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NEVER ON THE SALE RACK #2

ANCIENT WISDOM FROM DALE CARNEGIE

There’s an old, old book here in our library at the Voice of Prophecy that is literally being held together by some Scotch tape.  I mean, this book is tattered and torn and falling apart.  I know for a fact that it’s made trips out to the Orient and back a couple of times along with our writer/producer, and he “borrowed” it out of his dad’s library back when he was 17 years old.

It’s entitled How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I mention that famous title right here partly because its author — Dale Carnegie, of course — was born 112 years ago this Friday, November 24, clear back in the year 1888.  Well, that’s kind of interesting, but what about this old, beat-up book?  Actually, you can get brand new copies from Amazon.com, but this great bestseller was originally printed many, many years ago.  More than five million copies have been sold, and I’m told it’s been translated into 29 languages and read all around the world.

But now here’s something that we have to concede.  Not only is this book really old in appearance — you can hardly pick it up without pages falling down on the floor — but it’s old as you read it.  It’s filled with delightful, clever, informative stories, but they all date back many decades.  Anecdotes about Herbert Hoover, and a salesman trying to reach his quota selling Model T’s.  The names are old, the politics is old, even the prices are old.  Men’s suits for $25; workers who make the fabulous salary of $75 a week.  Etc.  All through this book, the ancient-ness of the illustrations just creaks in your face.  There’s not a satellite dish or a laptop computer to be found anywhere; I’m not even sure if typewriters were invented yet back in Dale Carnegie’s “olden days.”

As we continue to celebrate National Bible Week here on the radio, you might well be having a similar reaction to this other ancient book that has the two words stamped on it: HOLY BIBLE.  Sure, it’s been a bestseller.  It’s probably sold five BILLION copies, not just five million.  And it’s been translated into just about every language and dialect on Planet Earth.  But isn’t it obsolete?  The stories are so old!  The anecdotes are about fishing and threshing grain out in a field, about trying to light a fire by hitting two rocks against each other.  There’s nothing but Galilean dust and Palestinian parables and long lists from an old book called Leviticus, whatever in the world that means.

For example, listen to this bit of King James advice from one book earlier, Exodus.  Chapter 21:

“If men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keepeth his bed: If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.”

And the average reader today, trying to slog through something like that, says to himself: “What is this anyway?  I don’t know what they’re talking about!”  And we decide that this old Book called the Bible is just plain TOO old.  It’s not relevant.  It’s a waste of time to read it.  All through Leviticus are these ancient, obsolete laws about washing yourself, and staying outside the camp for seven days if you get this or that disease or have a runny nose.  And so, even if it is the Word of God, even if other Christians think it’s a bestseller, we set it to the side and determine to read something a little more up-to-date.

Well, do you know something?  I’ve been tempted with that myself.  But today I’d like to encourage you with two interesting truths.  First of all, back to that bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, written by our birthday honoree, the late Dale Carnegie.  True, it’s an old book.  True, the illustrations are written to people who rode on streetcars and had to actually use rotary dials to telephone their friends.  But I’ll tell you something: this is still a powerful, helpful book that is filled with marvelous insight on how to make friends.  How to win people over to your side.  How to make your world a better place.  We’ve actually used some of these old Carnegie stories on this very broadcast, because they’re right on in what they’re trying to teach us.  And you know, the wise man or woman is able to take a dog-eared old book like this one, move past the fact that it’s filled with stories from the Teddy Roosevelt administration and the Kaiser of Germany . . . and find help — real help, practical counsel, lifechanging principles — in those yellowed pages.

Here’s a marvelous principle found on page 84: “Become genuinely interested in other people.”  And Carnegie quotes an old, old story about a guy trying to sell some coal way back in the 30s.  He quotes from a Roman poet/philosopher named Publilius Syrus, dating back to before Christ, who says this: “We are interested in others when they are interested in us.”  Now, that’s old stuff!  It’s ancient.  But it’s still interesting and it’s still true.

Let me take you back to that almost amusingly ancient verse from the book of Exodus, that sounds like we’re reading it off a Dead Sea scroll.  Listen to it again, as freshened up in the Clear Word paraphrase written by Dr. Jack Blanco, a great contemporary Christian:

“If an argument develops into a fight and one man hits another man with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die, but is laid up in bed, and eventually gets up and walks with a cane, the one who hit him is not to be put to death.  He is to pay the injured man for his lost time and take care of him until he gets well.”

Does that make sense?  Now admittedly, you and I aren’t living in a Children-of-Israel commune, with endless rows of tents, which is the culture for which this was written.  But here the Bible is teaching a principle which works pretty well: if someone beats up someone else, he should pay the price for it.  And do you know what politicians of all parties are talking about right now, today, in Washington, D.C.?  Victims’ rights.  Community service.  Criminals making restitution.  Judicial reform and sensible prison sentencing so that some types of inmates can earn the money to pay back those they’ve wronged.

True, we do get a picture of all those tents and nomadic flavor in these Bible verses, especially in the King James rendering, but right there amid the thee’s and thou’s is some helpful truth that is actually rather insightful, and — if you get right down to it — kind of interesting, even.

I mentioned Dr. John Stott yesterday, who is one of the current leading evangelicals these days.  He writes about the challenge of reading this old, ancient Greek-and-Hebrew Book and finding truth for our satellite-dish, web-surfing, MTV world.  He explains an interesting mind process which he describes for us as cultural transposition.  Notice:

“The procedure . . . is to identify the essential revelation in the text (what God is saying here), to separate this from the cultural form in which He chose to give it, and then to re-clothe it in appropriate modern cultural terms.”

In other words, to strip away the tents and the fishing poles and the wherefore saidst thou’s, and pull these truths into modern times.  And he then tells a rather amusing story from his own Anglican background and how sometimes Christians, especially missionaries, don’t do this as well as they should.  Here’s the story:

“I remember the shock I felt on my first visit to West Africa,” he writes in his book, “The Contemporary Christian.”  “I saw Gothic spires rising incongruously above the coconut palms, and African bishops sweating profusely in the tropical heat, because they were wearing medieval European ecclesiastical robes.  I heard western hymn tunes being sung to the accompaniment of western instruments, and African tongues attempting to get around Jacobean and even Elizabethan English!  It is, of course, easy to criticize, and, if we had been in the position of the first missionaries, we would probably have made the same mistake.  Nevertheless, the imposition of western cultural forms was a serious blunder.  What is needed instead is what Stanley Jones in India called the ‘naturalization’ of the gospel, which means its transposition into indigenous cultural forms.”

Well, friend, that’s a big mouthful, and there’s more there than just Bible.  But I think we find right here this Dale Carnegie-type principle, where we take something old, appreciate the flavor of its age, recognize it as a true classic, but then bring it into today.  To the extent that believers through the centuries have done that, this is why we can celebrate National Bible Week.  This is why the Word of God, as we said in our title, is “never on the sale rack.”

Let me encourage you today, and all week, and always, really, to look for the new in this wonderful old Book.  In the Gospels and in Deuteronomy.  In what Paul writes and in what Hosea has to say.  True, its age wrinkles show through a good share of the time, with book names like Lamentations and authors with names like Jeremiah.  But how interesting to read something from that very book and that very author which goes like this:

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.”  And then that gray-haired old prophet, who probably wrote with the tip of a feather and wore sandals on his feet, adds this thought for Tuesday, November 21, 2000: “They are NEW every morning, [Lord]; great is Your faithfulness.”

Yes, friend, the Lord’s faithfulness and compassion are new every morning.  And so is His sure Word.