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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Religion and the Older Brother

George 1 Comment

Upon the recommendation of my good friend Adam, I recently read “Skeletons In God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, The Surprise of Judgement, The Hope of Holy War” by Joshua Ryan Butler

I must admit I was somewhat skeptical but curious, based on the title alone. (I suppose the publishers achieved their goal) Upon reading, I encountered perspectives that challenged my understandings on several fronts. Overall it was an enlightening read and is worthy of a re-read and deeper consideration. I hope to find an opportunity for conversation with others on the book.

A particular excerpt I found insightful and personally helpful, follows.

His father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!” “My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

In this short passage, Jesus reveals two ways religion can destroy our souls. First, it can destroy the way we look at God. The religious son looks to dad as a slaveholder rather than a good father: “All these years I’ve been slaving for you . . .” He sees his dad not as a close friend, but a mean boss. Ironically, he’s been close to home geographically, but far, far away in his heart. His religious obedience has kept him distant from the overflowing graciousness of his loving father. Externally he’s been close, but inside he’s been on his own little island. His father, however, does not call him “slave,” “worker,” or “grunt,” but rather “my son.” His dad calls him not by his works, but by their relationship: “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” The father rejects his son’s distorted perception of their relationship and calls him to intimacy. He looks upon his religious son with filial devotion and care. The second way Jesus says religion can destroy our soul is by the way we look at others. The religious son does not call the prodigal “my brother,” but rather “this son of yours.” When I would get in trouble as a kid, I remember my mom would jokingly tell my dad, “You’ll never believe what this son of yours did!” It was a way of distancing relationship. I was no longer “my boy,” but rather “your son.” Only, my mom was joking; the older brother here is clearly not. The religious son is distancing himself from his brother. He not only distances himself from his brother, he also elevates himself over his brother. He reminds dad which one’s been upholding the family name. Which one’s been taking care of the farmstead. Which one’s been contributing to the community. He lifts up his great track record (“ all these years I’ve been slaving for you”) in comparison to his brother’s illicit track record (he “squandered your property with prostitutes.”) The religious son lifts himself up . . . by pushing his brother down. And yet, the father rejects this power play. He calls the outlaw “this brother of yours.” He insists on reaffirming their family relationship. He refuses to identify the prodigal by his past behavior and instead reaffirms his present identity: “[ he] was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Dad rejects the religious son’s rejection of his brother. The father is for both sons. But he refuses the religious son’s exalting of himself over his outlaw brother. Tragically, the older son clings to his pride, refuses this reality, and remains sulking in the backyard.

What keeps the religious son outside the party is not the father’s refusal to let him in. He is kept outside by his own refusal to repent of his sin and self-righteousness, to let go of the pride inside his heart, to loosen his kung fu grip on the idol of himself. While the father beckons him into the party, “pleads with him” to come inside, the son prefers the backyard. He is kept outside the party by his religion. He is a slave to the sin he refuses to let go of. 

A captive to his own self-righteousness. 

He is bound by his religion.

Deming – Work Harder

George 0 Comments

This post is a follow up Io Intersections- Dr. Deming. If you have not read that post, I encourage you to read it so you will understand the context of this post.

I regard the influence of Deming’s thinking to be transformative for my life. In this post, I want to begin to give some substance to the transformations I experienced. 

I encountered Deming in the context of Ford Motor Company, particularly the Kentucky Truck Plant. The focus was on improvement of product quality and organizational changes necessary to achieve quality goals. I remember my initial perception being that we were embarking on another program to do quality better. Essentially, work harder at what we had been doing. 

Upon being introduced to Deming, my fundamental belief, and the belief of Ford management, that improvement is achieved through working harder, was challenged and proved false. 

At some point, I began to realize that what Deming was asserting was not just about Ford and industry in general, but applied universally to all human organizations. For me, family and church were the first to come to mind. 

Working harder as a solution, to most, if not all problems , was the default position for myself and for most people I knew. To have that option, questioned, much less eliminated, was traumatic, to say the least. My intuitive rebuttal was to interpret Deming to be saying that hard work is a negative. That was not the case, he dealred hard work is good and necessary, just not the solution to systemic problems. 

This was transformative personally. The belief that solutions to systemic problems is working harder, or, do better, implies that the sole responsibility for the problem falls on the indiviual, employee, wife, child, church member, or others within the organization. Under such an assumption, the role of leadership is largely confined to discerning how to get followers to work harder and do better. 

A work harder assumption regarding solutions to systemic problems is deeply related to one’s belief regarding the nature of human beings. That revelation was an occasion for much reflection, self-assessment and repentance. 

Although my understandings, with regard to work harder as a solution, were transformed; I continue to struggle with the temptation take the path of least resistance and, ironically, avoid the hard work of solving systemic problems. 

A continued prelevance of the “work harder” mentality is demonstrated broadly in our culture. From political podiums, pulpits, corporate offices and academia, it underlies and feeds the divisions that threaten our future and and is a barrier to much desired resolution.

My next post is, Deming – Systems Thinking 

Intersections – Dr. Deming

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This post continues a series entitled intersections. As I reflect on my life’s journey, various intersections along the way come to mind. My ambition was for a straight and narrow path. but, that’s not how life goes.

 Over three decades ago, Ford Motor Company and the rest of the American automakers awoke to the threat of Japanese automakers. The competition was real and the future of the big three automakers, General Motors, Ford and Chryler was not certain. 

It was in that context that I was first introduced to Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Of course, we did not meet personally. His philosophies and principles have had a profound influence on Ford Motor Company and for me, as well as american industry in general. The following Wikipedia excerpt Provides some insight into the depth of his influence on Ford.

Ford Motor Company was one of the first American corporations to seek help from Deming. In 1981, Ford’s sales were falling. Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred $3 billion in losses. Ford’s newly appointed Corporate Quality Director, Larry Moore, was charged with recruiting Deming to help jump-start a quality movement at Ford. Deming questioned the company’s culture and the way its managers operated. To Ford’s surprise, Deming talked not about quality, but about management. He told Ford that management actions were responsible for 85% of all problems in developing better cars. In 1986, Ford came out with a profitable line of cars, the Taurus-Sable line. In a letter to Autoweek, Donald Petersen, then Ford chairman, said, “We are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford and the many changes that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Deming’s teachings.” By 1986, Ford had become the most profitable American auto company. For the first time since the 1920s, its earnings had exceeded those of archrival General Motors (GM). Ford had come to lead the American automobile industry in improvements. Ford’s following years’ earnings confirmed that its success was not a fluke, for its earnings continued to exceed GM and Chrysler’s.

Although the impact of Deming on Ford was dramatic, based on his accomplishments In his career prior to Ford, they should not have come as a surprise. Wikipedia provides a helpful summary of his career. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

My experience with Dr. Deming , came via statistical process control and his management philosophies. In the midst of the above mentioned crisis of Ford Motor Company, my job responsibilities shifted to initiatives that were derived from Deming’s consultation with Ford executive management. 

One of the first  impacts of Deming on our assembly plant was the hiring of a cadre of young and mostly female statiticians and the formation of a Statistical Process Control (SPC) group. They were commissioned with the task of implementing SPC throughout our plant, which proved to be a daunting assignment.

Concurrent with SPC came Employee Involvement (EI), a joint initiative between the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) and Ford Motor Company. Also a derivitive of Deming’s influence and the Japanese competition crisis, longstanding  UAW/Ford anomosities were transcended as they joined forces against a common foe.

My responsibilty in EI was introducing and orientating every hourly employee, 40-50  at a time in an eight hour class. The plant popoulation was around 1500-2000  hourly employees at that time.  As SPC was met with much skeptism by salaried employees, EI was met with equal, if not more, suspicion by hourly employees. That experience is worthy of its own post. 

The radical nature of Deming’s methodologies and philosophies became most apparent when introduced to management and salaried employees. If the hourly ranks were fearful, management was terrified. The implications of adopting Deming’s management philosophies were a clear threat to the prevailing culture of Ford Motor Company. Change is hard enough, but when your career depends on making changes which are completely contary to all you have been taught; and makes skills that got you whatever measure of success you have achieved obsolete, it is terrifying. For management, the change required was not optional, get on board or get off. 

The  following are a few quotes from Deming related to his mangement philosophy. I believe they will help in understanding its radical nature.

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” 

 “Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”

We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing. 

In God we trust, all others bring data.

We know what we told him, but we don’t know what he heard.

……the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

Best efforts are essential. Unfortunately, best efforts, people charging this way and that way without guidance of principles, can do a lot of damage.

Management is responsible for 94% of the problems”

“Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. 

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

The greatest waste … is failure to use the abilities of people…to learn about their frustrations and about the contributions that they are eager to make.

If you wait for people to come to you, you’ll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don’t realize they have one in the first place.

During the meeting, our division president asked Dr. Deming, “Is there hope for GM?” Dr. Deming’s reply: “Sometimes you have to wait for people to die.”

Via Eric Budd – “In attempting to understand why he might say something like this, I ran across this quote, ‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’

A leader is a coach, not a judge.

He that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures

Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.

My job respnsibilty after EI was as an internal consultant to management, working with an external consulting firm hired by Ford. Our assignment was to facilitate senior management’s transition from traditional mangement philosophies to a participative management phililoshophy. That, too, is worthy of another of another post.

This excerpt from Deming’s writings may be helpful in providing understanding why I would write about my encounter.

The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge.The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.
My encounter with Dr. Deming was transformative and it shaped my life for good. The profound knowledge and principles referenced have permeated my life, family, faith, culture and politics. I fully realize that what I have I have shared leaves many unanswered questions. It is my ambition to write additional posts on the what, why and how my Dr Deming experience has played out over the past 3+ decades.

If you are so inclined, you can engage Deming on your own. His writings and writings about he him are widely accessible. If not, you can wait on my future posts.

More on Lament

George 1 Comment

I have written some earlier posts on lament. HERE and HERE Those posts were prompted by our grandson’s suicide and our subsequent struggle with grief. Lament has been on mind ever since and is now becoming more acute as we approach the one year anniversary (Dec 10) of Ryan’s death.

Recently, there have been two encounters which I think worthy of another post. The first was attendance at the Wilmore Anglican Church. My first Anglican worship experience, I was pleased and encouraged by a liturgy that recognized and provided space for lament. I have struggled with conceptualizing how such expressions can fit into my usual evangelical worship experience. I believe we can learn from the Anglicans. I wondered, as I listened to the prayers of the people, what that kind of opportunity would have meant for us in our grief as we worshipped the Sunday after Ryan’s death.

The second encounter came in my reading of Richard Beck’s recently released book: Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel according to Johnny Cash . I am enjoying the read and intend to post more about it later. But, particular to this post, Beck had some thoughts on lament that I find helpful and profoundly insightful. The following are excerpts from a longer commentary in the chapter “San Quentin”

We get to the good news of Easter Sunday only after crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

Lament isn’t a failure or lack of faith. Lament is an act of bold, trusting faith in the midst of pain, suffering, and confusion. In fact, if we ignore lament, if we avoid giving voice to despair and rage, the gospel loses its ability to speak honestly, realistically, and truthfully. Without lament, faith grows naïve and superficial—a happy, fake, glossy façade we paint over the pain and confusion. In addition, lament is the cry of the oppressed, a song of resistance. When we avoid lament, we are marginalizing the voices crying out in pain around the world. 

In sum, lament is the shadow of the gospel, the moon to the gospel’s sun. The bright hope of the gospel creates sharp, dark outlines of contrast around all that is unjust and broken. Lament is that gap separating the new heavens and the new earth from the shattered world we find around us. In pointing toward that gap, we are not failing or denying the gospel; instead, we are praying with tears and raw, cracked voices, “May your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”