So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start from the beginning: Part I

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

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me: I'll just need your bank account number

Prospect: I don't know it

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

Prospect: My checkbook is in my car

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

Prospect: I don't know where my car is

Me: What?

Prospect: My brother has it

Me: *Click*

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

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

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

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

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

Managers Part XII - Minimizing Your Boss-Imposed Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning: Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning: Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part IX