An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXVI - Dispensationalism & Zionism & The Rapture (Oh My)

It wasn't very long ago that I explained dispensationalism in one of my articles, but I've been seeing social media posts connecting Zionism to Dispensationalism and the concept of a "Rapture". Many of these "debunk" Dispensationalism as a new, unbiblical doctrine and conclude that this undermines the whole concept of Zionism. 

Biblical Contradictions

Many Christians would take issue with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself, not to mention historical and archeological records. Many others simply ignore the contradictions — or don't know about them because they don't read the Bible. But from the very early days of Christianity theologians have been aware of contradictions and discrepancies and attempted to reconcile them. (I'm mainly dealing with how Christian theologians addressed inconsistencies, I am not very familiar with how Jewish scholars may have approached issues in the Jewish scriptures).

The question of the nature of Jesus Christ — was he God, or was he a man? — caused a lot of ink to be spilled in the theological battlefields of the early centuries of Christianity. Even when they thought they had an answer — he's both! — the minutia of how he could be both, as well as the ramifications of the various theories, occupied Christian leaders for centuries, when it could be argued that they certainly had better things to do. 

The problem that the Church Fathers identified was that there were sections of the Gospels and Epistles that very clearly indicated that Jesus was a man, a very holy man, a special man, but a man and not God. There were also other verses which just as clearly came down on the side of Jesus being God. These second century scholars had a choice: they could ignore the question and focus what Jesus preached and encourage people to follow his example and live their life as he taught; they could decide that Jesus being a man made more sense and interpret the verses that suggested that he was also God in that light; or place their bets on Christ's divinity and interpret the verses that said otherwise in that light. What they did was decide that Jesus was man and God. They argued interminably about the details, but ended up with the conclusion that he was fully God and fully man. That was the starting point for the doctrine of The Trinity, a theological edifice to explain away a contradiction — a Christology which cannot be found in any actual book of the Bible. (The nuances of that stance take up fat volumes — check it out some time). 

The God of the Jewish Bible (aka The Old Testament) vs. The God of Jesus

A very large plot hole in the Bible is the stark difference between how God is portrayed in the Old Testament and the New Testament. (Other than the Apocalypse of John [aka Revelation] which reverts back to the wrathful, vengeful God imagery). In the 1800's there arose a theological position called Dispensationalism, which attempted to explain the differences. But long before that, Marcion, a Second Century Christian, came up with his own solution. Marcion took a blunt force approach to Biblical criticism and simply threw out the parts he thought made no sense. Observing that the vengeful God of the Old Testament bore no resemblance to the God of the Gospels he concluded that they were different gods. In Marcion's view, the Old Testament God was evil, while the New Testament God of Jesus was the "true" God, the good God. He threw out the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John and the non-Pauline epistles and heavily edited what was left. Say what you want, but Marcion took care of those pesky contradictions!

Dispensationalism as an Answer to The Contradictions

Nineteenth Century Dispensationalists eschewed Marcion's approach. Rather than relegating the Old Testament God to second deity status, they arranged history as outlined in the Bible into a number of "dispensations". A dispensation, according to them, was a time period where God dealt with humanity in different ways from the other time periods. Even though Dispensationalism as a interpretative framework did not come about until the Nineteenth Century, it is predicated upon the observation that God appeared to act differently toward humans during different periods of history, which is clearly based on scripture. There was a time when God required his people to follow The Law of Moses, yet Paul wrote that Christians were not required to follow The Law. There was a time before The Law, and there will be a time after Christ returns when all the rules will be different. And Jesus was certainly following the Law of Moses, at least in spirit, if not in Pharisaic detail. How to reconcile all that? The answer was to theorize that since the rules obviously changed periodically, there was a need to demarcate those divisions. 

Scofield Reference Bible

Dispensationalism became popularized with the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1900 by American Bible student Cyrus Scofield. It was innovative in that it included commentary in the margins, rather than in a separate volume as was the previous custom. In 1909, Anglican Minister E.W. Bullinger edited The Companion Bible, which was similar in its inclusion of notes and commentary, along with voluminous appendices. Both men were Dispensationalists and their commentary reflected this belief.

The Dispensations

Following is a common division of dispensations:

• Innocence/Original Paradise/Garden of Eden — Adam and Eve before eating from the Tree of Knowledge
• Patriarchal — before the Law was given
• Law — the giving of the Law to Israel
• Grace or Church — this started when the Law Dispensation ended and includes the present day
• Tribulation — starts with the rapture and includes all the horrors of the Book of Revelation
• Millennial — ends with Christ's return to defeat The Beast and The Devil and initiates the Thousand Year reign of Christ on Earth
• This is sometimes combined with either The Tribulation or Paradise Dispensations, 
• Paradise — establishment of God's eternal kingdom on earth 

There were usually seven of these time periods, although I have seen eight listed as well. Since these dispensations were the opinions and interpretations of the theologians who came up with them, there were different ways to divide them up. Here are a few of the other divisions from other groups:

• Conscience — after "The Fall" — no rules, people followed their own conscience, ended with The Flood
• Human Government — From Noah to Abraham
• Promise — starts with Abraham and indicates God dealing with one specific group of people — ends with Moses
• These three are often combined into one
• Jesus' Ministry — some recognized this as a separate Dispensation; some interpretations ended the Law at Jesus' resurrection, some at the beginning of his ministry, some at the ascension, other at the end of The Acts of the Apostles. 
• Part of The Law, at least definitely separate from the Church Dispensation

Despite there being disagreements among Dispensationalists on where these divisions should begin and end, the concept does have its own logic. There's no question that God acts differently throughout different time periods as outlined in the Bible. But there are no bright lines delineating changes in God's rules — if there were, there would be no disagreement among the various advocates of dispensationalism. You won't find the term in the Bible, but it's a legitimate interpretive framework.

Tribulation, The Anti-Christ and Other Hallucinations

The Apocalypse of John, also known as Revelation (not Revelations) is the final book of the Bible. It was not universally considered to be inspired scripture during the canonization process in the Fourth Century, and it was re-examined by Martin Luther. Luther questioned Revelation, as well as several other previously canonized books, but ultimately left the New Testament Canon intact. Objectively Revelation is a figurative commentary on then-current events, and has nothing to do with our times, or any other time in the future of the First Century CE. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals however, view it as prophetic, and a blow-by-blow description of how the world will end and be replaced by the Kingdom of God that Jesus thought was going to happen 2000 years ago.  

There are a few things that make it at least plausible as a prophecy of future events. One of these is Chapter 1, v7: "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.", which fits very well with First Thessalonians 4:15-17 "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

The other point is that the interpretation of chapters 20 and 21 makes the most sense as a description of events after the triumphant return of Christ. 

The Rapture

It's true that the concept of The Rapture is relatively new, it wasn't taught widely until the mid-1800's. But it does have a Biblical foundation, even without resorting to the acid trip that is the Apocalypse of John, aka The Book of Revelation. It's pretty clear from the Gospels, at least the Synoptics, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, i.e. he preached that the world as it was known was going to end, and God would inaugurate his Kingdom on Earth. Not at some hazy future time, but soon. He is quoted as saying that end would come before the current generation passed away. Paul, writing around 20 years later, and arguably writing toward the end of that generational countdown, thought it would happen soon as well. 2000 year old spoiler alert: it didn't happen. 

Within Paul's epistles he addresses the undeniable fact that it hadn't happened yet. He comforts those who were concerned that those who had died would miss out in First Thessalonians chapter 4 by describing those who had already died rising from the dead, followed by those still alive, to meet Jesus in the air. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." First Corinthians chapter 15 gives additional information. Second Thessalonians chapter 2 addresses those who thought that the resurrection was spiritual and had already happened by stressing that it was still future, would be physical, and could not happen until a "great apostasy" took place. The great apostasy, or "falling away", as some translations render it, could conceivably be linked to the "Beast" of the Book of Revelation. 

As Paul grew older, with no sign of Jesus returning to gather the believers in the air, he started writing about his belief that a believer would be in God's presence immediately upon death. As the Catholic/Orthodox version of Christianity became the dominant, official, version, the canonical doctrine became that a believer would immediately be ushered into God's presence (or, if evil, to Hell) at death. The future resurrection was viewed, if at all, as a return of Jesus to herald the new heaven and new Earth. 

Dispensationalist End Times

Nineteenth Century Dispensationalist theologians combined the description of a resurrection in Paul's epistles with the events in Revelation and with various prophesies in the Old Testament to concoct a timeline of the end times. It eventually became an article of faith in Fundamentalist and Evangelical circles that a rapture of believers would be followed by a "tribulation" which would end with the triumphant return of Jesus, the last judgement and the ushering in of paradise. It's my opinion that the Rapture itself, even apart from the Book of Revelation, is a plausible interpretation of the New Testament doctrine regarding the fate of the dead, despite it being a relatively new theory. 

Zionism

The name Zionism comes from "Zion", the name of the mount upon which Jerusalem was built in Biblical times. It originated in the mid-1800's as a movement to create a national home for the Jewish people. Alternatives to Palestine were considered, but the consensus settled upon Palestine. The Ottoman Empire was still in control of Palestine at that time. Jews from other areas in Ottoman lands, as well as from Europe where Jews endured regular persecution, began to migrate to Palestine. Some Zionists had a religious motivation: to fulfil prophesies of the return of Israel to its ancestral land, others had purely political motivations — to secure a safe haven where Jews were in control. When the Ottomans lost in World War One, the United Kingdom took control of Palestine, which then included what is now the Kingdom of Jordan. The United Kingdom agreed to assist in the creation of a "national home for the Jewish people". Israel declared itself an independent state within the borders set by the United Nations in 1948. 

Christian Support For Zionism and the State of Israel

Even though the Jewish Zionists were not motivated by the Book of Revelation (even if some were spurred by Old Testament predictions of a return to their ancestral domain) the support they received from the United Kingdom was. Dispensationalism and the related End Times interpretation of the Book of Revelation had taken root within the upper echelons of U.K. government. They saw it as their Christian duty to facilitate Israel's return to The Holy Land. Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States military and financial support for Israel is based on some of the same assumptions. (It's ironic that many of these same cheerleaders for a Jewish state, nevertheless tend to be bigoted toward actual Jews.) 

Dispensationalism became a bedrock doctrine of American Evangelical and Fundamentalist Churches and explains a lot of the right wing support for Israel. The relevant scriptures that point to a re-establishment of Israel and The Temple are not found in Revelation however. References are scattered throughout the Old Testament: Ezekiel 37:21-25, Zechariah 14:2-4, Jeremiah 31: 31-34, and others refer to Israel and the Israelites returning to the Biblical lands. The implication of these verses is then read into the events of Revelation. 

Anti-Israeli Backlash

Recently, especially, but not exclusively, among progressives who support Palestine and decry the Israeli government's treatment of them, there has been a backlash. This reaction usually takes the form of denying that the modern State of Israel has anything to do with the Biblical Nation of Israel. This is often extended to include an assertion that the State of Israel is an illegal colonialist entity that has no right to exist. I'm not going to debate that issue here, but just as we shouldn't be conducting foreign policy based on the Bible, we shouldn't be doing so based on whether a country that clearly does exist, shouldn't exist based on a different Biblical opinion. In other words, our support for another nation should be predicated on our national interest, not whether that nation's existence fulfils a prophecy. Equally, scouring the Bible for reasons that a nation doesn't fulfill a Biblical prophecy, should not be a reason to abandon an ally. We shouldn't be using anyone's Holy Book to set national policy!

The movement to delegitimize Israel and our support for their war also includes denial of the legitimacy of Dispensationalist theology, including the Rapture. Opponents of Israel apparently believe that  debunking the interpretive legitimacy of Dispensationalist and Rapture theology undermines any rationale for our alliance with Israel. Their foundation is not particularly strong, Dispensationalism, which in my opinion has its weak points, can be justified Biblically. 

Antisemitism — An Offshoot Or Foundation of The Backlash?

An unfortunate side effect of all of this is a resurgence of Anti-Jewish bigotry, discrimination and persecution. Social media posts that I have seen attempting to discredit Dispensationalism often include the false assertion that the Scofield Reference Bible was "commissioned by the Rothschilds". Anyone who has paid attention to antisemitic tropes over the years knows that "The Rothschilds" is often shorthand for the conspiracy theory that powerful Jews are running the world through their alleged control of, among other things, banks, the media and government. No Rothschild had anything to do with the Scofield Bible. Another feature of the backlash is an insistence that the modern State of Israel has nothing in common with the Biblical Nation of Israel. This assertion is usually based on a 1976 book by Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe. Koestler theorized that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e. Jews from Eastern Europe as opposed to Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews — from Spain and Egypt respectively) were descended from a Turkic Tribe that had converted to Judaism in the Eighth Century. Koestler claimed that this would remove the racial basis for discrimination and persecution against Jews. It had the opposite effect. It became a favorite of White Nationalists, the Christian Identity Movement, and Arabs who maintained that modern-day Jews had no ancestral claim to Palestine. 

Bottom Line 

It's complicated. I am not a Bible believer, and am firmly against basing our foreign policy on religious texts. But most of what you're reading on this subject is not true. There are plenty of reasons to be against our war with Israel against Iran, and many reasons to abhor Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but insisting that certain Biblical interpretations are wrong isn't one of them. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXVI - Sunk Costs

One of the things you learn in economics courses is the concept of "sunk cost". Most people don't understand it. Sunk cost is the money that you have "sunk" into a project or a purchase that you will never get back, no matter what you do. The sunk cost fallacy is when the money that you already spent becomes the justification for continuing to spend money, even though you really don't want or need to continue. An example would be sitting through a terrible movie because you already paid for the ticket; or you paid for repairs for your junk car last month, and it needs repairs again, so instead of getting rid of this money pit of a car, you keep repairing it, not wanting to "waste" the money you already spent; or holding on to an asset that in all likelihood will never again be worth what you paid for it because you don't want to "lose" money by selling it for less than the purchase price. In all of these examples the money for the movie ticket, for the car repairs, for the purchase of the asset has already been spent in the past no matter what you do in the present. It's gone. 

My point of view regarding my involvement in The Way International was very much a sunk cost fallacy. There were red flags aplenty, many reasons why my involvement was a bad idea, but I had rationalized that I had put so much time and effort into it, that it wouldn't make sense to back out. I had completely changed my religious world view, I had antagonized my family and abandoned my friends, I had quit college and moved halfway across the country to participate in a program that turned out to be a joke, I had seen people who supposedly were Godly leaders seriously falling short of even the most basic of expectations, yet here I was, signing up for another year of commitment to this sketchy organization, and not only that, I was taking the first steps to joining their so-called leadership training program, a lifetime commitment. If I had made all of those big moves, I "reasoned", why wouldn't I want to double down and not "waste" the time and preparation I had invested so far. 

One thing that is clear in retrospect, but I wouldn't admit to myself back then, was that I simply didn't want to admit to everyone who thought that getting involved in The Way was a bad idea, that it was a bad idea. 

So here I was, now in a "Way Home" in Lincoln Nebraska. There were no restrictions on how many hours I could work, or a minimum number of hours I was required to "witness" every week, I could travel to visit family  — in short, none of the formal strictures that defined the WOW Ambassador program. But there was still an expectation that the Way leadership had first call on my time. If there was a meeting, I was required to attend, if there was a class, I was required to participate; the whole purpose of the home in which I lived was to serve the needs of the Way hierarchy. One of the first things that I noticed was that things were conducted much more formally than I had grown used to. In New York, which was one of the first areas to experience large numerical growth in the seventies, the wide spread of fellowships had outpaced the ability of Way headquarters to staff them with Way Corps graduates, or even Way Corps students. This resulted in a very organic leadership structure, largely free of a lot of egotism or central control. In Sidney, isolated as we were from other Way people in the state, we were similarly informal in our activities. But the state leader of The Way had graduated from the Way Corps several years earlier, and was in his third year as Limb (state) Coordinator. Branch, and even home fellowship, meetings were highly structured, and lacked the spontaneity that I came to expect. Despite my initial resistance to this approach, I became somewhat enamored of it myself and began to enjoy being "the leader", the local "Man of God" after I had been appointed Twig Leader of a small fellowship. 

One of the things that was always at the forefront of the minds of Way leaders was outreach and growth. The way these things were measured was twofold: running PFAL classes and "splitting" twigs. PFAL classes I have discussed before. If your twig fellowship could find seven or more people to take the class, you were outreach heroes. It really didn't matter much if the class graduates wandered away afterward, the important thing was that we had run a class. Splitting a twig indicated that you had too many people to comfortably participate in a home fellowship and that you had enough to start up a new fellowship in another home. When I arrived in Lincoln, there were six or seven home fellowships as part of the Lincoln branch and a similar number in Omaha, with a few isolated twigs in smaller towns around the state. Around halfway through the year Rev. Ronnie, our state leader, decided to split all the fellowships. Now we had double the numbers of twig fellowships, double the numbers of leaders, but not double the number of people. This became an issue the following year when the new incoming state leader discovered that the Lincoln Branch and the Lincoln Twig Area (basically a half-size branch) didn't contain ten thriving fellowship requiring two Way Corps overseers, but four feeble little home fellowships. 

An issue, however, that was to cause problems before the ministry year was out was that a lot of us were young people (I had just turned 23) and been (mostly) celibate for the previous year. There was an overabundance of young, single people looking for boyfriends and girlfriends, and along with that, sex. This reality, coupled with The Way's hypocritical and inconsistent views on pre-marital sex and even dating, was going to result in a big change in my relationship with The Way.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Workin' Man - Part XXVI - The End of Retail

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 had survived, barely, five months of excruciating uncertainty, but it wasn't the only problem. Tim, the Assistant Store Director, had applied for an  ASD position in another store and was moving to the Super Saver at 48th & O. Right around the holidays! If I remember correctly I was able to keep him for Thanksgiving, but he would be gone by Christmas. I had to hire and train a new ASD. Right around this time Susie's doctor found a tumor in her eye and had to have surgery to remove it. While she was in Iowa City recovering from surgery I had to drive back to Lincoln to conduct interviews. I don't recall who was handling HR duties at the time, but I had that person set up interviews, one after the other, on a Saturday. I believe I interviewed eight or nine candidates. Like HR Coordinators, Assistant Store Director openings usually attracted people with little to no qualifications for the job, mainly because no one really knew what they did. Of all the people I interviewed I considered only two to be qualified. One was Todd, my Night Manager, but he declined after I offered him the position (why do people do that?). My second choice was Jamie, who had been the Assistant Grocery Manager when I was at Pine Lake. 

Jamie was very rough around the edges. There had been several complaints about him from other employees, but Nick, our old Store Director, and I always tried to see beyond the gruff exterior — he was a misfit, just like the rest of my crew at Van Dorn! But I remembered how Jamie was able to motivate the grocery clerks at Pine Lake. Grocery clerks are typically the laziest bunch of anyone in any store, but he was able to turn them into a productive team. I could always count on him to follow through on assignments and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Since the position would combine that of Grocery Manager, I thought, given his grocery experience, that he'd be ideal. I sold the idea of promoting Jamie to my supervisor, District Manager Scott Ruth, who was on board, but when I checked with corporate HR about what pay rate he could be offered, they reacted as if I was planning on hiring Satan...or Pete Hegseth. Ah yes...Jamie had the HR target on his back. Around the same time the Assistant Store Director at 66th & O Russ's had quit suddenly — remember, we're right around the holidays. Tim (not my former ASD, but the Tim who turned down my offer the previous year to be Front End Manager/Human Resources Coordinator) was helping out and somehow impressed Scott Ruth, who recommended to me that we bring him on board as ASD, which we soon did. The problem was that Tim had absolutely no experience in grocery. We sent him out to a few other stores to get trained by experienced Grocery Managers and ASDs, but he was still pretty green going into Christmas week. Looks like it's time for another Pat Raybould story.

It was probably about a week before Christmas, on a Sunday. I had decided that after working with New Tim in the morning I would turn him loose to manage the store solo for the first time that the afternoon. I gave him a to-do list, which included restocking the Christmas candy display. About 30 minutes after I left, Pat showed up. Without checking in with Tim he found a pallet of Christmas candy in the back room and brought it out to the holiday aisle. He then spent some time berating Tim for the display not being full. Then he began the great fruitcake fruit hunt. For those who don't make their own fruitcake, grocery stores stock the dried cherries, pineapple, apricots and citron (nobody really knows what citron is, but we carried it anyway), but they hardly sell any. You usually can find a stack of it marked down in January. If you sold out you considered yourself lucky and didn't try to procure any more. Pat wandered over to the Christmas baking display and noticed that there was no fruitcake fruit. He started asking employees where the fruitcake fruit was. Of course since none of them, like meat cutters, produce clerks and floral department employees, had anything to do with stocking these items, not to mention the fact that we were out, no one could tell Pat where the fruitcake fruit was. Tim tried to tell him that we were out. Pat couldn't believe that was true and embarked on a quest through the back room to find the fruitcake fruit. Of course he didn't find any, because we were out, and happy about it. The next day he called Scott Ruth and told him to tell me to get more fruitcake fruit in the store. I got some from one of the other stores and didn't sell even one unit and had to mark them all down after Christmas. 

At some point during the year new Tim was transferred to another store and Bill, an experienced ASD came to my store. I was also given permission to hire a Grocery Manager. For once I thought that the corporate executives actually wanted the store to succeed. I was wrong. There were a lot of hints that the store was going to close. The barely functioning air conditioning unit that required a sprinkler on the roof to keep it cool, the stinky drain that should have been dug up and repaired, the department managers who were being transferred out one at a time. But it was all confirmed one evening when an email that was only supposed to go to the corporate executive committee went out to all Store Directors and Assistant Store Directors. It clearly stated that the store was closing soon and a date needed to be set. News travels fast. Scott Ruth came out to our store and met with all the managers and lied to them, that the store wasn't closing. Bill and I kept our mouths shut. 

At some point I got another visit that didn't bode well. Tom Schulte, Operations VP, was accompanied by Donna, the corporate HR Director. They had with them a pile of printouts from my Facebook page. I had made a comment that they didn't think was appropriate, and others had made further comments that escalated the perceived inappropriateness. Someone from B&R had seen these comments and reported me to corporate. I was written up again, and had to attend counseling sessions through our employee assistance program. This is when I realized how much of a target I had on my back and how closely my actions were being scrutinized. At my counseling sessions the counselor brought up incidents from years in the past that I thought had been resolved and forgotten. I was on thin ice with B&R. Nothing is ever forgotten. 

The incident that I am sure was the one where they decided I would be fired came in the Autumn of the year. Two customers, friends of one of my managers, wanted to getting married in the store. This was something that I always thought would be cool — the Store Director officiating a wedding in the grocery store! They ended up buying their flowers and wedding cake at the store, as well as a lunch for them and their witnesses. Melissa, who was in charge of promoting store events on our internal social media site, took photos and posted them. Soon after I received a call from Donna telling me to take down the photos of the wedding. She claimed that she had received complaints from several of my peers and at least one store employee. The complaints were supposedly that I was doing personal business on store time, but in reality they were about the fact that it was two women getting married. This was confirmed for me when Donna mentioned that the internal employee called the wedding an abomination. I took the photos down, but once again, a meeting that involved Donna took place. I was criticized for doing the wedding on my 15-minute break, but Donna maintained that since I still had my nametag on, I was really still "on the clock". I was criticized for leaving 30 minutes early at the end of the day (I left the Assistant Store Director in charge and left early since I had not taken a lunch break.) Donna maintained that since I was in the Deli area for the wedding, that indicated that I had taken my lunch break. (Which is it Donna? Was I on the clock or on my lunch?). I was written up again, although for some reason it was worded as an extension of the Performance Improvement Plan from the previous year. I was told that I had a track record of making bad decisions and if another problem arose I would be fired — no further discussion involved.

I believe that the real reason for me being in this level of trouble was the same-sex wedding, but I guess they didn't want to be on record for firing me for that reason. I knew that there was no chance that nothing would ever come up which they could use as a pretext to get rid of me. I was not wrong. Not long after this Bill and I observed a cashier having a long conversation with a customer while a line was forming. I went over to ask what was going on and was yelled at by the customer, who ended up elbowing me in the ribs as he left the store. I followed him outside and took a photo of his license plate, thinking I should maybe call the police (I ended up deciding against it). He called the corporate office to complain. I never found out what he said, but a week later I was fired. 

During that week Scott Ruth avoided talking to me and would not return my calls. The day before a scheduled vacation we had what was called a "Holiday Show" at one of the other stores. This was a day where we were trained on how the corporate executives wanted us to merchandise our stores for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I went through the whole day, until at the very end Scott said he wanted to talk to me before I left for vacation. Then he and Donna fired me. 

Even though being unemployed was not something that I looked forward to, it was obvious for a long time that the situation wasn't going to get better. Even if I hadn't been fired, with the store closing I doubt that I would still have had a job. In similar situations managers were forced to apply for open positions. I was actually happy that I was fired. The pressure was off, the other shoe had dropped. 

I was fired on Thursday October 29, 2015. I took the weekend off and made job hunting my job. 

Start with Part I

Managers - Part XXVI (Post Pandemic #1) - Why Has the Pendulum Swung?

Over the last few years I have been writing a blog about management theory, management styles, management responsibility etc. But things have changed a lot since the unemployment rate started dropping precipitously around 2015 and things really got shook up when businesses were forced to close as the pandemic took hold, and people scrambled around to find work in industries that hadn't closed up for the duration. One of the results was that the power balance between management and labor shifted in many lines of work. 

In Managers - Part III - Sources of Power I laid out four main ways that managers exert influence over their employees, one of these is by rewards and punishment that I further expound upon in Managers - Part IV - Reward-Coercion-Based Power One of those sources of coercive power, of course, is the threat of getting fired. The popular interpretation of the current dynamic is that employees no longer care about getting fired, since they can easily find another job that pays the same or better than the one that they have now. All sorts of theories are floating around regarding the "why" of all this, the most common being that employees have, after having their eyes open during the pandemic, finally set boundaries between their work and personal lives and are no longer letting management abuse them. Sounds about right...right?

The problem with this view is that people quitting jobs, in particular low wage jobs, is nothing new. What's new is that there isn't a similar flow of people looking for low wage jobs as there was ten years ago. Every job has a churn rate — the amount of turnover that a business might expect in certain positions. During my time as a manager with several companies over the decades, the need to hire people never went away. We never reached a lasting period of stability where we had a staff that we could depend on — people were always leaving and we were always recruiting replacements. There were always people who refused to work certain shifts, or would quit without notice, or just were unhappy with the requirements of the job. The difference was that we knew that there would always be someone else who would apply for the same job — in fact there was usually a backlog of applicants, always many more than we needed to fill a position. In most situations management had the upper hand when the employee needed the job more than management needed that specific employee. One exception was people who didn't really need the job, for example, high school students, or someone who was working a second job, not to make ends meet, but to save up for some luxury purchase. Counterintuitively the situation got worse for employees the higher in rank and pay that they rose, since the availability of non-entry-level positions was even rarer, unless of course you possessed unique skills that were rarer than the available openings where those skills were required. 

So, what's the difference.

2% unemployment.

Yes, I know that the official unemployment percentage isn't a true reflection of the number of people who are out of work, but if the methodology is consistent it gives us a point of comparison. For instance, it was around 10% after the housing bubble burst in 2008. 5% is considered, statistically, full employment. Unhappy employees aren't any less happy than they were before Spring 2020, but the options are different. Terry Pratchett said in one of his Discworld novels that magic is simply knowing one extra fact, and in 2026 that extra fact is that if you quit your entry level job today, you'll be able to find another one before lunchtime. The second extra fact is that managers know that if one of their people quits, it may be a long time before they are able to hire a replacement. And the third extra fact is  that employees know the managers' second extra fact: it's hard to find replacements. What we are left with is what I ended the first paragraph with: the power balance between management and labor shifted in many lines of work. 

How has this shift in the power balance manifested itself? One manifestation is the increase in wages, especially at the lower wage levels. Companies who are competing for a scarce resources are going to be willing to pay more for that resource. This only kicks the can down the road, however. If everybody is having trouble hiring, and everybody is reacting by raising wages, then, while employees are benefitting by getting paid more (leaving inflation out of the picture for now, which eventually negates wage increases) management is still in the same situation: unable to replace workers who quit due to low unemployment. So coercion based management just isn't going to work any more. (I'm not saying it was ever a good way to manage, but it was pretty common, and even among good managers, termination was a motivator of last resort) Now, the reward side of reward-coercion-based management is kicking in. A reward need not be a bonus, or an extra vacation day, or anything like that, but can take the form of tolerating behavior that, just a few years ago, would have been intolerable. Like looking the other way when employees socialize when there's work to be done, overlooking rudeness to customers or bad customer service, failure to adhere to any number of company standards and policies, refusal to work scheduled shifts, or just being incompetent at the job. The positive side of this is that bad managers, the egotistical little tyrants who revel in terrorizing and abusing their employees no longer have the upper hand. Employees no longer have to put up with abuse of any kind if they choose not to; they aren't required to allow customers to treat them like dirt; they don't have to sacrifice life for a job. Employees are less likely to be told "You don't like? Go ahead and quit" and employers are more likely to beg: "You don't like it? We'll fix it, please don't quit". 

In upcoming posts I'll discuss both sides of this new dynamic.

Start at the beginning: Part I

St. Patrick's Day: Green vs. Blue

Every year around this time you see lists of things that everyone supposedly gets wrong about St. Patrick's Day. Many of them are correct, for example the tradition of corned beef and cabbage is an American invention. But one just seemed off the first time I heard it. This was the supposed "fact" that the color of St. Patrick was blue, not green. The first time I heard it was from a know-it-all from the B&R corporate office. (The same guy who thought we didn't need to account for the different origins of Spanish-speaking customers when doing our Hispanic merchandising)  According to the Wikipedia article on "St. Patrick's Blue", English King Henry VIII was the first English king to declare himself "King of Ireland". He had an official flag designed that featured a gold harp on a blue field. The color blue in this case was not specifically associated with St. Patrick.

The color blue's actual association with St. Patrick only dates back to the 1780's and the Anglo-Irish  and Protestant 'Order of St. Patrick'. Yes, Anglo-Irish, the descendants of those who the English had settled in Ireland in order to keep the locals in line. In fact, the order had considered orange as their official color, but decided that the sectarian associations with the color would be too obvious. Orange was the color of militant Protestants who aligned themselves with the English. William of Orange was the Protestant champion in the revolt against the Catholic King James II. (For those who are unaware, the pro-English Irish tended to be Protestant while the pro-independence Irish were predominantly Catholic) There is no evidence that St. Patrick even had an official color and if so, what it was, but there is a large consensus that "St. Patrick's Blue" was an "invention of tradition" to bolster the choices of the tenuously Irish 'Order of St. Patrick'.

Native Irish societies, such as 'Irish Catholic Confederation' and 'The Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick' founded in  the 1680's and 1750 respectively, used green as their official color, partially as a counter to the English use of blue as an identifying hue. During the 1790's Irish nationalists adopted green as their color as well. The phrase "wearin' of the green" comes from a song from that era referring to Irish nationalists being persecuted for wearing green. As time went by the color green became more and more associated with Ireland by Irish expatriates and by extension, St. Patrick's Day, a day when Irish heritage was celebrated in the United States. When the mass emigrations to the United States took place in the mid 1800's to early 1900's green was firmly in place as the color symbolizing Irish independence, Irish culture and especially independence from England. It's doubtful that many Irish thought about whether green was specifically associated with St. Patrick, but knew that it was intimately associated with a free Ireland.

Wear the green...forget that blue nonsense.
 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXV

The "Ministry Year" of 1980-81 that had just ended was a big one in Wayworld. Victor P Wierwille, the founder and leader of The Way International was retiring as President of the organization and a successor would need to be named. Around Christmas 1980 it had been announced that Loy Martindale, usually known by his middle name, Craig, had been chosen as Wierwille's replacement as Way President and would be installed in that position during The Way's 40th Anniversary in 1982. 

A brief aside regarding the Way calendar: Victor Wierwille had been a minister in the Evangelical & Reformed Church in 1941 and served as a pastor in that denomination until 1957, although from early on he had what we would now call "side gigs" starting in 1942 when he hosted a weekly radio program. Although he didn't start teaching his "Power for Abundant Living" (PFAL) class until 1953, or incorporate his activities outside his denomination until 1955 as The Way, Inc., or separate from his denomination until 1957, at some point he began retroactively claiming October 1942 as the genesis of The Way. 

Craig Martindale, Wierwille's anointed heir, had been the director of The Way Corps, billed as The Way's leadership training program. Martindale had been an early participant in the program, enrolling in the Second Way Corps group. Virtually all of The Way's leaders at all levels were graduates of The Way Corps, so Martindale, as that program's overseer, had an influence upon most of The Way's leaders across the world. The early 1980s saw The Way at its peak numerically. Every U.S. state had a Way presence and several other countries rivalled the United States in the number of active PFAL grads. 

The Way had always eschewed Biblical-type titles like bishop or religious designations such as priest, preferring corporate/academic terms such as Board of Trustees, President or Secretary-Treasurer for the top tier, and Coordinator for lower levels, but the installation of Martindale was to be a full-fledged religious experience. Wierwille had long been referred to as "The Man of God", or "The Man of God for Our Time", with unofficial speculation about which of the "gift ministries" of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher (probably all five!) that he exercised. Wierwille hagiography made much of the supernatural promises supposedly made to Wierwille that inaugurated his "ministry". Audible speech from God, snow on the gas pumps in the summer and other miraculous events all carried the suggestion that Wierwille wasn't just some guy who worked hard at studying the Bible, but someone who had been chosen by God to bring long-hidden light to our generation. The fact that everything Wierwille said had been previously published by others, some of it in the previous century, didn't deter the myth-making. Now, the wink and nod pretense that Wierwille had been chosen and sent by God was not hidden behind the corporate curtain, but out in the open as he passed the mantle in a very literal sense. 

When I say "literal" I mean that there was an actual, physical, mantle that was passed from Wierwille to Martindale in a ceremony that rivalled any papal installation or monarchal coronation. The year leading up to the "passing of the mantle" was spent honoring Wierwille, presenting him with gifts, printing a collection of essays in his honor, building up Martindale, and outlining the highly symbolic ceremony that would take place anointing (also very literally) Martindale as the new Man of God. There was a mantle, there was anointing with oil, there was something called a covenant of salt, there was laying on of hands and prophecy. There were teachings ad nauseum about the Biblical symbolism of all of these things. While Wierwille had earned his adulation by presenting an alternative to mainstream Christianity that looked new and unique (and "accurate") to people who didn't know any better, Martindale was starting his new gig propped up by symbolism and spiritual mumbo jumbo. 

As I ended my year as a WOW and began my new year as a WOWvet and apprentice Way Corps, the upcoming inauguration of the new president, with all the attendant "spiritual significance" was in the air and influenced everything that we did in Wayworld.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXVI

Workin' Man - Part XXV - Target On My Back

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 

 Overall, that first year went well. I had finally earned a position as a Store Director. There was a lot more stress — you never really know all the details of a job until you're in it — and even with a raise I was making less money due to a lack of a bonus. But I had achieved a long-term goal — I felt that I had finally proved that I could do it; that I was "worthy". I thought that, even though the store was still losing money, and I wasn't bonusing, I had gotten the place running smoothly and in some ways on autopilot. We did some fun things, like the chili contest, where Jamie, the Scanning Coordinator, won third place with a crock pot full of canned chili. We brought in a band to entertain the customers one Saturday. We had a group of regulars, retired guys who had breakfast just about every week day (one of whom made a point to tell my boss how I was doing a great job running the store). 

Things came crashing down Memorial Day weekend 2014, my second year as store director. 

I was working on Friday night, theoretically scheduled until 5:00pm, but still working at around 7:00 because we were swamped and I was helping out by checking, filling displays etc. I managed to get off my feet for about five minutes when one of the cashiers found me in my office — he had forgotten to scan a customer's loyalty card, which meant that the customer wouldn't get all the points that his large purchase had earned for him. When I arrived I saw that there was some alcohol, so I rang it up since the cashier was a minor and couldn't legally sell alcohol. As I finished up the order I realized that the previous customer was still there and was glaring at me angrily. The cashier then reminded me about the loyalty card not getting scanned. Correcting this could be done at the register, but it was a multi-step process that I wasn't totally sure that I could do accurately, and with the lines starting to build up again, I asked the cashier to take the customer over to the customer service counter, where I knew they could solve the problem pretty quickly and efficiently. I knew this was the quickest way to get the issue fixed. The customer refused, suggesting that I was sending him over there because he was Black. 

Yikes.

That was not a response I expected. I was already on my last nerve after being there all day, and the lines not getting any shorter. My father had passed away a couple of months previously, and I probably hadn't fully processed that yet. In retrospect I was probably a bit curt, but having the customer service clerk handle the issue was the best way to handle it. Frankly I was more than a little pissed at being accused of being a racist; I always felt that if you're going to lob that bomb, the discussion is over — I'm done talking to you. There was shouting. There was more shouting. At one point I got into his bubble and asked him who he thought he was talking to, but immediately backed up, realizing that this was not a good look. He continued to yell and demand that I fix the problem at the register, but we were well past that point. Some of my larger and potentially intimidating employees began to gather 'round. I threatened to call the police. He finally left, but we weren't done. 

The next morning I was forwarded an email from this customer that had gone to the corporate office. The email wildly exaggerated what had happened, accusing me not only of bigotry, but of threatening him and using profanity. I quickly sent off an email giving my side of the story, but his email, if even partially believed, could have ended my career then and there. Words like "sinister" peppered his account, and his opinion that I was going to use violence against him. I couldn't function the rest of the day, I couldn't sleep that night. Initially, my immediate supervisor thought that I had handled myself professionally, but I found out that without my knowledge the Director of Loss Prevention had conducted an "investigation" at my store on my day off and interviewed any employee who had been present. None of them contradicted my version of events. Scott Ruth, my boss, called the customer, apologized, added the appropriate amount of points to his card and gave him a gift card.  Scott let me know how the conversation went and I breathed a sigh of relief. 

But we weren't done. 

The customer, after talking to Scott, called back the next day. He had changed his mind. He wanted me fired and would accept nothing less. This engendered more investigations. It dragged on. I had no idea if I would be fired. Then one evening Scott Ruth and Tom Schulte, Scott's boss, showed up at my store and presented me with security footage showing me stepping close to the customer. I pointed out that if  the video showed me stepping close to him, what is there to talk about? I certainly wasn't going to deny what could clearly be seen on video. After going back and forth over this issue for weeks, I felt that they were looking for an excuse to believe the customer. After rambling on for awhile I was told that they needed to decide what to do and they would let me know in the morning. I lost my temper. I pointed out that this had been dragging on for weeks and that they needed to make a decision: either fire me or not, but make a decision right now! I was tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. They told me to give them fifteen minutes, so I walked around the store for a quarter hour. When I returned, I was told that I still had my job, but that I would be written up for what they said was bad judgement in the whole situation. Tom showed up the next morning and presented me with a write up. I still had my job, but it continued to drag on. 

My annual review was due six weeks later in August. At B&R you were reviewed in 15 categories and scored from 1-4, with 4 being excellent and 2 being usually as low as anyone went. If you were really screwing up in a category, you received a 1. If you got a 1 in any category (or your total score was below a set amount), that automatically triggered a PIP — a Performance Improvement Plan. A PIP gave you 90 days to resolve a performance issue or you were fired. I got a 1 in Communications for the Memorial Day incident, which was fair, but even though the situation was supposedly wrapped up with the write-up at the end of June, it now was going to drag on for another 90 days. 

During those 90 days your immediate supervisor was supposed to give regular feedback on your progress toward improvement — which I wasn't getting, so I went to Scott and asked why. I was concerned that I would be canned after 90 days without any warning, which would have been par for the B&R course. I figured with regular feedback, at least I would be able to see it coming. After that I had weekly meetings to discuss my progress, which he said he was happy with. At the end of 90 days in November 2014 I passed my PIP and wasn't fired, but this process had dragged on for five months. 

What I found infuriating was that at one point Tom Schulte had a conversation with the customer's employer (he was a UNL professor) and was told that he did this all the time. Nonetheless, B&R executives had long memories — your "sins" were never truly forgiven. 

I had a target on my back and I was closely scrutinized. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXVI