How To

How To

Dale Carnige wrote an introduction for How to Win Friends and Influence People that told why he wrote it. “Fifteen percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about eighty five percent is due to personality and the ability to win friends and influence people!” so he wrote this “practical, working handbook on human relations”. I think that it is a dangerous book because it works! Dale states that over all you must be sincere and he repeats that over and over however his ‘how to’ works so well that even with the sincerity missing it works! J.D. Rockefeller said “the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar ... and I will pay more for it than for any other”.
Some people have come up with books on how to dominate people. Not that they are really needed. Roman Ceasars and Czars and lots of other imfamous leaders have been using the principles for ever so long. They build on stupidity and ignorance, even if they have to create that ignorance. One of the chief principles is to play on the negative emotions; build fear of the system, and build hatred for some scape goat person or group but these would not work without one emotion that we normaly think of as positive. Honesty. Well, a combination of honesty, trust and loyalty. Most people really do try to keep the rules. Why do you stop at an intersection for a red light? Why do you pay income tax? Why do so many women stay in very abusive relationships? Why did the people of Hawaii tolerate a ruler who would kill some one just because the kings shadow fell on them? Not just fear, not just because their hatred has been diverted, not just because the fear of change and of the unknown is greater than the present situation, not just because so many of us are too slugish, defeated to do something even though we are dying for a change. Most of us do not have the all encompassing drive to tell every one else what they can and can not do, and at the same time we really do want to respect the ‘rules’, we do want to be seen as good. Stupidity, ignorance and lazyness do play their part here too, we often do not stop to figure out what really is wrong with the ‘rules’ we are subjected to and why. All we like sheep . . . Karl Marx wrote one hand book on dominance. The humanist manifesto is another. Disarm the people, keep them poor and ignorant of the truth . . . As Dale says most tyrants want to be seen as nice guys; benevolent, generous, what they do they do for everyone’s good.
Then there are the religious books and systems.
Lots of people suggest that the Bible suggests the bad guy good guy routine that we hear about; the God of the Old Testament was a harsh demanding god but the God of the New is the good guy. Actually the God of the New is just as demanding, in fact in some ways more so, than He was in the Old. The differance is that in the New He will take - has taken out His vengence on His own Son rather than on us as individuals IF we will accept the work of Christ on our behalf. The Body of Christ has not been subjected to the usual domineering methods of earth’s rulers; swear an oath of aligence, keep the rules, fear the system, hate the ‘bad’ guys not me, be ignorant. Our Ruler’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. With the change of the priesthood, from that of Aaron to that of Christ, there came a change of rules. Oh sure I would like to have a way to make church members fall in line but our rules are - Love one another, Encourage each other, Pray for each other, Don’t miss the weekly motivational ralies, Esteem all others as greater than ourselves, “Learn of Me, Know Me”. “The love of Christ constrains us..”... ; where as even love was legislated in the Old, it is earned in the New.. “... He died as us”! Think of it that way, ‘He died AS me’ is a lot worse than ‘He died FOR me’is, as bad as that would be, then you begin to understand how the God of the New could be more harsh and demanding than that of the Old.
Did the Head of the Church deligate authority to certain people to rule His Body? No! The body works as an integrated network of individual units each of which has its own direct connection to the head. If the watchman on the wall has responsibility for the people in the city it is not because he has authourity over them! Likewise if the elders of a church will be held accountable for the loss of members of the body it is not because they had authority over the church! Too many times already “leaders” have taken on authority over the members and then demanded an oath of aligence to their system. God never ment for Israel to have any government but an autocratic, in the sence of rule by one alone, theocracy; when they demanded a king God told Samuel “they have not rejected you, they have rejected Me”. Episcopal government of a religous body shows all the hallmarks of rule by dominance and the differance between that and Presbyterial government is that all the power is not supposed to be held in the hands of one single person in a Presbytery.