Sat, 10 Jun 2023 18:00:13 -0700WeeblyTue, 28 Aug 2012 05:41:27 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/the-politics-of-providing-for-the-poorThe Poor Shall Always Be Among Us

Do we believe "taking care of the poor" is the greatest spiritual value, and vote for politicians who claim to support that agenda?  Elevating caring for the poor causes many to overlook that when a particular party is in power opponents of values that are in antithesis to what the Bible teaches find a political audience for their causes.  Thus we have a 40 year history of the Bible, the pledge of allegiance and patriotic songs being banned and expunged from the national conscience, as education and other problems of the poor continue to prevail and worsen.     

Both the Old and New Testaments indicate poor people always will be amongst us, and we are encouraged to share to help them. Deuteronomy 15:11, Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7  and John 12:8. 

Properly Providing for the Poor

The Bible says properly caring for the poor includes giving them the opportunity to work to support themselves. Leviticus 19:10 says, “Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien.”   

The greatest virtue regarding how we treat the poor, however, is giving them the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Christ.  Thus, Matthew 11:5 and Luke 4:18  and 7:22 say, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”  Jesus heals many of the disabilities that contribute to poverty. 

The greatest spiritual value is helping people from all walks-of-life to make good decisions by responding to Christ in repentance which eradicates other causes of poverty, such as alcohol and drug abuse and criminal behavior.  

While providing the poor is commendable, the Bible shows requiring their responsible participation is more productive than mere handouts.   While Jesus heals and sets people free from the causes of poverty, perverted government perpetuates enslavement to poverty programs to get votes from those who hope to support the poor.  



]]>Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:00:33 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/the-divine-decalogue-for-dynamic-decencyI teach a program called “Leadership To Renew America’s Biblical-Constitutional Values, a centerpiece of which includes an overview of what I call "The Divine Decalogue for Dynamic Decency," which explains the 10 Commandments in positive paraphrases that highlight the behavioral outcomes they are designed to produce.  For instance Command number 6 is "Mercy Mitigates Murder" and Command 8 is "Do not rip off others and yourself out of God's plan for both your material blessings."

The Biblical Basis for The Bill of Rights

America's Founding Fathers realized that through the Ten Commandments God was securing or inalienable rights.  They realized God was saying through 

Commands # 1-4 - "you have a right to worship God the way the Bible says to worship Him." 
Command #   5 - "you have a right to an honorable family." 
Command #   6 - "you have a right to defend your life and not be murdered. " 
Command #   7 - "you have a right to have sex only with your marriage partner," and  “you have a right not to be sexually assaulted." 
Command #   8 - "you have a right not to be stolen from - 
nor have your property improperly seized.” 
Command #   9 - "you have a right not to be lied to, slandered or falsely accused." 
Command # 10 - "you have a right not to have your belongings or property coveted.“

These God-given rights are “inalienable,” meaning since they come from God we can't be alienated from or deprived of them by other individuals or the government - even by democratic majority vote!

The Founding Fathers codified our God-given rights in the US Bill of Rights. Thus, amendment one protects our rights to obey commands one through four. Amendment two, the right to bear arms, protects our rights under commandment six.   

Dynamically Decent People and Politicians
The Divine Decalogue explains the objective standards of behavior people and government representatives need to adhere to, so as a society we have the capacity to enjoy the freedom to pursue the life, liberty and happiness America’s Founding Fathers envisioned.  
]]>Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:23:12 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/public-power-and-the-peter-principleDoes power corrupt leaders who lie, are petty and mismanage resources?  Or does power give them opportunity to demonstrate how misguided they already were?


Power Drunk People

The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, asks: “What is the difference between someone who is intoxicated on power and someone who is on drugs or alcohol?  

You get erratic behaviors from both, including loss of mission focus, lying and mismanagement. (pages 223-227) 

Government Going Astray

Government officials who think, “It’s all about my political ideology,” pursue initiatives that are less effective than those who see themselves as managers of large organizations that should be operationally efficient.  One-dimensional politicians think the organization serves them.  Two-dimensional leaders ignore operations, believing their political ideology is the mission and an end in itself. Thus they pursue it, blinded to outcomes that fail to meet stated goals, unintended negative-consequences, and huge deficits that saddle future generations with insurmountable debt. 

Bad employee behavior is justified and gets a pass, as long as it is perceived as furthering the political ideology. By contrast, three-dimensional political leaders act as CEO’s who take responsibility for government programs to operate efficiently with employees who work competently with integrity.   

Big and powerful governments do great damage when their leaders go to war on false pretenses, or spend millions turning slogans into initiatives in the name of a “common good” that only favors a “sub-segment de jour.”  Such activities only satisfy the paternalism of politicians and/or the agendas of those whose money buys their initiaitve.  

Properly Presiding In Power  


Character is needed to handle power properly. Three-dimensional politicians work so that approximately eighty percent of constituents are satisfied with their initiatives. Keeping a long range view of fulfilling the mission by maintaining healthy working relationships that are disciplined and achieve effective operations avoids the Peter Principle and satisfies the most reasonable members of “We the People.”
 
]]>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:17:48 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/government-inefficiency-is-fueled-by-politically-appointed-leadersPoliticians tend to appoint to government’s most influential decision-making positions their family members, friends, paramours, significant others, chief donors and key supporters. These people often see that their main mission is to help their politicians gain the name recognition they need to continue to get elected to office every two to four years.  Consequently, many appointees use their positions to dream up costly, politically motivated initiatives designed to make a headline or photo opportunity for them and their politicians. The initiatives make great sound bites, but in reality often lack not only a working knowledge of available resources but also the contextual awareness and detail to coordinate the various operational elements to make programs effective. 

As a former statewide government program administrator, I improved underperforming government services by instilling pride and focussing employees on performance and productivity processes.  The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context explains that government has challenges with efficiency often because its leaders only function within two of the three MRC essentials necessary to achieve effective operations.  

Even simple things are overlooked like coordinating the job titles and partner relationships that are necessary to provide services in ways that deliver meaningful outcomes to the public.  While many appointees can recite a government agency’s mission statement, their behaviors painfully demonstrate to gifted and skilled civil servants that they have no actual experience in what they are tasked to manage or oversee. 

The new initiatives often are out of synch with why the program was established, and how it was set up to operate.  The heavy handed way appointees tend to go about implementing them demonstrates the lack of people skills and leadership abilities necessary to effectively coordinate large numbers of people across multiple departments.  Many a civil servant has been idled as a result. 

]]>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:44:06 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/the-two-dimensional-solyndra-specialThe Solyndra bankruptcy shows how one and two-dimensional leadership decisions miss the mark for the Obama administration, the company and the nation.  One-Dimensional leadership is all about “me” not the mission.  Two-dimensional leadership sets up “us vs. them” dynamics, and three-dimensional leadership focuses on “we,” as in “we the people.”  

The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context (MRC) focuses leaders on behavioral and character traits necessary to achieve the three essentials that contribute to organizational success.  Three-dimensional leaders consistently focus on the mission and get people at all levels of the organization to do likewise. Properly focused leaders negotiate the context appropriately to deploy resources and continually align them so employees can succeed at their jobs. Thus their organizations have a high potential to succeed. 

The federal government should see the big picture context of “we the people.”  By investing in a private enterprise, everyone concerned looses sight of the mission.  Solyndra should have focused on the mission of designing a business whose products and pricing would appeal to customers.  Instead it focused on lobbying the government for money.  The government should not be creating “us vs. them” situations by pitting one private company against the others. The mission of government is to do what is in the best interest of “we, the people.”  It should not be betting on winers and losers in the marketplace.   

When governments and private companies put their individual interests, above our collective interest, it’s “we the people” who lose. The Obama administration’s Solyndra scandal is a self-centered solicitous affair that is two-dimensional at best. Since the company head was a fund raiser for Obama, however, it appears the funding was a quid pro quo that benefitted them at the expense of US.   

]]>Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:50:15 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/dr-martin-luther-king-synthesized-mission-vision-and-values-into-a-cohesive-strategic-planDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied the synthesis of mission, vision, and values into a strategic plan.  Here is an excerpt from chapter two of The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context: 

• Dr. King’s mission was equality. 
• His vision was expressed beautifully in his “I Have a Dream” speech.  
• And his values were nonviolence. 

A strategic plan says, “We will use these resources to accomplish this mission that will get us to our vision as we pursue it with these values.”  

As a leader, Dr. King successfully rallied people to the mission of equality. The values of nonviolence fueled the operational engine that propelled the people of his organization to persevere by focusing on achieving the vision of nonviolent revolution.  Once volunteers rallied to the cause, Dr. King focused them on the organization’s values—so much so that his marchers faced violent and murderous opposition in the most hostile environments, yet they persevered in carrying out the organization’s mission with the values of nonviolence.   

Dr. King embodied three-dimensional leadership.  He keenly understood the mission, and passionately articulated a vision to achieve it. King stated his mission and vision so clearly that it was easy for people to follow him, to see what he was talking about, and to believe that if he could do it, they also could.  He organized people and resources around a set of values that they consistently lived and applied.  King helped his followers negotiate the hostile context as a team that often locked arms together and sang “We Shall Overcome!”  The America we live in today is in large part the fruition of the vision—the Dream, which was the focus of Dr. King’s life. 

Are you following Dr. King’s example and embodying the mission, vision, and values of your organization?


]]>Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:52:09 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/one-dimensional-leaders-call-the-american-flag-incendiary-on-cinco-de-mayoAmerica is organized around the our Constitution’s value system that empowers us to be “one nation under God.” The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context advocates achieving goals by rallying people to the mission that matters most. 3-D Leaders never loose sight of the main thing, cause, or reason why the organization exists.  

On May 5, 2010, Morgan Hill, California’s Live Oak High School Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez, lost sight of the American mission, when he sent five students home for wearing clothing displaying the American flag on Cinco de Mayo, stating the garments were “incendiary.”  One-gimensional leaders ignore the main mission to pursue agendas that undermine it. Mr. Rodriguez meeds to understand that everyday in the USA is American Flag Day! 

As an American, I welcome to this nation anyone who wants to participate in the value system that has made us a healthy, stable and prosperous society. That value system is rooted in the Bible’s Ten Commandments, and “Turn the other cheek.”  Love your neighbor as you love yourself, and “Do not others as you want others to do unto you.”

The school superintendent intervened and said. “No one will be punished for wearing patriotic clothing.” A federal judge, however, just ruled the students violated the Mexican students constitutional rights.  People who advocate celebrating alternative heritages by denigrating America’s needlessly are setting up two-dimensional “us vs. them” dynamics. American values enable one to exercise free speech to support almost any cause, but only shall be able to do so as long as our Constitutional values remain the main thing. Manipulating diversity issues to bash the symbols of America’s values only serve one-dimensional, “It's all about me” agendas, and not the mission of America as “We the people, one nation under God.” 

]]>Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:22:54 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/one-two-dimensional-government-leaders-undermine-we-the-peopleThe Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context gives us a scalable reference for understanding good and poor leadership.  Here’s how the template or paradigm applies to rating and assessing leaders in government.  

When government in America operates from a three-dimensional perspective: it sees its mission is to facilitate a set of circumstances that make it favorable for our nation’s chief resource, which is “We the People,” to use our talents, gifts and abilities to innovate goods and services that others find useful and beneficial and are willing to pay us a profitable price to obtain and enjoy.  The context that good government must keep in focus is the U.S. Constitution, which is based upon Biblical values.

A three-dimensional government leader keeps a long term focus on this mission, resources and context, or these MRC’s.  When government leaders operate from a two-dimensional perspective they only get a bearing on just one or two of these MRC concepts. Worse yet, one-dimensional government leaders think that everything that takes place within the American economy has to include them, their “input and/or control. One-dimensional leadership is all about “me” – not the mission of enabling “we the people.”  

One and Two-Dimensional leaders needlessly set up “us vs. them” dynamics. They appeal for votes by separating us into individual groups of hyphenated-Americans, divided by race, ethnicity, income and behavioral preferences.  They promise us “African-Americans” rights we already have  as Americans, and which undermine “we the people” seeing ourselves as “one nation under God.”  For instance, I do not need a special law saying you can’t hit me because I am black, because we already have laws that say you can’t assault me.  

Responsible and astute government leaders and citizens keep the big picture MRC’s in focus to promote the concept that "we the people" are one nation under God.

]]>Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:46:49 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/biblenotstatereligionA cultural war is being waged in America against the Bible using a misinterpretation of the concept of “Separation of Church and State.”  The misinterpretation lies in the fact that the Bible is not a church or a religion.  The Bible is a historical record of God reaching out to us to give us “peace on earth and good will to men,” and other benefits.  The Old Testament records the history of God reaching out through Abraham, and promising to bless the world through his lineage.  The Bible informs us that this was accomplished through the birth of Christ, through whom we receive forgiveness for our sins by his substitutionary death on the cross.  The New Testament records the ministry of Jesus Christ, his death, burial and resurrection, and the early history of how He and God reach out to the world through the earliest Christian disciples and churches. 

Religions and their “churches,” mosques, temples etc...are institutions organized around expressing worship based upon the interpretation of historical writings, like the Bible. The phrase “separation of church and state” is being misused to ban the Bible. "Separation of church and state" is common usage for the phrase "wall of separation between the church and the state" which Thomas Jefferson originally penned in a letter to the Baptist Association at Danbury, Connecticut on January 1, 1802. His purpose was to assure them that the American Constitution establishes a wall to protect them from the government favoring one religion or Christian sect or denomination over another, to their detriment.  Founding Father’s like Jefferson and Madison intended to keep the state from manipulating religion for political purposes.  It was not designed to keep Biblical values from influencing matters of the state and public life.  

]]>Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:03:49 GMThttp://www.threedimensionalleader.com/3-d-leadership-to-renew-america-blog/disparaging-the-founding-fathers-to-discredit-their-work-in-the-us-constitutionMany journalists, educators and social scientists have thrown out objectively reporting information to espouse opinions that support the writers’ views. They are particularly invested in denigrating America’s Founding Fathers.  

Most material passed off as educational about the “scandalous” lives of America’s Founding Fathers is built on innuendo and conjecture from vague and dubious sources, and is the shoddy wishful thinking and prevarication on behalf of those, who desire to recast the Founding Fathers after their own perverted ideals.  Such is the case with One Nation Under Sex, by pornographer, Larry Flint. But don’t waste your money on it; read the reviews on Amazon.  

America’s Founding Fathers were not perfect, but they did know right from wrong. They established a government system based upon the the Ten Commandments as the code of ethics, under which people should self-govern to participate in a  Constitutional Republic where everyone from the president, government and law enforcement officials, to corporate executives and working class people, to teenagers and youths are expected to obey the same laws.  

If indeed the Founding Fathers were as bad as today’s pundits say they were, then they had enough decency not to parade in public what they knew are sins. This is why their alleged behaviors (most of which did not take place) is said to have been so well hidden. If these made up stories (like those about Shakespeare’s homosexuality) were true, the fact that the Founding Fathers hid them is an acknowledgment that they knew they were wrong. Just as most people today still consider them wrong and know we should not be doing them.  

People want to disparage the Founding Fathers so they can discourage people from listening to what they really had to say, especially what they clearly stated in the U.S. Constitution.  


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