How to Win Friends and Influence People

(The Picture is of The Liars' Club)

That's the title of an old book by Dale Carnegie.


I suppose that I should spend more time learning about such things.


One of the things I'm not good at is dealing with the politics of church life.

"What!? Politics in church?" I can hear your incredulity.

Yep. In church.

You have to learn to say the right things to the right people and to avoid saying the wrong things to the wrong people.

And vice versa, I think.

In His sermon on the mount, Jesus said, "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." (Matthew 5:37)

When I first read that, it seemed like a sort of trite redundancy.

Then it began to seep in what it means.

It means tell the truth at all times.

In fact, it means to restrict yourself to truisms.

That's where I get into trouble.

I am much too direct to be an effective "church politician."

While I usually don't go so far as to say, "Why hello, Mrs. Hampton. Welcome to our church. I must say you're not nearly as fat as everyone has been saying you are."

But I've come close.

This propensity spills over into my everyday life, especially my politics.

When I hear a politician tell a flat out lie, I don't try to smooth it over with a, "He parsed the other guy's words and spun them to mean something the other guy didn't mean."

I just say, "He lied!"

If he lied, that makes him a liar.

Frankly, I don't trust liars, because if they lie about one thing, who knows what else they might lie about?

It's not OK, for instance, to lie about sex before a grand jury.

"It's only about sex," means that now I need a list of things about which things it is OK to lie about and which things it is not OK to lie about.

Yet I know that there are many times when I am more direct than the situation demands.

Often I have trouble knowing when the situation demands straightforwardness and when it doesn't.

God grant to me the spiritual wisdom to know when to soften my words and when the circumstances really require a more forceful response.