Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't, Gripe About Those Who Do.
Basic to success in life are the never-ending criticisms from those who resent the productivity of others.
I wrote an article for students of the Ron Paul Curriculum. It dealt with success in life. Maybe you saw it: //www.garynorth.com/public/13942.cfm.
I also sent it to about 90,000 subscribers to my Tea Party Economist newsletter. LewRockwell.com also ran it.
That was on Saturday. On Sunday, a man devoted his day of rest to acting on behalf of God to bring me under verbal judgment.
He gave me a piece of his mind, in no uncertain terms. In Christian love, of course. In the name of Jesus, of course.
No one else sent me a critical letter.
So, I will now offer another rule of success:
Ignore critics who try to beat something of yours with nothing of theirs. They can't beat something with nothing.
Here is what I am talking about.
22nd June 2015Dear Dr North,
I read with interest your article " Rules of Success to Adopt by Age 13". It would be more accurate to say that I started reading with interest but by the time I came to the words, "Take my advice", my interest had dwindled and my attitude became one of consternation. The problem was that I could not find any good reason to take your advice in the paragraph leading up to this statement, and yet it was clear to me that the paragraph was designed to give such reasons. Here is how it went for me:-
Here is why you should take me seriously. I was born in 1942. I have seen what works and what doesn't.
Lots of people were born in 1942 or earlier. My father was born in 1923 and celebrated his birthday last week. He is a lot older than you and he has all sorts of ideas on what works and what does not based on his considerable experience. His conclusions are different to yours. Some of his conclusions I accept and some I reject as plain wrong. So this kind of statement is not a good reason for taking any notice of your ideas over and above his or anyone else's. Besides, 1942 is not very long ago in terms of having time to develop conclusions about what works in life.
I have a PhD.
Lots of people have PhDs and other such qualifications. I never thought my university degrees gave me the ability to instruct others on how to be successful. You have done some study in a narrow academic field and passed some exams, which may give you a platform for instructing others in that same field, but I do not see how that translates into a basis for teaching about success.
I am rich by most Americans' standards. I have never been divorced. I am in good health.... I am content with my life....I own everything I want.
Lots of people can say the same things. How does this enable them to be authoritative when explaining the rules of success?
At this point I realised that there was something uncomfortably familiar about what I had just read. I often rail against "success" speakers who tour the world explaining how they became wealthy through following certain rules and doing certain things. Their message is, "Copy me and you too will be wealthy and happy". What they never seem to understand is that you may well copy them and find yourself poor and unhappy. Some of them have defied conventional investment wisdom, had some "lucky" breaks and now they think they are wise men! Following a set of rules does not necessarily work. Why is that? We Christians know the answer. "The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up." The "success" speakers seem to believe that there are impersonal forces out there that they have somehow harnessed to their advantage. Both you and I know that this is a serious error of judgment.
Then I came to your rules for success. These have some similarities with some of the "success" speaker rules, some are similar to my father's rules but they appear to be just another collection of rules. I am old enough to get on the bandwagon and write my own set of rules, but I do not. The simple reason is that we already have the Book of Proverbs and other Bible passages of practical instruction to tell us what success is and how to achieve it. I can see parallels between many of your rules and the Book of Proverbs, but the Book of Proverbs has a context, and that context is the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom. Your rules do not have a stated Christian context. The reader may suspect that there is something vaguely Christian about you, but nothing definite.
This leads to a major weakness in your article is that you have not defined success, and of course I am looking for some kind allusion to a Christian idea of success.. The reader may infer from your statements that success involves money, marital happiness and contentment but it is not clear what constitutes success in your view. Were the apostles successful? Was John Calvin successful? They certainly neglected to follow some of your rules. In addition they did not end up with one of your markers of success, which is having plenty of money. Was Joshua successful? He was certainly given the rules of success: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success."
I am not saying that your rules are of no account. Some of them are an interesting repackaging of Solomon's proverbs and other biblical teaching. For example, "Sex is for married couples. No exceptions" and "Honesty is the best policy".
Others are not so good.. You say that tithing to church is good, but how can tithing to charities be of benefit if you have no involvement with church? You seem to be saying that giving to church is good in and of itself, but what if you have a grudging attitude? What if you attend church and tithe because you think it will be good for your business success? (I know of such a person. He was eventually converted and repented). You seem to be saying that if you have no involvement with church but give to charity as a substitute for giving to God that this will lead to success. Surely not! The reason I am finding problems with your article is that I am trying to analyse it from a Christian perspective and find it lacking as an expression of biblical truth. I know from your other writings that you have made efforts to ground practical instruction in biblical foundations. What happened this time?
I warn my children about the dangers of listening to old people, particularly old Christians, who think that their experiences are the basis for adding wise statements to those of the Bible. There is not only the arrogance of youth but also the arrogance of old age. I assure them that they can be wiser than their instructors if they study the Bible carefully and apply some analytical skills to what they are hearing and separate the wheat from the chaff. Your article has been useful in that I have given to them and asked them to sort out what is wrong with it and what is right and report back to me.
How much better it would be if you would write an article defining success in Christian terms and then use your own experiences to illustrate the wisdom of following God's rules.
Yours faithfully,
Richard B.
Auckland
New Zealand
He did not mention my audience: teenagers who use the Ron Paul Curriculum.
These rules of success work. That was my point. Kids need motivation to change their habits. He asks: "Was John Calvin successful?" Yes, he was. He was not rich. But I would not gain readers with this headline: Rules of Success That Work Best for Calvinists. Also, They May Make You Poor.
What has my critic done to motivate the same audience with his program of success? Nothing. He did not provide a link to anything he has done. There is a reason for this.
His criticism is not that my rules make people rich, enabling people to give their wealth away intelligently. He promotes a view of success that begins and ends in poverty, and does so self-consciously. He says this as a man possessing statistically enormous wealth, as everyone who has access to the Internet in an English-speaking country possesses. He does not bother to compare his wealth with that of a Chinese or Indian farmer. Why does he possess such wealth? Because he lives in a capitalist nation whose people have followed many of these rules of success, unlike those living in rural Asian villages. This never occurs to him. He takes his historically unprecedented wealth for granted. Most Westerners do. He implies: "I'm spiritually holy because I am not rich." In fact, he is merely hypocritical. He has no understanding of why we in the West are so incredibly rich by historical standards.Calvinism once played an important role. It no longer does, especially in Calvinist circles, which are tiny. He needs to see my Mises Institute video on this. Students taking my economics course for the Ron Paul Curriculum have seen it.
He said: "The reader may suspect that there is something vaguely Christian about you, but nothing definite." One way that the reader might suspect this was the lead article for Tea Party Economist and the fourth article on this site: "Christian Economics in One Lesson, Chapter 13." For those who saw the article on Lew Rockwell.com, this also might have been a tip-off:
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit //www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 31-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
What are other gripes?
1. I did not provide anything on success from a biblical standpoint.
I have written a book on the biblical basis of success. It is free. It is here. I wrote it in 2008.
2. I did not talk about tithing and the church.
I have written two books on tithing. One is Tithing and the Church. It is free. It is here. The other The Covenantal Tithe. It is free. It is here. I debated three other Protestant theologians on this. The book is here. It is not free.
3. I did not quote the book of Proverbs.
I have written a commentary on Proverbs. It is free. It is here.
He did not ask me if I had written anything like this. Instead, he shot from the hip. As I like to say, "When you shoot from the hip, you risk blowing off an important appendage."
If I were sensitive to criticism, I would have stopped writing 50 years ago. If you attempt anything of significance, you will be told it can't be done. If you achieve it, you will then be told that you shouldn't have done it. If you are a Christian, you will be told by a Christian that Jesus did not want you to do it. Jesus wanted you to do it differently.
You will not be given specifics, for that would require the critic to reveal what he understands of your supposedly failed project. He knows in his heart that you missed the mark. He knows that you should have done it differently -- the way he would have done it, had he done it.
Be aware of Jerks for Jesus. It is a large organization, and its members love to use email. I have written about this here.
This is basic to success. Prepare for it mentally.