Roadtoad
Bufo Caminus Inedibilis
I just finished reading a book about the collapse of Enron. It turned out to be a fascinating read, particularly since it was written as the company was starting to tank. What really got my attention was the fact that even at that early date, it was clear that Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and crew knew that the company was in trouble, and they continued to keep up the illusion of a well run, ethical, viable business.
Okay, maybe it's me. Part of this is what I read, which includes books on business and politics, as well as ethics and philosophy. If anything, I want to know why things work, as well as why they don't. If I remain a Christian, it's more nominal now, rather than evidenced by regular Church attendance and holy utterances. Some may choose to say I'm backsliding, but the reality is more along the lines of cutting through the bullsh**, and getting down to the realities of who we are, and what's really going on.
Another book I'm now reading is The Myth of Market Share, along with the autobiography of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. This might seem odd for someone who's trying to verify whether or not God exists, (right now, I would suspect that Tricky and Shemp are nodding their heads: "Yup, he just might be getting it..."), but once you get past the basics of these books, and start getting into the meat of them, you begin to see the parallels.
One thing which struck me is that even as Enron and other companies were heading face-first into the compost, (Rikzilla could probably verify this), the facts were there in the trenches that there were real problems. The boards of these companies have insulated themselves from realizing that the products and services they sell are not meeting the needs of the market, a fact that was readily apparent to the troops on the front line. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?) While the boards were out there looting the treasuries, ignoring the damage they were doing to pension plans and the marketplace, it was the average worker who saw what was happening, and was actually trying to warn the higher-ups before things tanked.
In looking at this, I realized that as a Church Member, (note the caps), my job wasn't to follow the words of Christ, or to support the mission of the Church, but rather it was to help insulate the Pastor from the damage his words were doing. I did so by tithing, by learning to attack those who questioned the validity of what came down from the pulpit, and by participating in the cliques which the Church came to ordain. In other words, my job within Christianity was not to spread the truth, but to contain it, to keep it from reaching people who needed it. You spread truth by providing comfort, but as the Church frequently points out, "Our job is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable." It's odd that people like Charles Keating and Ken Lay were so terribly afflicted, yet someone like our own Fowlsound or JJ are somehow comfortable. I didn't get it, and I still don't.
Clearly, though, I wasn't doing my job, because I was never really welcomed within any of the cliques at any of the Churches I attended. Something to think about.
Another point which came from Jack Welch is that you have to constantly check yourself against the facts, not what you think are the facts. This is a hard thing, but once you get into the habit of doing so, you begin to realize that you can't operate any other way. If you have someone in authority who's stifling incentive, who's lying, who's depleting morale, you have to find them, and find them quick, and once you do you have to get rid of them now. You do that because they will break your company within a very short amount of time.
I found that Churches not only keep such people, but they encourage their presence. When I proposed to one church that we provide first aid kits to members, that we sponsor CPR classes, encourage first aid courses, and even stockpile material for our flood-prone neck of California, I was met first with silence, then with mockery. The Pastor never did this, but those who were closest to him did, thereby keeping the little big man's hands clean. It provided him plausible deniability, but it also made it possible to keep the Church a select little club, one where the money (profits) continued to flow in, but responsibility remained low.
Instead of building a skeptical base, which would have strengthened the Church in the long run because our actions would have been based on facts, the Church continued to lurch and stall along, never reaching anyone for Christ, never accomplishing much of substance. If anything, it suggested that perhaps there wasn't much of substance to be offered, perhaps because there wasn't anything of substance behind it. We were declaring by our actions that there was no God.
This provoked another thought: Why continue following actions which are demonstrably false?
It's been ages since I've been in Europe, but I read with interest about Ryanair. They not only followed the successful model of Southwest Airlines here in the states, (and having flown on Southwest, I'll gladly endure the rotten seating, the lack of eats, and warm soda, simply because the staff made the trip bearable), but according to what I'm reading, they improved on the ideas of Herb Kelleher. Instead of following British Airways business model which wasn't working, they went with one which did, then refined their plans to the point that they could offer air travel for as little as $10 a pop. They not only made a profit, but they boosted their market share. What they did worked.
You look at what works, and you have to ask: why am I doing what doesn't?
If your actions and your words provoke hate and anger, which are clearly indications your actions and your words are negative, why do you continue to do them? More to the point, if they are driving people away, would that not indicate that a change is required, rather than digging in your heels and declaring that you're merely following the "Word Of God"? Frankly, after reading and rereading the Bible, if anything, I remain convinced that people like Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, and their ilk know nothing of God, and they have nothing to contribute to the conversation. If anything, they have demonstrated they have no faith to speak of, and are cynically exploiting people's fear.
This pseudospirituality was once brought to bear by Richard Brautigan in his very funny book, A Confederate General From Big Sur. I found out that there are people in this world who will actually count the number of commas in the King James Version of the book of Leviticus, (I think that was it), seeking some evidence of enlightenment in that sort of exercise. People are so spiritual, they're useless in the real world. If there were one less comma, or a period where a comma should have been, would that be evidence of a lack of spirituality, a possibility of a soul condemned to Hell, based upon a typographer's error? And would God be so cruel as to damn those who fell for such an error, when the error was clearly not theirs? Is this evidence of a Merciful, Just and Honorable God?
Let me put this in another perspective: Gay marriage is the current hot button issue, and there are studies which indicate on the surface that in nations where gay marriage is legal, heterosexual marriage is on the decline.
Except, that around the world, marriage is in decline anyway. It has been for years, and there have been lengthy articles complaining about this in scholarly journals and the popular press. Some have blamed women's liberation, others legalized and simplified divorce. Regardless, when you think about it, is gay marriage really having that much of an effect on marriage in general? Probably not.
It puts the lie to the Church, and makes me wonder why I'm clinging to it at all. Probably others, too, which would explain why the Church as a whole is in a decline. It has nothing to do with power-point presentations and praise bands, but everything to do with the substance of what is presented. If the Holy Spirit truly moves through the Church, where is the Spirit when the Church is confronted by not the spectacular sorrow of a Katrina, but the everyday miseries of the common soul in our own communities, the real point in our daily lives where we truly expect to see God in action.
The reality: we see God inaction.
As you may have noted, I have been helping a family in a very small way as a two year old fights Leukemia. Why is it, if God is so merciful, that it is atheists and agnostics, and ultimately, hard science, which is healing this child, while the former Pastor of the child's grandmother can't even be bothered to pick up a telephone and call to say he's sorry, and he'll pray for this child? Sorry, but that's an attitude that's totally f***ed.
It's taken me a while to reach this point. I've a long way to go. I just thought it bore mention, because if I've learned anything, you only think you're on that road alone.
Okay, maybe it's me. Part of this is what I read, which includes books on business and politics, as well as ethics and philosophy. If anything, I want to know why things work, as well as why they don't. If I remain a Christian, it's more nominal now, rather than evidenced by regular Church attendance and holy utterances. Some may choose to say I'm backsliding, but the reality is more along the lines of cutting through the bullsh**, and getting down to the realities of who we are, and what's really going on.
Another book I'm now reading is The Myth of Market Share, along with the autobiography of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. This might seem odd for someone who's trying to verify whether or not God exists, (right now, I would suspect that Tricky and Shemp are nodding their heads: "Yup, he just might be getting it..."), but once you get past the basics of these books, and start getting into the meat of them, you begin to see the parallels.
One thing which struck me is that even as Enron and other companies were heading face-first into the compost, (Rikzilla could probably verify this), the facts were there in the trenches that there were real problems. The boards of these companies have insulated themselves from realizing that the products and services they sell are not meeting the needs of the market, a fact that was readily apparent to the troops on the front line. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?) While the boards were out there looting the treasuries, ignoring the damage they were doing to pension plans and the marketplace, it was the average worker who saw what was happening, and was actually trying to warn the higher-ups before things tanked.
In looking at this, I realized that as a Church Member, (note the caps), my job wasn't to follow the words of Christ, or to support the mission of the Church, but rather it was to help insulate the Pastor from the damage his words were doing. I did so by tithing, by learning to attack those who questioned the validity of what came down from the pulpit, and by participating in the cliques which the Church came to ordain. In other words, my job within Christianity was not to spread the truth, but to contain it, to keep it from reaching people who needed it. You spread truth by providing comfort, but as the Church frequently points out, "Our job is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable." It's odd that people like Charles Keating and Ken Lay were so terribly afflicted, yet someone like our own Fowlsound or JJ are somehow comfortable. I didn't get it, and I still don't.
Clearly, though, I wasn't doing my job, because I was never really welcomed within any of the cliques at any of the Churches I attended. Something to think about.
Another point which came from Jack Welch is that you have to constantly check yourself against the facts, not what you think are the facts. This is a hard thing, but once you get into the habit of doing so, you begin to realize that you can't operate any other way. If you have someone in authority who's stifling incentive, who's lying, who's depleting morale, you have to find them, and find them quick, and once you do you have to get rid of them now. You do that because they will break your company within a very short amount of time.
I found that Churches not only keep such people, but they encourage their presence. When I proposed to one church that we provide first aid kits to members, that we sponsor CPR classes, encourage first aid courses, and even stockpile material for our flood-prone neck of California, I was met first with silence, then with mockery. The Pastor never did this, but those who were closest to him did, thereby keeping the little big man's hands clean. It provided him plausible deniability, but it also made it possible to keep the Church a select little club, one where the money (profits) continued to flow in, but responsibility remained low.
Instead of building a skeptical base, which would have strengthened the Church in the long run because our actions would have been based on facts, the Church continued to lurch and stall along, never reaching anyone for Christ, never accomplishing much of substance. If anything, it suggested that perhaps there wasn't much of substance to be offered, perhaps because there wasn't anything of substance behind it. We were declaring by our actions that there was no God.
This provoked another thought: Why continue following actions which are demonstrably false?
It's been ages since I've been in Europe, but I read with interest about Ryanair. They not only followed the successful model of Southwest Airlines here in the states, (and having flown on Southwest, I'll gladly endure the rotten seating, the lack of eats, and warm soda, simply because the staff made the trip bearable), but according to what I'm reading, they improved on the ideas of Herb Kelleher. Instead of following British Airways business model which wasn't working, they went with one which did, then refined their plans to the point that they could offer air travel for as little as $10 a pop. They not only made a profit, but they boosted their market share. What they did worked.
You look at what works, and you have to ask: why am I doing what doesn't?
If your actions and your words provoke hate and anger, which are clearly indications your actions and your words are negative, why do you continue to do them? More to the point, if they are driving people away, would that not indicate that a change is required, rather than digging in your heels and declaring that you're merely following the "Word Of God"? Frankly, after reading and rereading the Bible, if anything, I remain convinced that people like Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, and their ilk know nothing of God, and they have nothing to contribute to the conversation. If anything, they have demonstrated they have no faith to speak of, and are cynically exploiting people's fear.
This pseudospirituality was once brought to bear by Richard Brautigan in his very funny book, A Confederate General From Big Sur. I found out that there are people in this world who will actually count the number of commas in the King James Version of the book of Leviticus, (I think that was it), seeking some evidence of enlightenment in that sort of exercise. People are so spiritual, they're useless in the real world. If there were one less comma, or a period where a comma should have been, would that be evidence of a lack of spirituality, a possibility of a soul condemned to Hell, based upon a typographer's error? And would God be so cruel as to damn those who fell for such an error, when the error was clearly not theirs? Is this evidence of a Merciful, Just and Honorable God?
Let me put this in another perspective: Gay marriage is the current hot button issue, and there are studies which indicate on the surface that in nations where gay marriage is legal, heterosexual marriage is on the decline.
Except, that around the world, marriage is in decline anyway. It has been for years, and there have been lengthy articles complaining about this in scholarly journals and the popular press. Some have blamed women's liberation, others legalized and simplified divorce. Regardless, when you think about it, is gay marriage really having that much of an effect on marriage in general? Probably not.
It puts the lie to the Church, and makes me wonder why I'm clinging to it at all. Probably others, too, which would explain why the Church as a whole is in a decline. It has nothing to do with power-point presentations and praise bands, but everything to do with the substance of what is presented. If the Holy Spirit truly moves through the Church, where is the Spirit when the Church is confronted by not the spectacular sorrow of a Katrina, but the everyday miseries of the common soul in our own communities, the real point in our daily lives where we truly expect to see God in action.
The reality: we see God inaction.
As you may have noted, I have been helping a family in a very small way as a two year old fights Leukemia. Why is it, if God is so merciful, that it is atheists and agnostics, and ultimately, hard science, which is healing this child, while the former Pastor of the child's grandmother can't even be bothered to pick up a telephone and call to say he's sorry, and he'll pray for this child? Sorry, but that's an attitude that's totally f***ed.
It's taken me a while to reach this point. I've a long way to go. I just thought it bore mention, because if I've learned anything, you only think you're on that road alone.
