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

* 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

* 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

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

Manager Part XI - Training

How do you get your subordinates out of Levels 1 and 2 and become more self directed?

(Refer to Part X for explanation of the 5 levels)

As a manager you can't just show up to work and expect that your subordinates will automatically aspire to Level 4 or 5 independence. You have to actually train them! And once you've trained them, you have to follow up in order to assure yourself that your subordinates really know what they're doing. Just telling a subordinate that you expect them to work independently and make their own decisions doesn't mean that they will. (And we're talking here about ability and understanding, insubordination is a completely different subject). And even after a subordinate has been instructed in the expectations of the job, doesn't mean that they have been trained. And even after you are sure that they fully understand all aspects of the job and have the ability to carry them out, being fully trained means that they are actually doing it. If you don't follow up and ensure that the work is being done you run the risk of your subordinate deciding on his own what his job should be, and that might be very different than what you expect!

Back when I managed grocery stores we had a position called Grocery Clerk. This was an entry-level position and was almost always filled by high school kids who had never held a job before. The clerks had two main jobs: retrieve carts from the parking lot and "pull cardboard". They had other duties as well, but those are the two main ones. Pulling cardboard involved methodically going through an aisle, section by section, and removing any cardboard boxes that were less than half full and then "facing", pulling all the product forward on the shelf. (This was what was called a "warehouse" store, most product was put on the shelf in the case that in came in, with the front and top cut off.) The purpose of this was to keep the shelves orderly and make it easy for the customers to see the products. Something called a "cardboard bin", a wheeled, plastic container, 4'x4'x4' was utilized to throw the cardboard in. This was mind-numbingly, boring work, but it had to be done. It was also extremely simple to master, but it was almost never done correctly.

The problem was training. What should have been done was that each new grocery clerk be teamed up with a manager for half of a shift, released for a few hours to work on his own, and then back with the manager for follow up. For the first few weeks the clerk's work should have been checked by a manager until it was assured that proper training had taken place. What did happen was that the new clerk was teamed up with an "experienced" clerk who probably was doing things incorrectly himself, ensuring that the cycle of incompetence would continue. Look in on most grocery clerks allegedly pulling cardboard and you'll see two of them strolling down an aisle, chatting (grocery clerks are almost never supposed to be working two-by-two, pulling cardboard is a one-person job), pulling the occasional box off the shelf, without a cardboard bin, then strolling to the back room to throw out the small amount of cardboard that they can hold in their arms. And there is rarely, if ever, a manager checking up on them.

A few years ago I conducted an experiment. I watched as a grocery clerk exited an aisle that he had supposedly just got done pulling cardboard in. (He had a cardboard bin). I entered the same aisle and pulled cardboard and faced the correct way. I piled all the cardboard on the floor in front of each section and then called him back to show him what he had missed. He was not happy, but he did learn what was expected of him.

The nature of the training is critically important to the ultimate achievement of higher level competence. During my final 10 years before retirement I worked for the state revenue department. My training was a bewildering hodgepodge of regulations, definitions, and statutes in a Power Point presentation. During training my mind raced, trying to keep track of all the information that was being shot at me. Most of it made no sense to me, since it was completely without context. What I wasn't being presented with was the practical information that I needed in order to do my job. After training was over and began my assigned tasks another new trainee and I figured out the actual requirements of the job by trial and error. We learned to focus on what we really needed to do the job and pretty much ignore the rest. Over the years I heard from other new hires how confusing and useless the training was. 

Eventually I was promoted to a position where I was responsible for training the new people. With my manager's permission I completely revamped the training program so that it focussed on how to do the job, with the regulations, definitions and other details presented as an adjunct to the practical instruction. I revised a checklist so that a new hire could methodically carry out their assigned tasks. The new training program was practical rather than theoretical and was key to getting employees to the goal of working independently. 

Sometimes the lesson managers get from the Five Levels of Management Freedom is that everybody should be at Level 4 or 5 and that they are just supposed to sit back and watch everyone work. (Presumably with their feet up on their desks). That is the wrong lesson! Subordinates at Levels 4 and 5 doesn't free managers from work, it frees them from other people's work so they can concentrate on managerial work. 

Getting everyone to at least Level 3 and ideally Levels 4 and 5 is the goal; but how do you accomplish that goal? Not by wishful thinking or by simply telling people to manage themselves, but by putting in the hard work of training subordinates to be not just "hard workers", but independent thinkers and problem solvers.

Training can be very time-consuming, but the result is worth the time.

Start with Part I