How to Rule the World

"The one who tells the stories rules the world" is the epigraph of Gospel of Wealth or Poverty? How Do Bible Verses about Jesus, Wealth, Poverty, and Heaven Affect Your Income?

The Hopi quote is not only a signpost pointing out the theme of Gospel of Wealth or Poverty?, it also defines the crux of the problem. It identifies the power of stories to rule the world. Stories rule the world because they teach us who we are and how we are to live. Most significantly, the Hopi quote identifies the one who tells the stories as the one with power to rule our lives.

About Stories in Gospel of Wealth or Poverty? 

Two Types of Stories

Stories do rule the world. Broadly speaking, there are two types of stories — stories that constrain you and stories that liberate you.

Constraining stories teach you to shrink and shrivel, to worry about breaking rules, to learn your place, and you keep you obedient. They are morality tales about the dangers of stepping out of line. 

In contrast, liberating stories teach you to grow, to risk. to dare, to go beyond your current limits. They are heroic stories that plant visions of possibilities that appeal to the best within us (Gospel of Wealth or Poverty, page 12).

The recurring and unifying theme of another of my books also concerns the power of stories. It's not about the Bible but about psychotherapeutic beliefs about what is wrong with you. 

About Stories in How to Get Out of the True Self Trap

The power to change your life story beings with the stories you tell yourself that rule your life. Wherever those stories came from and whoever told them to you first, they rule your life because you made these stories your own. You have become your own storyteller and the stories you tell yourself rule your life.

What kind of stories are you telling yourself? This is the real question. Are the stories that empower you to fulfill your dreams and accomplish your goals or are they stories that keep you stuck and struggling? (True Self Trap, page 12).

My book, How to Get Out of The True Self Trap: The Life-Changing Secret of Heroic Stories, challenges the assumptions of self-help work that treats you as a problem to be solved. This tendency is deeply rooted in religious and psychotherapeutic beliefs about fixing what is wrong with you. In contrast, heroic stories are about ordinary people doing extraordinary actions in response to some outer challenge. In the process, they discover that they are capable of far more than they imagined.

Available on Amazon in either Kindle or paperback versions. Click Buy Now From Amazon to get your copy now.

Does the Bible Really Say That? Series focuses on the impact of Bible translations on what people believe “the Bible says” on any topic.

Gospel of Wealth or Poverty?: How do Bible Verses about Jesus, Wealth, Poverty, and Heaven Affect Your Income? connects your financial status and your biblical beliefs. The question mark in the title challenges either/or choices between wealth or poverty based on Bible verses.

Wealth and poverty are significant themes in the Bible. If you focus on isolated Bible verses, you can claim that God wants you to be poor. You can also claim that God wants to you to be rich. But neither claim can be justified if you go beyond the verses and read whole stories set in their original social, economic, political, and religious contexts.

Available on Amazon in either Kindle or paperback versions. Click Buy Now From Amazon to get your copy right away!