Forge Your Own Path

For whatever you think, believe and do in life, you must forge your own path.

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”.

Philippians 2:12

So many men in the church have grown up their whole lives simply accepting whatever dogma was given to them by their parents. They never question a single drip of the doctrine that is passed down from generation to generation. Even if what they are being told is right, this mental laziness is wrong. 

It is of extreme importance for every young man to forge his own path and uncover what it is he truly believes.

Every man has the responsibility of examining everything he knows and seeing if it is really true. As mentioned in an earlier section, one of the finest examples of the refusal to forge one’s own path is the Baptist mantra, “Born a Baptist, Live as a Baptist, Die as a baptist”. The emphasis here, therefore, is not on discovering what the truth is, but rather is focused on maintaining a personal label that one has invested in for years. That mentally shows that many men are not interested in having a logical “answer for the reason for the hope within them” (1 Peter 3:15), but instead are interested in living a life based on emotions. This mantra says, “Even if I am shown viewpoints that oppose my own and that may actually have merit, I will not give up my man-made, denominational name for the sake of truth”. 

The masculine man is one who does not blindly accept what he has been told his entire life.

Instead he scrutinizes everything that he is told just like the Noble Bereans (Acts 17:11). He first examines the validity of the Creationist arguments and compares them to the evolutionist arguments. He then compares Bible-based Christianity to all other religions to see which is true based on fact. Finally, he compares what is taught in the Bible to what is taught in the various “flavors” of Christianity and chooses the one he can prove best fits what the Bible has to say. This is what it means to forge your own path. A man must have his own personal, intrinsic reasons for believing and behaving in specified ways. 

The masculine man rejects the typical mental laziness of so many in the religious world and instead he “works out his own salvation”. You must ensure that you are that man and that you are never falling into the trap of mental complacency.

Mantra

I have a reason for everything I believe.

Application

It is of great importance that you deconstruct everything you believe, breaking it down to the most fundamental levels in order to determine why you believe it. You need to be able to explain your own position with good reasoning rather than with emotionalism or traditionalism. This starts by answering the most fundamental questions of reality:

1. Why do you believe in a God?Explain why do you believe in the God of the Bible?
2. Why are you a Christian instead of a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist etc.?
3. Why are you a specific “Type” of Christian (Church of Christ/Baptist/Methodist/Catholic etc.)? Can you defend your position as a Christian with logic?

Once you answer these big-picture questions, you can begin to answer all the smaller questions:

1. Why did God command this behavior?
2. For what cause did God instruct His people to take these specific military actions?
3. Why does God operate in the ways that He does throughout the Bible? (Etc.)

For every question you have in your own mind, you need a clear answer. If you don’t think you will know how to answer a question someone might ask you, then you need to do some deep thinking and find a good answer. It is not enough to simply do something because you have always been taught to do it. You need your own reasons. 

A masculine man forges his own path, character and philosophies from the foundation of logical thinking.

He is able to answer questions rationally, not emotionally. The masculine man is stoic and is concerned with the answer to the question “What is truth?”. He is not concerned with the answer to the question “Who is right?”

You have a responsibility to be this rational, masculine man. It is imperative that you have your own reasons for everything you do and you must never take anything at face value. A man is never excused from the responsibility of using his own rational mind to discover what is truth and, more importantly, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling”.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.