Thomas P Benjamin in Christianity and 5th discipline LO9258 said, in part:
<<The posting by JC Howell and comments by our temporary host on the
LO9225 was disturbing...
I do not have a Bible in my reach right now, so no quotes.>>
And then a story of learning according to the bible.
My (very personal) reactions are to say thank you for not quoting from the
bible, since I only occasionally find bible quotes to be insightful or useful
and since I've seen people say pretty much anything they want through such
quotes. (Posted prominently on the front wall of church housing in Garden
City SC is a quote from the bible about NOT THINKING and only accepting truth
as told from the gospel -- wish I'd saved that one for this note.)
Yet my experience finds the bible thumpers quoting as " infallible TRUTH,"
taking quotes quite literally, and choosing to ignore many inconsistencies.
As many of you know, I use cartoons as metaphor. And I believe we can learn a
lot through metaphor but learning through metaphor as TRUTH is much less
productive.
Some today take the Dilbert cartoons as reality. I am certain that it is not
the intention of Scott Adams. Yet a "religion" is forming around his work
much like a "religion" formed around Celestine Prophecy, the novel of James
Redmond. (I am not obviously equating the bible with Square Wheels or Dilbert
but merely pointing out that these tools do have learning value.). I believe
that any tool that causes one to think about their behavior and to learn is
useful.
I find some of us do not have happy experiences with the church and find some
of its activities, to use Thomas' word, "disturbing."
Here in Greenville, our County Council recently passed an anti-gay resolution
and many are disturbed that council would position itself to expouse its
values of "family" on the community at large. Bible Thumpers were active
outside council chambers, quoting verse that gays would burn in Hell, etc. A
community survey found 70% to be against the resolution and even the Chamber
stated it to be an ill-advised decision. And, lastly, these Christian
governmental leaders also took the position that they were not open to further
dialog on this subject!
City council similarly did not permit a church to get a zoning permit -- the
first time this has EVER happened -- apparently because the church had some
gay members (maybe) and did not obviously take an obvious anti-gay position
toward its membership. Our family tolerance of gays' family values is most
certainly greater than those of our predominently Christian community leaders.
Thus, I have difficulty meshing many of our religious organizations general
practices with a concept of Learning Organization - I just don't see it in the
mainstream as espoused by Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan and others.
I am not against religion or spirituality and believe myself to be a
relatively advanced spiritual person, on the whole. But I do find the
exclusionary, sometimes racist, often repressive positions of many religious
leaders to be "disturbing." Thus I find this thread to be somewhat strange.
Maybe our Christian organizations will eventually see some of the
inconsistencies I see. Maybe. One can hope.
His (Thomas') posting ends with,
<<the Bible may help the interested make their own conclusions.>>
Maybe.
(And why do some of us posting counter to this Christianity thread do so in
great hesitancy. For the most part, I think it is fear of not being PC and
the resulting flames -- email-type, only. I think that dialog is great but I
have had a major hesitancy about dialoging in this thread because of my belief
in a lack of real / sincere openness by some participants. These represent my
beliefs and not any truth, methinks.)
Some personal beliefs of
--Scott Simmerman
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>