Why nobody ever listens to this "radical" new age management style crap.

Well, I'm now back at university and loving it. Freshers week was good with virtually no alcohol, and so have been the other two weeks I have had here so far (okay, with the small exception of the few days of flu that may or may not have been of the swine variety that caused me to miss my first lecture of the module I will talk about in this post) have been good.

So anyway, onto today's lecture, one which is very fresh in my mind, having just come from it. As a management student, I decided to take a module in Human Resources Management - and so this was my first lecture. Now, when the lecturer starts off the lecture with "there is no God", you know the next 2 hours are not going to go well. He shows the first slide, which I adore. Following the horror of the bad HR management I experienced in my year in industry, this slide tells me everything that I already know - so wha does this have to do with God? Well, apparently, according to my lecturer, We have transformed society into one that was originally dependent on rules and regulations, one that was dependent on the state, one that said that everybody was useless, which is (apparently) what religion teaches. (hold your horses, I'll get to that in a minute - that isn't the hilarious bit). This is the age of the self - this is a world that now revolves around you, with you at the centre of it. Some psychoanalysts found that if you strip away everything that is on a person, all of their culture, their societal rules, you free them to do whatever they want. These people were free from society, free to be their own person. These people created their new subcultures, with different ideas about what they liked, and how they saw the world. They were free...? Er, no. What these psychoanalysts had developed was a technique to strip away one culture for another to take it's place. The old culture was built by... people, oddly enough. This was not the age of the self, this was the age of being taught how to try a different society. Besides, this was touted as good. I don't think it is. I think, having observed people, that those who act on what they want, what they desire, are the ones who end up foolish, and the ones who end up lost - because you do not know what you want. These new people, that were free from society telling them what they wanted, all of a sudden, became very open to the new corporations who were doing something new - telling people that if they bought their product, they would be free - that this is what they wanted. People need to be led. This is the ultimate conclusion of Marxist and Communist Philosophy - we can try to get people to work for themselves, and be their own leaders, but ultimately new leaders will find their way in this place.

So why did I find his HR values so fresh and exciting, and agree with them? Because they were all about valuing the person, and making the person feel needed, valuable, etc. Nothing to do with the psychobabble in the video - people need to feel valued because it is a great motivator - if you tell someone that they are useless, they will be - this is something I learnt first hand at work. The moment I slipped up, I was told that I was useless. This did nothing for my self-confidence. The way to treat people is to make them feel valuable, help people realise why they made the mistake, back them up, encourage them so that they don't make the same mistake again. This is nothing new. This is Christian Ethics. People have the idea that religion is based on making someone feel bad about themselves, making them feel useless, that they are unable to help themselves. This is why my lecturer said what he did at the beginning of the lecture, because he thought because of this idea, people are rejecting it. Perhaps he is right, maybe that is why people reject the gospel message, because of this misunderstanding.

But I have news for you. This is NOT the Christian Message! The Christian message is full of love. It tells you that this God, the most powerful being in the universe, who put the stars in space, who created the heavens and the earth, who created the most beautiful nebulae in space, to the most magnificent mountains on earth. This God, who can control the forces of nature - cares about YOU. He Values YOU. He wants YOU for the skills and abilities that YOU have. This is My God. Someone who cares about Me. Not some distant entity that I cannot reach, but one who reached down to me and lives in me. One who cares about the smallest issue that I have. One who cared about me so much, one who loved me so much, one who thought that both you and I were so valuable to him that he came down to visit, to show his glory here, to die for us, to save us. That is My God. One who cares about YOU and ME.