The Richly or Poorly Show
Show Transcript
shdawson-20260127.mp3
Episode 01/27/2026
01/27/2026
Hello! Welcome to The Richly or Poorly Show!
My name is Dr. Stephen Dawson, and I am your show host.
Thank you for joining me.
Please visit shdawson DOT COM SLASH podcast and click on the LINK offer to learn about The Richly or Poorly Show! Here you can familiarize yourself with the show.
Please listen to, follow, and like the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. And please remember to leave the show a nice review.
Please share the show with your friends. Send them the link to my podcast web page, and offer to help them set up their device to subscribe to the show.
Thank you to the six streaming services that syndicate The Richly or Poorly Show!
Finally, please continue to email your questions and comments about the show to service AT shdawson DOT COM.
The show's motto is unmistakable: RICHLY IS GOODLY!
Please consider how you define the term good as we journey through life together in your pursuit of defining the term richly in your life.
The plan for my presentations to you has been to establish a foundation of shared understanding between you, the listener, and me. We are now at a point where the foundation has been established after today's episode. We will be able to assemble the many pieces we have covered to build an even stronger understanding for you to be able to live your life more richly by you being able use all we have covered in our time together easier than you imagined when you first started listening to The Richly or Poorly Show!
Last week, I presented the term forgive and said I would address it today. Today, we will consider the term forgive based on the material presented last week and consider how you can prosper from forgiveness.
I presented arrogance, humility, and forgiveness last week. I will not repeat their explanations today. I will present the journey I took to embrace forgiveness and become free of arrogance by using humility to connect arrogance and forgiveness by way of healthy barriers.
Understanding what I present today is based on understanding what I presented last week. I urge you to either listen to or refresh your understanding of the episode last week before listening to this episode so you will gain the maximum understanding benefit.
I do not have the words to explain how upset I was in 1988 when all things went bad and after being removed from my position in the global organization. I had justifiable anger, no doubt. I had to face the fact that I was somehow arrogant in my anger. I realized my arrogance was based on a feeling of ownership. The ownership feeling was constructed by my being in my job. I concluded the job was a two-part relationship between employer and employee. Yes, that may seem simple to understand now, but service work is not manufacturing work. The most distinct part of service work is the personalized nature of the delivery aspect of service work. It is the exact opposite of manufacturing work, as manufacturing work is all process-based to have the exact same result in each output.
My existence in anger held the undeniable understanding that I would end up in violence unless I got out of anger. I knew I did not want to be in violence. The way I saw for me to get out of anger was to get to forgiveness. I knew that I knew nothing about forgiveness. So, I began to study forgiveness.
I spent several years wasting my time with what I could not prove about forgiveness. Things like unconfirmed stories, parts of stories, and attributes of those who say they had reached forgiveness in their life. Then, after about 20 years, I learned about a guy who went through provable forgiveness. He is not the only guy I know who has gone through provable forgiveness. It is the story that I can best relate to in how forgiveness works.
The guy's name is Ishmael. Wow, he got a bad deal. His father and a woman other than his mother had another child when he was 15. Ishmael did nothing wrong from what I see of his life, but he was sent into the desert at 15 years of age with some food and water in what appeared to be a sure death. His mother went with him. He was sent into the desert by his father, all because of a series of poor choices by his father.
The piece that gained my attention is why Ishmael was sent into the desert. He was sent there as the only way possible by his father to resolve the many poor choices of his father, and for Ishmael and his mother to live. It was difficult for me to understand how all this was good until I remembered how the global organization did the same thing to my coworkers and me. The global organization was responsible for many poor choices, choices that caused many forms of harm to many people. The global organization had to separate itself from its poor choices. They had to send us into a place with no money, no chance of continued work, and no ability to explain their actions, so they could survive.
The global organization held the position that they must survive for the benefit of many people, not just the four of us who were treated wrongly by them. I have agreed since 1988 that the global organization must survive for the benefit of many people. Still, being sent away as we were was horrible. The similarities between my walk in life and the life of Ishmael started to become clearer to me.
So, back to Ishmael. The day comes when his father dies from old age. I read that Ishmael and his 15-year-younger brother buried their father. So, get this. Dad dies, Ishmael shows up, and tells his younger brother, "I have come to help bury father." I have to believe the younger brother said something along the line of, "Where 'ya been?" I also have to believe the younger brother was in shock when Ishmael arrived and stood before him.
The story I read does not say they argued. It says they performed the burial of their father as was the custom of their father. Imagine that. Sent off into the desert to die, and Ishmael got over it to the point of coming back to honor his father without giving his younger brother a hard time about it. I doubt I would have been able to do what Ishmael did, but I cannot say for certain how I would have behaved.
The story I read about Ishmael concluded by stating that the descendants of Ishmael settled in the area not too far from the younger brother, and that they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them. So, Ishmael went through the forgiveness process, but not his descendents.
OK, here is where the rubber meets the road for me.
The forgiveness process does not happen overnight. It takes some time to occur. That time is when the offended realizes there is nothing good about being angry, as it will lead them to violence.
Furthermore, I am only me. I cannot control the lives of anyone else, including my loved ones. So, the forgiveness thing is only about one person: the offended.
Finally, all of the talk about forgiveness is absolutely, positively, 100% worthless without action to back up the assertion that forgiveness occurred. Ishmael going in peace to help his brother bury their father in the custom of their father is a huge piece of supporting evidence that forgiveness did, indeed, occur for Ishmael.
So, Ishmael accomplished forgiveness. I am not saying he was a perfect person. I am not saying he did it alone, but he arrived at the place of forgiveness.
How about you? Could you do what Ishmael did? If not, then why not?
If you are angry about being offended, then you went through arrogance, did you not? If you are angry as a result of your arrogance, then you are on your way to violence, are you not?
I have to believe Ishmael taught his dependents that there is no value in being violent as an outcome of their anger-based arrogance. Regardless, the story I read stated clearly that they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them. That action must have hurt Ishmael terribly.
So, how do I know the story is real? It is real because all of world history affirms the story. I mean, all of world history. The study of world history beginning with Ishmael is out of scope for my presentations to you. I leave it to you to read the story of Ishmael for yourself and see how world history matches the story. What you will find in your study is what I said last week. The Truth has many aspects, but The Truth exists as a whole. It is a matter of how we view The Truth.
You will also find that Ishmael coming to help bury his father, as he did, is further proof of what I said last week: Humility is the way to avoid the harm of arrogance.
I arrived at a point in 2015 of forgiving the global organization that harmed me in 1988. That is 27 years later. The nice conversations I had with my coworkers from those days, another eight years later, affirmed to me that I was in the place of forgiveness.
So, here is the material for you to read when you are ready to face The Truth that forgiveness is better than either arrogance, anger, or violence.
Visit the web site bible gateway DOT COM
Go to the Book of Genesis
Read Chapters 16 and 17:
Explain how things started for Ishmael.
13 years of living with complaints from family members.
Then, read Chapter 21:
About 15 years of age.
All goes bad for Ishmael.
Sent off into the desert with his mother by his father.
Water appeared miraculously.
They both lived.
They lived the rest of their lives in the desert.
Finally, read Chapter 25:
The return of Ishmael and his lineage.
"9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite"
"18 His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt, as you go toward Ashur. And they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them."
It should take you no more than 10 minutes to read these four chapters.
You decide on your own effort if your worldview can handle what you read in this story. I hope you find the story of Ishmael to be as helpful to you as it was for me. I also hope you can take a look at world history to see how the life of Ishmael is seen today apart from his descendants.
Well, that's it for today.
RICHLY IS GOODLY!
Please consider all you have heard from me today.
I hope you are excited about how you can apply the material I present to you on the show to your life, so you can live your life more richly than you have ever known!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Richly or Poorly Show!
I have enjoyed presenting to you today.
Until the next episode, I hope you will be safe and join me next week.
Until then.
© 2026 SH Dawson. All rights reserved.