RU: Labor Exploitation for Jesus - Part Eight

We're into page 7 of 10 in the RU: Schools of Disciples Handbook.  Today's theme: conduct, conduct and more conduct - and the Bible verses that don't really support them.

First up: how to behave during educational components.

My thoughts:

• How many Bibles do the students need?  Is this a way of adding that Bible Concordance to the list of needed materials?  How long do you need to do that journal a day?

• I have a mental image of staff members running surprise checks of patients to see if they are carrying their "Daily Meditation Cards" during dinner or at work.

• How much Bible work is required on top of the work from the "Phases"?

• How far do you need to progress in the "Program" each week?

• The last two bullet points are weird for any program - and creepy for adults.  During my time in Pine Rest, I gave and received support from people of both genders. Often, people in similar life situations - unmarried young adults, married adults, older adults who had lost a spouse - shared good times with each other.  Also, how does this work out practically on a job site?

My thoughts:

• 2 Corinthians 5:12 " We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart." I have no idea how that has anything to do with riding in a van to a job site.

• 1 Corinthians 14:40 "But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way." Sounds better - but the chapter is about how to conduct yourself in church so perhaps it should be moved to the previous chunk.

•  All of my math for the scheduling bit is a bit off now since a full 30 minutes is wasted at the beginning and end of all programs and services.

• Does keeping all conversations "Christ-like" mean that you have to use the aphorism "Amen, Amen I say to you....." at a certain frequency?  Or that all convos will be in ancient Aramaic? I missed the obvious one: It's all about carpentry.

 My thoughts:

• Sweet!  I call turning over tables and yelling at people when they do something I don't like after Mark 11:15-16. Go Jesus-style or go home!
• Notice that most of the outlawed verbal behaviors - e.g. griping, negative criticism, complaining, faultfinding and sowing discord - create problems for the staff, not the patients.
• Good luck trying to contain gossiping in a place with 50 men or 80 women and 3 full-time staff.

• In real therapeutic settings, you talk about "old habits or lifestyles" - e.g. your addictions - to help clearly see how they were hurting you and the people in your life.  By talking with others, you gain understanding of what triggers your behaviors and other bad consequences that can befall you if you continue in your current path.  Now, glorifying the old habits and lifestyles is a bad idea - but in a therapeutic setting either the therapist or fellow patients will call you out on that.
• Who is scrutinizing the relationships to determine their relevance?  The correct answer is the patient with support of a therapist - not a blanket prohibition on anyone that is not your spouse or a blood relative.  Two of the people who were most helpful to me when I was recovering from depression were two family friends who had experienced depression themselves and reached out to help me recover.

• I worry that there is no timeline for dealing with complaints addressed by the patients.  I'm sure this surprises no one, but there is also no appeals process or outside oversight - but we'll cover that more when we get to the Complaint Process.

My final thought for today: The priorities of a group become clear in their writings.  Helping patients recover takes low priority for RU compared to crowd and cost control measures.