August, 1996 

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Christians labor under a heavy burden: most of their spiritual peers are mediocre performers. The Christian community does not enjoy the division of labor. We all know that we can't really rely on each other's work. This keeps us dependent on non-Christians.

If the typical Christian had the same drive to succeed as the typical Jew, the Christian community would be worth imitating. But who wants to imitate mediocrity? Years ago Franky Schaeffer wrote a book, Addicted to Mediocrity. It was a study of evangelical Protestant Christians and the arts. The cover was the best part of the book: a man with a paint roller in his hand. He was painting over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. (Schaeffer self-destructed, I believe, because he was afflicted with mediocrity in the arts. But that's different from being addicted to it. He escaped his affliction by dropping out.)

Christians must be superior just to stay in the running. This is true of every minority group. The Jews learned this in the 1800's. The immigrant Chinese have learned it in this century. Immigrant groups and ghetto culture groups usually learn that in order to succeed, they have to perform much better than those in the general culture around them.

Evangelical Christians, because they have been active participants in the general pagan culture, have not felt pressured by their ghetto status in American culture to improve themselves and their performance. They are told by those in authority to sit on the sidelines, pay the tab, and to keep their mouths shut (public education, for example). They have. They sat contentedly in the back of American humanism's bus until about 1980, buying the gas and singing choruses. "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. (Where?) Down in my heart! (Where?) Down in my heart!" They still see no reason to replace humanist culture with something better. They don't think this is eschatologically possible. Meanwhile, they defend humanism's natural law theory: "All men believe the same things." They are content with a cultural stalemate, and they keep redefining their standards so that defeat means stalemate. They want only equal time for Jesus. Imagine Moses coming before Israel with this message: "Thus saith the Lord: I want equal time with the gods of Canaan!" Christians think Jesus really said this; hence, they are content with mediocrity.

This is bad for evangelism. Paul wrote that the Jews had been cut off as a nation in order that the gentiles might be grafted into the tree of faith. But someday, he prophesied, the Jews will be re-grafted in as a people. When? After they become jealous of the gentiles. And when that happens, the final blessings phase of the millennial era will begin.

I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? (Romans 11:11–12).

Look at the Christian community today. What might provoke a Jew to jealousy? Our scholarship? (Count the Nobel Prizes awarded to Jews compared to Christians.) Our business success? Our artistic achievement? (Spend one evening watching TBN: the Trinity Broadcasting Network. More weird hairdos per hour — male and female — than anything ever seen in public except at Mardi Gras.) Our reputation for reliability?

It is as if Christians believed that Jesus spoke these words: "I am come that they might have mediocrity, and that they have it more abundantly."

Rick Patterson, the pastor of the Jesus Fellowship in Miami, Florida, as a graduate student in business two decades ago phoned the man who founded Holiday Inns. This was part of a class project. The man agreed to let Patterson tape the interview. Then he said: "I'll call you right back; students never have any money." Quite true. During the interview, this man — who had no college education — gave his secret of success:

All you have to do is work half a day, six days a week. Just half a day. And it doesn't matter which half: the first half or the second half.

It's simple: work a 60-hour week every week without a vacation until you're successful. That's why most college professors cannot make it in business. The profession's teaching schedule corrupts them. Only those who work long hours to get out books and articles make an impact. They follow the "half a day" rule.

In 1959, I was a freshman at Pomona College. It is one of the elite four-year liberal arts colleges, along with Swarthmore (the most rigorous), Oberlin, Carleton, and a few others. I was one of the average students. There were some real achievers in my class. (One of them was Twyla Tharpe, who went on to choreograph some really strange ballets. We both transferred out after one semester, for different reasons.) I remember the welcoming speech by the dean of something or other. Anyway, I remember one point: "If you work a 40-hour week, as you'll be asked to work when you graduate, you'll make it."

Schools like Pomona screen the student body in advance. Nobody flunks out except for psychological reasons. The truth was, you didn't have to work 40 hours a week to make it there. I didn't. But if you did, you surely would succeed.

My friend Arthur Robinson trains his children by requiring them to put in five hours a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year at their studies unless they're on a project trip. After they put in five hours, they do their chores on the family's sheep ranch. Some work on Arthur's experiment to see if higher carbon dioxide levels increase rats' life expectancy. Another runs the printing and stuffing machines for Arthur's excellent newsletter, Access to Energy. They own no television. They own no stereo. So, the children learn.

Arthur and the older kids have produced a six-disk CD-ROM education program. It includes over 200 books. Reading widely is a fine way to learn how to read, think, and even write. I monitor some of the home school Internet forums. I did a search on dejanews.com, the search engine that monitors every word of every newsgroup. I searched for "curriculum" and "Robinson." I found a few discussions.

What struck me was this: the home schoolers thought the program sounded good, and at $100, it is certainly affordable. But one thing put them off: Robinson has his children study five whole hours a day. Inconceivable. "He lives on a farm," one parent said. "He can control them." Conclusion: parental authority depends on family isolation.

Each week, Robinson's children get 20% ahead of the typical home schooler, just by the Saturday assignments, not to mention the full five hours. Every year, they get an additional 30% ahead because of the extra weeks of study. This is cumulative.

They teach themselves. He doesn't tutor them. The oldest boys have gone through Linus Pauling's college chemistry textbook assigned by Pauling to Robinson 37 years ago. The oldest boy passed 10 AP exams and therefore entered college as a junior. He attended for one quarter, was appalled at the blatant homosexual activism on campus, and came home. He made a deal with his professors: "I do the work by myself; I take the exams; and I come on campus only to take the exams." They all agreed. He is teaching himself upper division physical science in his bedroom. He never hears a lecture, never asks for help.

Robinson is teaching his children not to be content with mediocrity.

The problem evangelical Protestants face is that we have so few models of success. With the lone exception of the Wycliffe Bible translation program, there is no explicitly Christian ministry that has gained the reputation of being the best on earth, in any area. Also, there is no place for young men to apprentice under a truly successful person who has made his mark in business. Well, that's not quite true. There are some successful Christian businessmen out there. Pat Robertson is one. But how does anyone imitate him? (Actually, it can be done: on local cable TV. I know a man in an Arkansas town of 12,000 who makes $100,000 a year running a local cable channel. But he isn't a Christian.)

Max Dupree's little book, Leadership Is an Art (Doubleday, 1989), is a good introduction. The company he runs, Herman Miller, Inc., makes fine office furniture, and it enjoys steady, above-average growth. But it's sort of a Dutch ghetto business. The Dutch, unlike most Protestant immigrant/ghetto subcultures, have aimed higher than mediocrity. Not at excellence — for amillennialists, comprehensive cultural excellence is just too much to hope for — but at least well above mediocrity.

Here is the three-part rule for success in business (and everything else):

Do what you told the customer you said you would do

Do it on schedule

Do it at the price agreed upon

What about excellence?

Do a little better than you told the customer you said you would do

Do it ahead of schedule

Offer a discount for the next job ("if you order today!")

Simple, isn't it? Yet I have found only a handful of businessmen claiming to be born-again Christians who have religiously adopted the success standard. I have never met one who follows the plan for business excellence. Even in my own life, I tend not to get things done early. What has made me a success is the tyranny of publishing deadlines. You have no leeway in the newsletter business. The printer is waiting. The mailing house is waiting. I have missed mailing Remnant Review on time only once in 23 years, when a totally incompetent printer was late, day after day, yet told me, also day after day, that she would have it ready the next day. I never went back.

A competent craftsman usually is a poor businessman. He will never achieve wealth. He is too afraid that business will stop coming too him. He is too fearful about failing. So, he accepts every job. Then he stops meeting deadlines. He gets jammed up with business, but he is too afraid, too insecure about his work, to turn down business. He short-changes his customers, not on price or quality, but in regard to time. He makes them dependent on his schedule, and then he stiffs them. I have seen this happen many times.

What is the solution? Raise prices. Turn away business the profitable way. Keep only those businessmen who have money to spare. Such businessmen seldom have time to spare. They have deadlines to meet. They hire people at high prices because: (1) their work is above average; (2) they are never late. Time and quality are more important than costs in a successful business. This is why you seldom see Christian independent contractors who have successful businesses as clients. Christian craftsmen are too fearful to turn down business and too ashamed to admit that they are short-changing their clients' by delaying their clients' production schedules. Successful businessmen look elsewhere. They try to find a non-Christian independent contractor who will not mentally justify his delays by the all-too-familiar refrain, "Jesus wants people to be patient with my failings. After all, I'm born again." To which a businessman thinks: "Next time, find me a Chinaman." We ought to say, "He didn't have a fundamentalist's chance," not "He didn't have a Chinaman's chance." We ought to say, "This place is run like a fundamentalist fire drill."

Jesus wants excellence, for He is excellent. Don't mistake his patience with mediocrity for His approval.

Sincerely,