaselly sort, offered to sell me some Rotel, which sold well during Super Bowl.  I checked the database and ordered accordingly. The problem was that the database listed sales in units - I thought it represented cases. If I remember correctly we sold about 100 units around Super Bowl the previous year, which meant I needed 8-10 cases of 12 each. I ordered 100 cases. The vendor had to have known that I was making a rookie mistake, but let the order go through. We eventually sold it all, but it took all year! I never trusted that guy again. 

Years later all bulk or pallet sized orders originated in the corporate office. But when I was first promoted to grocery manager we had the freedom to order large quantities and run our own internal sales. I would regularly order a truckload of Old Orchard cranberry juice and other flavors, figure out what price point I wanted sell them at, calculate what price I needed to buy them at to achieve our gross profit goal, and negotiate with the supplier to get my target price. For about a year I would order a truckload every quarter and sell the whole delivery in less than two weeks. 

There were definitely some interesting characters in that store. Don, the Assistant Grocery Manager, was one of those guys who had a story for every occasion. He was a guitarist, and he used to talk about having played with some famous people, including David Crosby. No one believed what we thought were just tall tales until several years later talking with some local musicians who confirmed that he had indeed played with David Crosby! 

Terry was our janitor. He was a scruffy little guy with a giant moustache, who always seemed down on his luck. He would share his financial woes with the rest of us, woes that boiled down to him spending money foolishly. A couple of us offered to help him manage his money for a few months, especially since he was constantly taking out high interest payday loans to make ends meet, which always put him further behind, but he refused. The craziest thing he was involved in was getting involved with a woman in another state. This was around the year 2000, the infancy of the internet, and I don't remember how they got in touch. Despite being chronically broke he paid for her and her adult daughter to move here whereupon she moved in with him, hooked up with another guy, and kicked him out of his own apartment. He was the only person who I ever gave a zero to on an category of his annual review. This was in the category of appearance. There were a lot of issues there, but coming to work with a large hole in the seat of his jeans...while not wearing underwear, earned him that zero. 

Our maintenance man was another guy named Don. I don't remember him doing much maintaining, just a lot of walking around or standing up front with his arms crossed when we were busy. One busy holiday afternoon, while we were overrun with customers and having trouble keeping up I asked him to fill a few displays (rather than standing up front with his arms folded). He responded that he wasn't any good at that and went back to standing up front doing nothing. He was once asked to build a mobile podium for the cashiers' managers to use. The tiny wheels he put on it bent under the weight of the wood after one shift. 

I was assigned by the store director to do Don's annual review. The reviews had 15 categories where we rated the employees on a scale of 0 - 4. A "2" indicated that an employee was just doing the basics, but not really doing anything outstanding. It was a typical score for someone new. A "3" meant that they were an excellent employee. "4's" were rare, but I always tried to find some reason to give a few. Some managers maintained that they meant "perfect", which was incorrect—it was more like "over and above", or "an example to others". If you didn't miss any work and showed up in the proper uniform every day I gave you a "4" in the attendance and uniform categories. (A "1" meant you had areas that were well below standard; a "0" was rare enough that I only gave out one in 17 years. I gave Don a pretty good review. A couple of "4's" and "2's" and mostly "3's". Weirdly he sat through the review sullenly declining to give an feedback or response. After we were done he stomped into the store director's office and slammed the door. He thought that he should have received all "4's" and complained about his review. Fortunately, the store director backed me up that time. 

I was still involved in The Way at that time, and despite my theoretical management knowledge I wasn't a very good manager at the time. The Way subscribed to the "Yelling" school of leadership, believing that a leader's title gave them claim on respect and obedience. I had internalized that lesson and exercised it at Super Saver. While this approach made me unpopular, it didn't do much to harm my career, since being an asshole only hurt a manager if their sales and profits were below budget. The abuses of managers who were making money for the company were routinely ignored. (A produce manager who ran a very profitable department in a very profitable store literally assaulted an employee, choking him in the back room, with no repercussions)

My biggest challenge during my time as a Grocery Manager was my relationship with the Night Crew. In theory the Grocery Manager decided what displays would be built and where, directing the work of the Night Crew. The Grocery Manager did the daily ordering which determined their nightly work load. The problem here was that the Night Crew had very firm ideas about how things what they would do and how things should be done. My own inexperience added to the mess. In theory, the Grocery Manager was supposed to "walk the store" first thing in the morning to make sure the Night Crew had left everything in order. In practice, any changes or input were going to be ignored. Very soon after I started, Mike, the Assistant Store Director, pointed out a few minor things to me that he thought needed to be changed, and that he wanted me to communicate to the Night Crew. They were so minor I can't even remember what they were, but when I talked to Alex, the Night Manager, about it, he out and out refused my instructions. If you've read my series on managers, you know that a manager has several possible sources of leverage over their employees. 

1. Legitimate Power: The ability to influence others due to one's position, office or formal authority
2. Reward Power: The ability to influence others by giving or withholding rewards such as pay, promotions, time off, etc.
3. Coercive Power: The ability to influence others through punishment
4. Expert Power: The ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills
5. Referent Power: Power that comes from personal characteristics that people value, respect or admire

There were several problems that stymied my ability to get the Night Crew to do what I needed them to do. 

1. I wasn't technically the Night Manager's boss - he was very aware that, although I was responsible to give them direction, on the org chart we were equal. I didn't have any formal authority to tell them what to do
2. I had no control over pay, vacation, promotion. There was nothing I could do for them. 
3. I couldn't force them - same as #2. There was nothing I could do to them. 
4. I couldn't dazzle them with my deep knowledge of merchandising or even stock crew operations, because I didn't have either. To them I was an outsider (true) whose only experience was six months as a stocker. My many years experience as a manager was worthless to them. 
5. I've worked for managers who got things done simply because they were good people that their employees would do anything for. I've been that manager on occasion. These guys had no respect for anyone, least of all me. 

The problem was exacerbated by the refusal of the Store Director to address the problem. I exacerbated it myself a couple of months after I started. Thanksgiving was coming up, my first big holiday as a manager. As the big day approached I kept hearing the phrase "double truck". Due to the holiday, one of our regular deliveries would be eliminated, so extra stock needed to be ordered to make up the difference. But I took the term "double truck" very literally. If normal procedure called for one case, I ordered two. If it called for two cases, I ordered four. When I arrived at work the next morning the aisles were choked with stock that would not fit on the shelves. Craig, the Assistant Store Director (the previously mentioned Mike had transferred to a new store) had to literally prevent Alex from assaulting me. 

My lack of experience coupled with the Night Crew's lack of respect for me or anyone else escalated. One night a member of the forklift crew ripped up a list of changes that I left for them right in front of me. Alex refused to walk the aisles with me in the morning, despite our VP of Operations and Store Director mandating that it be done. It finally came to a head during a meeting that included me, Assistant Grocery Manager Don, the Night Manager and his Assistant Night Manager, the Store Director and Assistant Store Director. I don't know if Alex had complained about me, or if store management finally saw a problem that needed to be resolved. The meeting was tense, but it seemed like we were getting things figured out. Alex and his assistant talked about the amount of time it took to execute a change in a display and I promised to keep the operational side of things in mind when planning. It all appeared to be headed for resolution; I summed up my side of things by saying that I just wanted to have open communication. Alex responded with "Well, I'm communicating that you don't really know what you're doing" or something similar. Store Director George attempted to smooth that over by asking both of us if we could work together moving forward. Alex shrugged and gave an answer something like "I'll do what I can". George was prepared to accept this, but Assistant Store Director Craig exploded. He asked Alex what he meant by that. What he thought "doing what I can" entailed. He ripped into him for his comment about communication. He ripped into him for his attitude. He made it clear that he thought that the problems between day and night teams were entirely Alex's fault. 

From that moment on I had an ally in Craig. Even though Alex didn't respect Craig either (he had recently left another grocery chain to work for Super Saver), Craig did have real authority over the Night Manager and backed up my decisions, while at the same time teaching me how to be better at my job.

Not long after this meeting most of the bulk and truckload ordering had moved from store level to the corporate office. All available storage space was rapidly being filled. Unlike Food 4 Less, the back rooms at Super Saver were small and were not designed to store large quantities. Overstock was stacked on top of the warehouse racking on the sales floor. All of that top deck space had been filled and pallets were being stacked three high on the floor near the check stands, and in other areas of the store not designed for storage. Alex and his crew complained to no avail, until one day, fed up with the mess, Alex and several of his most experienced forklift drivers walked out. This left us short staffed, but no one missed Alex. 

The two years that I worked at the 48th & O Super Saver were in some ways the last gasp of the old school way of running a grocery store. I mentioned earlier that bulk ordering shifted to the corporate office. Adequate staffing was coming to an end. In Super Savers the Grocery Manager oversaw the janitors and grocery clerks, who were responsible for bringing in carts from the lot and generally keeping the store in order. In those days there would be four grocery clerks and a "utility clerk" (basically a janitor) on duty in the evenings, with six clerks on weekends. It wasn't long before Walmart came to town, resulting in fewer sales. The corporate answer was always to cut labor. By the time I left Super Savers in 2013 we were lucky if we had two grocery clerks on duty at any time. Before the cutbacks having that many unspecialized staff meant that not only could you handle special events that required extra staff, like anniversary cake giveaways, but if someone called in sick in another department you could loan them out to check, or stock dairy, or fill produce racks. Corporate never seemed to understand the effect that cutting staff had. Their answer to staffing shortages was, for years to come, was to "just get a grocery clerk to do it", when there were no grocery clerks to do it!

Another change was the bonus structure. For some reason Grocery, Frozen, Dairy, General Merchandise (GMD) and Spirits Managers were not eligible for bonuses, but the so-called perishable departments, Meat, Deli, Bakery and Produce were able to earn quite lucrative bonuses. A Meat Manager could conceivably make $60,000-70,000 in bonuses on top of a typical $35,000 (typical for the 80's) a year salary. The potential bonuses were much reduced, which angered many long term managers, especially the Meat managers who had grown to expect the large payouts as part of their salary. 

After about two years as a Grocery Manager I started to set my sights on a promotion to Assistant Store Director (ASD). My own ASD had started coaching me on some of the responsibilities of the position and I felt confident that I would be able to step up. There had been some changes with store directors retiring and ASDs moving up, leaving several open positions. I considered applying for the position in one of the smaller stores, but my ASD counselled me to wait, suggesting that something better would open up soon. In fact, he was promoted to store director, opening up an ASD position in my own store. I interviewed for the position and was offered the job. However, unknown to me, Tom S, the Operations VP, was offering the same job to Lonnie, the Grocery Manager at the Cornhusker Super Saver. So I had to interview again, this time for the ASD position at the Cornhusker store. Brian, who had hired me as a stocker two years before, was still in charge and hired me as the Assistant Store Director for his store. 

Time for the next new adventure.

Start with Part I

Managers Part XIII - The System

It likely came as no surprise that your boss has a legitimate claim on your time, maybe a bit more of a surprise that your subordinates had a legitimate claim on your time, but what's this about the system having a claim on your time? 

We're going to define the system as anything and anyone who is not in your chain of command, but whom you have to deal with and/or keep happy as part of your job. For many businesses this includes the customers, suppliers, and vendors. It probably goes without saying that you have to treat your customers right, whatever that entails in your business, and to pay your vendors and suppliers on time. But it also includes those who are part of your company, but whom you don't directly answer to. This could include Human Resources, Accounting, Tech Support, or Janitorial. Some of the people in these other departments may be at the same level as you in the organizational chart, some may be on the same level as your boss, some may have positions that don't translate neatly into the hierarchy. But they all make up the system that you have to deal with. They all have procedures, and maybe even paperwork that you have to fill out before you can make a legitimate claim on their time. How well you get along with these other departments can determine how strictly they decide to enforce their requirements and how often they "cut you a break". 

If most of the time you follow their rules, don't go over their heads, and don't make unreasonable demands, then you've got some good interdepartmental credit that you can draw upon in an emergency. For example, at the government agency where I used to work there is a defined procedure for resolving computer problems. It's not very difficult, but it can take a while to get a result. Unfortunately I require computer access to do 90%+ of my job and my computer was not functioning one morning. I know that the normal procedures would cause me to be non-productive for a good portion of the morning, so I walked over to the IT department and asked for some help. Since I never before had jumped the line and get along well with all of the tech people, I was up and running in about five minutes. They could have easily made me follow procedures, "paying full price" for what I needed, but since I had good credit with IT that I had not squandered, I was given a "discount" on the time it took. On the other side of the coin, several years ago I was managing a grocery store. The various stores usually helped one another out by transferring items from stores that had a surplus to stores that were short a product. The procedure was to call ahead, ask if you could spare item xyz, and find out when would be a good time to pick it up. This allowed the store that was transferring out the time to organize the transfer without disrupting their own operations. One particular store manager never called ahead; he just sent one of his subordinates with a list of things that they needed. The first time we chalked it up as inexperience, the second time to an emergency, but it kept happening, even after we asked that procedures be followed. After a while we stopped helping this manager—he had ruined his credit with us.

There are many examples, some that you could think of, where cooperation and help from another department, or even from your peers in the same location would make your work day proceed smoother. There are a lot of people on your team that are neither boss nor subordinate that can make or break your day. If you are spending all of your time battling the system, your self-imposed time might be shrunk to nothing.

The other part of the system involves reports, those you read and those you produce. This includes emails, trade publications, tracking, forecasting, payroll and whatever else you have to involve yourself in that doesn't involve direct interaction with another human being. There are a few ways to handle these items. One is to delegate. Does everything that you do necessarily have to be done by you? Is there someone else who would benefit by reading that report, or by answering those emails? Is it really someone else's job and not yours? Does the report even have any impact on your job? 

Years ago the store director that I worked for asked all of the department managers to report the dollar amount of their waste every week. One of the managers refused to do it, claiming that the head guy wasn't doing anything with the information. I thought that he had a point, so for a couple of weeks I just made up numbers and put the report on the boss' desk, which he proceeded to file away unread. There was another incident where a central office supervisor required that we enter sales numbers in a database in order to project sales and labor. I thought that I had a better way to do it, but had to use this other guy's system. After a while I stopped changing the numbers and just changed the date every week. He never noticed. This is a strategy known as benign neglect. If you leave something undone, and no one notices, you probably don't need to do it. Furthermore, if you make it look like you're reporting something and no one sees that the information is fake, or isn't changing, then they don't really care about the information, only that you are obeying their order. You have freed up the time that you would have spent compiling information that no one will look at or care about and can spend that time wisely, managing, rather than stupidly following orders. 

Notice that I haven't trotted out the usual time management tips like "make a list" or "prioritize. I used to tell my subordinate managers that I was paying them to think. Think about what parts of the system can be eliminated and eliminate them. We've touched upon the skill of knowing what you should be doing and what you should delegate. Coming up in the next installment, management time vs. vocational time.

Start at the beginning: Part I

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XII (Revelation Decided By Committee)

How did The Bible become The Bible? Did a committee of early Christians get together, divide up the responsibilities of what to cover? "Paul, we need you to cover some of the doctrinal issues, and address the fact that Jesus hasn't come back yet; James, your assignment is to balance up Paul's focus on faith with an alternate focus on works; John, lay off the magic mushrooms for a bit and write up an end of the world scenario, and Matthew, Mark & Luke, can you guys do some biographies, and damn it, keep it consistent we don't want a bunch of contradictions". No, as we've seen, a number of Christians took it upon themselves to write letters to other Christians, pen biographies of Jesus, compose "apocalypses" describing the end times or the heavenly realm, or just put together a little something to let people know that those other guys weren't "real" Christians. There was an incredible number of these writings circulating around Christian communities. Different churches favored different books and for three centuries there was no widely agreed-upon canon (i.e. the authorized, divinely-inspired collection of books of The Bible). 

One of the reasons there was no consensus canon of the New Testament was that for the first three centuries, and possibly after, there was no universally recognized central authority. The various cities and regions operated more or less autonomously. As a virtually illegal sect, Christians weren't building big, beautiful buildings, but were meeting in homes, likely led by whomever owned the house they were meeting in. Eventually leadership became institutionalized and overseers (the title "bishop" comes from the Greek episkopos - i.e. "one who watches over") came to hold authority over whole cities. 

In the early days there was a many varieties of Christian. The previous installment listed a few "heresies" regarding Jesus' nature, but there were many more regarding the purpose of his death and the kind of life a Christian should be living. Local leaders early on attempted to define Christian doctrine, meeting in councils to reach consensus. Eventually that consensus began to resemble the main doctrines of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the minority opinions were pushed out and suppressed. As Christianity became legalized and preferred, not only did Empire-wide councils become easier to hold, but the Bishops of the main cities of the Empire as well as cities important to the early Church, Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria in Egypt, viewed themselves as "leaders of leaders" and attempted to exercise authority over the assemblage of bishops. Finally there was something close to a central authority and and the work of deciding what would be considered divinely inspired began. 

Occasionally you'll hear talk about some nefarious plot to "take out" offensive books from The Bible, to remove anything that elevated women for example. The other day I heard somebody talking about how the Emperor Constantine edited the Bible at the Council of Nicaea to conform it to his beliefs. None of that is true. There was nothing to "take out" of The Bible because there wasn't a Bible! There were decades of arguments about what was to be considered inspired "scripture". Some books that most of us have never heard of, like The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache were in the running for years while others that are in our Bible, like I & II Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, I & II Peter, all three Epistles of John and Jude were all considered to be not in The Bible. The book current day fundamentalists love so much, Revelation, was a long shot and was the last one to be canonized. Centuries later Martin Luther re-examined some of the canonical books and had his doubts about some of them. 

One of the doctrines of the early Church that horrifies Protestants is Apostolic Succession. The doctrine states that Jesus passed on to his apostles his spiritual authority and his true teachings and that the apostles in turn passed those things on to their successors, who passed it on to their successors all the way to the present. The reason a Protestant would be horrified is that the core doctrine of the Protestant Reformation was sola scriptura, "scripture alone", that the opinions of Church leaders must be subordinate to the Bible. Remember that in those early days not only was there no Bible, but there were dozens of competing "scriptures". Somebody had to decide what Gospels were the Gospels, what Epistles were the Epistles etc. In order to have a unified Christian Church somebody had to take the bull by the horns, claim the authority to decide (whether that authority was real or not) what The Bible would be. As it is there are numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in what we have, imagine if all those apocryphal books were held as equal to the canonized books and there was no "written in stone" scripture? We think that we have a confusing multitude of denominations now? Christianity would never have survived without a central hierarchy. 

Christians today like to believe that today's Bible was without controversy accepted by the early Christians, that its divine source was obvious while the apocryphal books were just as obviously not inspired. 

The real story is a lot messier. Divine inspiration was bestowed by committee. 

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

Go to: Part XII

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 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 in a stock brokerage in Manhattan while 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. Bernie, our putative leader, was the one who was responsible for paying the bills after collecting each of our shares. 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 together, 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 clusterfuck The Way was. The allegedly infallible leadership had missed the boat, not once, but twice. They pushed us to give Bernie 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

Go to: Part XIII

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. Surely no one would be that stupid to give that information out, would they? Well, they would! 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 in addition to your hourly rate. 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 supposedly 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 hundreds 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 divorced. 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.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XIII