Pearls

Politics (Game Theory, Rational Choice), Organizational Behavior, and Emotional Intelligence, and Theology are a few currently interesting topics. This blog was created to compare, contrast and provide references for others interested. Comparing academic sources and biblical ideas, I hope will clarify beliefs allowing people to whole heartedly follow Christ.

I've observed in my own life, American culture's individualistic tendency is to believe that if I'm smart enough, strong enough, and disciplined enough I can control my destiny. This leads to type A personality and seems to fall in line with the quote Jesus made "Can you by worrying add one iota to your life?"(Mathew 6:27) On the other hand, I've been told a story where three times a New Orlean person stranded on a flooded house's rooftop refused help saying "God is going to save me." These generalizations remove and distance the details and personal context from the experience. It is only in choosing to create room in our life for His Word that we can, over time, know that we are on the right path. This allows us peace in the midst of life's chaos to keep at bay the vices prohibiting our life's fulfillment.

With this in mind, I plan to ponder academic sources comparing them with biblical ideas in a personal and modern context in the hope that light will disperse confusion.

As an example. You'd think that 7 Habits of Highly Effective People would be a good book to read for your career right? What if you didn't know better than to try to share and implement your new found vision and goal setting wisdom (Chapter 2) with new people? A few biblical ideas come to mind. "Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved"(Mathew 9:17); "Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces"(Mathew 7:6); Moses out of his own volition showing that he was the Israelites savior by killing an Egyption that was abusing one of his people(Exodus 2:12). Afterwords he was in the desert for decades as a sheep herder. There is much wisdom in 7 Habits book but without the balance of God's regular Word in our lives, that wisdom may be setting us up for a painful growing experience.

From an academic perspective Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behavior echoes these same sentiments. "The metaphor of a 'corporate immune system' is a useful one in understanding the dynamics of this response. As Pinchot (1985, p. 189) relates: 'When you start something new, the system naturally resists it. It is almost as if the corporation had an immune system which detects anything that is not part of the status quo and surrounds it. If you are to survive, you will have to lull this immune system into ignoring you. You will have to appear to be part of the corporate self, rather than identified as a foreign body.'" (p. 509)

In my experience the conflict that arises from the 'new wine' has potential for getting people fired.

"'The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right.'" (John 7:6)