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Men are Worthless – So Become Valuable

It is of critical importance for a man to distinguish himself as valuable. Not just for the sake of his income, but for the sake of his sanity. The need to contribute something to the group is built into every man. A man who does not live out this purpose finds himself listless and empty. Whether the group you contribute to is your immediate family, your customers, or your small tribe does not matter. All that matters is the answer to this question: Are you bringing value to the table wherever you find yourself at this moment?

Most men cannot answer that question honestly. They may say to themselves that they provide value to their company, but reality does not bear this out.

Most modern jobs are unnecessary.

I would go so far as to say we have created thousands of low-value jobs for no other reason than to give the masses something to do with their time. The number of jobs that are actually needed to perpetuate human survival is small in comparison to the unnecessary jobs that exist.

The majority of men have no technical skill, minimal experience, and no ability to think with their own brains. Yet they still manage to find a company willing to pay them just enough to maintain their existence in exchange for some menial labor.

This is not the way men are designed to live, and it is no wonder that the majority of people are unhappy with their work. It is because they know in their hearts that they are not contributing in the best way possible to the greater good of society. They may not even be able to see if they are doing any good in their immediate environment.

Let me give you a few of the non-negotiable keys to human happiness, though happiness is irrelevant to being a man.

Progress
Contribution/Service
Being Needed/Responsibility
Autonomy and Self-Direction

The fundamental key to human happiness is progress.

We are never as happy to achieve a goal as we are when we are in pursuit of a goal. Men were not designed to stagnate and stay still. Earl Nightingale observed that men are like ships, designed to sail from one port to the next and they fall apart if left to “rest” in the dock.

The most unhappy men in the world are the ones who have checked all society’s boxes yet have no goal for themselves. They went to school, git married, had a few kids, bought a house, and have a “safe, secure, stable” job, but they are still continually unhappy. And it is simply because they are truly idle and because they have no port to sail to that they find themselves so miserable. All the trappings of common life cannot provide the peace and evenness of mind that the steady pursuit of a worthwhile goal can provide.

Secondly, a man must contribute to some greater good in order to be satisfied with himself.

This is a point that has taken me years to recognize, but I believe it to be true. Men are fulfilled when they can serve others, and this service is usually rewarded monetarily. While it sounds very nice to be able to live in a cabin in the woods far away from all humankind, if there is not some portion of a man’s life spent in service to others, he will find himself feeling empty. Even if the emptiness is only a slight, nagging feeling, it will be there, and it will rob him of complete peace.

Thirdly, men need responsibility.

A man must feel that he is needed by his company, family, or tribe in order to be fulfilled. Really this is true for every person who lives. Who in the world does not want to feel that they are needed by society?

Jordan Peterson has observed that human beings are happy in proportion to the responsibility they are willing to take on. Greater responsibility, counterintuitively, equals greater happiness and fulfillment. A man has to take on some sort of responsibility if he wants to be happy.

This does not necessarily have to be traditional, industrial-age work, though society would have you think this is required of you. However, you rarely find a fulfilled man who is also unemployed. The happiest retirees are the ones who have found additional work they are able to do, even if it is non-remunerative.

One of the reasons that post-retirement work is even more fulfilling than previous work is that it is autonomous. Autonomy and self-direction is the fourth key to human happiness.

No one likes to be told what to do. We live in a day and age where, to a certain degree, the average man can choose the manner in which he wants to spend his days. There are plenty of professions to choose from and there is no shortage of work, despite what you hear in the media.

Most men simply give up this freedom, however. they choose to mindlessly go to college, major in whatever is popular then complain about their post-graduation salary. They complain even though they learned no useful skills in college and simultaneously did not learn to use their own brains. They simply went to college for the false promise of job security.

Job security is an illusion.

It is something that we create in our own minds as an ego protection mechanism. If we buy into the lie that the masses tell each other and themselves, we feel better. Everyone believes in this idea of a safe, secure, stable job. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no such thing as a stable, secure, safe job. There is only the illusion of such a job.

Take a look back at the depression of the 1930s when nearly a quarter of the American population was unemployed. Let me reiterate that: one out of every four Americans was out of work. And this is back when more American men had families to consider.

Do you think those men thought their jobs were “safe and secure”? They likely did. As humans, we would degenerate into a neurotic mass if we felt we were constantly on the verge of losing our income. Yet I argue that this is the reality of most American men in the modern-day. Especially those men who know in the depths of their minds that they have low-value skills, little experience, and are not contributing to their current employer.

Let me ask you a series of questions and see if you still believe in the idea of a safe and secure job.

When your income rests in the hand of one man (your boss), is it stable?
The only thing between you and lack of income is two words (“You’re fired”), so is your job stable?
When a worldwide pandemic can crush the global economy over the course of a single year and leave many Americans out of work, is your job stable?
When at any moment a company could lose a large chunk of revenue and be forced to downsize, is your job safe, stable or secure?

the fact that people still promoted the idea of a safe, secure job after the depression is another piece of evidence showing that will learn nothing from the 2020 pandemic. We do not do a great job of learning from history.

A man’s greatest weapon against the inherent insecurity of the workforce is to build his own skills and increase his value to the world.

Imagine this, if the world as we knew it ended and chaos ensued. If the United States disintegrated into hundreds of small city-states that fought and warred in a feudalistic manner, what value could you bring to your group? If you were in a small group of people forced to survive, what exactly would you bring to the group that would justify your life? Could you provide the group with anything that would justify feeding you from the group’s supplies?

Most of the men I know would not be able to contribute more than a few low-value skills to the group. They have no technical skills, but they also do not have the ability to use their own minds or to lead others. Most men have no value, and the greatest sin is the fact that they have control over this fact and still elect to do nothing.

We all have control over our personal values. But society has been so safe for so long that we take this for granted. So many men have been coasting along bringing nothing of value to their company but they are kept on because it is easy. There is nothing that is rocking the boat for most Americans, so there is no need for men to improve their value.

So many of us are detached from the stark reality which is that we could lose our current income at any given moment. What would you do about that if you were in that situation? Most men have no idea what in the world they would do. They have no stash of funds nor marketable skills. They assume that everything will proceed as always and never plan for the moment that their life will be sideswiped by a tidal wave.

Most men believe there is no reason to become more valuable. society is already stable and safe.

Most Americans are one hospital stay away from bankruptcy. You cannot listen to the old advice given you by the older people advocating for a safe, secure, stable job. Most of these people will outlive their resources or will lose them all in one medical emergency. The average American not only builds his financial house on the sand but advocates that you do the same thing.

One of my titanium rules is the following: do not take advice from anyone you would not trade places with.

It may seem arrogant, but if you think about it, you will find it makes perfectly logical sense. A person’s life is the direct and cumulative result of all the actions they have taken up to that point. If you do not admire, like, or want the same result in your own life, why would you model their behavior and actions?

You have the opportunity to prepare for that now. Write down 10 ideas for how you would generate income if you were to lose your current income stream right now. You need to be ahead of that game when it comes to your personal value. Plan your protocols for if you are ever in a situation where you have no money coming in.

Also, you need to make a plan for how you are going to make yourself more valuable to society and to your group. What would you contribute to your group in a survival situation? If you cannot think of anything, consider learning a skill that would be useful in those instances. While that may not happen in your lifetime, cervical situations always unfold over the years.

Additionally, you need to come up with ideas to make yourself more valuable to society.

What is it that you are contributing to your company, family, or society? Most men think they are contributing value, but in reality, they are contributing nothing. They merely go with the flow and call it “Doing the right thing” or “doing their duty”. I think men should do their duty, but let’s not go so far as to label everything as “duty”.

Some things are just stupid, and men do them anyways under the ruse of “doing the right thing”. Sometimes doing the right thing involves going against the societal flow. Sometimes it means rocking the boat and making some serious life adjustments are making some equally serious personal life evaluations.

Find out ways to increase your value to society and to yourself. There is no excuse for our value to not increase proportionally with our age. We should consistently see geometric growth of income. Or even better, if we are clever enough, we should see the increase of income due to capital or investments, known as “passive income” which is extremely tax-effective compared to ordinary income. Every man should be wise enough to establish revenue sources that do not rely on him being present.

If you can create stability for yourself through financial independence, you have much less to worry about in life.

References to Consider:

Amadeo, Kimberly. “Unemployment Rate by Year since 1929 Compared to Inflation and GDP.” The Balance, 23 Sept. 2013, www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-3305506.

NVSS – Marriages and Divorces. 2019, www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm

Common Core of Religion

The majority of the teaching and preaching that occurs in our churches is shallow. It is rudimentary in concept and emotionalistic in delivery. Whenever a position is weak, men will paint over it with emotionalism. An open outpouring of emotion can hide some of the weaknesses of a discussion. Or in the case of church teaching, can make a topic appear to be deep when in reality it is emotionally driven.

The modern American education school system has seen the introduction of the “no child left behind” and common core ideas.

The core philosophy is that the content of school must be watered down in order to accommodate the lowest common denominator. This watering down is done irrespective of differences in individual family situations, which seem to be one of the primary driving factors behind the academic success. It stands to reason that the family who places a high value on education will create a familial culture of an appreciation for education that manifests in good or excellent academic performance. Barring those with exceptional gifts and anomalistic intellectual defects, all individuals have the ability to succeed in school at a relatively consistent level based on their mental faculties alone. The use of those mental faculties and the effort placed in developing them on an individual level will be a prime driver of differences among the individual performance.

Despite those realities, the school system nonetheless marches ahead with the philosophy of common core. Rather than maintaining a certain standard for academic performance, the school waters education down so the person who cares the least can still “succeed” with flying colors. Instead of taking additional time with the individuals who struggle academically and pushing those who work hard onto advanced course work, the state-sponsored indoctrination camps give the same cookie-cutter education to every individual.

It is easy to understand that this has disastrous long-term effects on cultural education (and the NAEP scores demonstrate this fact). Yet many religious groups mindlessly plod down the same pathway. Instead of taking the time and effort to be autonomous in the development of training programs for religious individuals, the church and other religious entities simply copy the school system method of common core in their teaching. The same system that is producing academically retarded individuals is copied in religion and produces spiritually retarded individuals.

Instead of creating bible classes and having high-level teaching and preaching, we have common core.

Related: Tips for Improving Bible Class

Adult Bible lectures are becoming indistinguishable from the children’s classes, as most adults are still on the same developmental level as children, both in spiritual knowledge and overall spiritual development.

The application of the common core method in the church is producing generations of people who have no idea what the Bible has to say about any given topic. They could have grown up their entire lives in the church, yet their knowledge is still almost zero. You can test this by asking any given individual in your church where to find a certain topic or story in the Bible. 75% of the time they will not be able to tell you. And why should they need to be able to tell you? In reality, no one is ever going to come up to them and ask them a question about the Bible.

The irony of recreation with fellow Christians is that there is never an intense Biblical discussion to be found. We might sit around, have an emotionally and Biblically shallow “devo” while singing the latest songs from the liberal press, but we will never discuss the bible in a way that actually requires us to think.

And that is the problem with Christian and men as a whole: they never think.

They never take the time to develop their own mental faculties to the point where they are able to use them independently. And that is what humans want. These men want other people to do the thinking for them, they do not want to do any of the thinking themselves. Henry Ford was correct in his observation that “Thinking is the most difficult labor of all, which is why men do not do it”.

The more liberal or emotionalistic or Biblically ignorant a religious group becomes, the more the entirety of the group will mindlessly look to their leadership and accept everything they have to say without a moment’s thought. Just look at the Catholic church for a perfect example of this.

Catholics notoriously know nothing about the Bible. They could not tell you where any Biblical topic is located. The majority of their knowledge is limited to their priest or the occasional “missile” publication. And the Catholic religion as a whole of course looks to the pope for guidance and answers. Rather than using their own minds and looking to the Bible, the word of God, for the answers, they trust other men to find the answers for them.

So strong is the urge to avoid the labor of thinking that men will stake their souls and eternal destination on some other man’s interpretation of the word of God.

Part of the epidemic of low-thought level teaching is the laziness of so many preachers. It is a rare thing to find a preacher who presents original content anymore. When thousands of sermon outlines are available online, why should any man bother to write his own unique material?

The lack of work ethic among our religious leaders is a topic all in itself. But I would argue that 70% of the people who intend to go into ministry or who, bless their hearts, go to college to study the Bible are not nearly as concerned about the Lord’s work as they are about avoiding their own work. Most college Bible majors want a cushy youth ministry job so they can be paid to do nothing. And that is exactly what so many do. Not all leaders are like that, of course, but many are.

It is reflective of the safety of the times and the convenience of religion. Religion is fast, cheap, and easy, so we have no problem engaging with it as a part of our lives. Add a sprinkle of difficulty, persecution, or war and everyone will sing a different tune.

The main point, of course, is that the teaching in the church has become so watered down that no one is improving their overall knowledge or spiritual development.

When lectures become common core, those who are far beyond the level of that core have nothing to stimulate their minds and are forced to resign to reading their Bible and doing their own personal study during class time. Does that sound like an effective use of time? The entire purpose of the class is to provide subject matter at a rather advanced level. If I can get the same level of new knowledge from simply reading my own Bible and doing approximately 5 seconds of focused thinking about it, then the class is a waste of time.

A class session should represent a full week of study, digging, and focus on the part of the teacher. But rather what it often reflects is the ability to search online for a topic to speak about on Sunday. A class should be a graduate-level learning session for people who have spent their lives and hundreds of hours studying and improving their understanding of the Bible. But rather we get the adult equivalent of VBS for adults with not a soul in the entire room having to stretch their minds to accommodate new ideas or difficult passages. T

his is not a new development, it has been happening for years. Generations who thought that sitting their kids in a pew for a few hours was sufficient for their spiritual development are now seeing the results of that mentality: hordes of biblically ignorant young and middle-aged adults passing on mutated forms of doctrine that are nothing more than emotionalistic propaganda.

The common core mentality that has leaked into the church has made religion into nothing more than a social gathering with a light dusting of spirituality.

And everyone knows that if you can manage to lightly dust anything in religion, you can call it a “religious gathering” and shame people who do not want to attend. Regardless of the fact that you offered cookies, pizza, blow up houses, and games you dare to call it a “devo” because there is about 5 minutes of nominalistic nonsense vomited out by a teacher who found the devo outline online and decided to share with the group.

Common core is crushing the education system, and now it is crushing the religious system. And no doubt it is or has tried to creep into your church. You would do well to stand guard against that nonsense, provide intellectually and spiritually stimulating lectures, and hold people accountable for their spiritual development because they are obviously not strong enough to hold up themselves. Maintain the heavy spiritual discipline; the alternative is to give way into the spiritual rot or religious common core.

Christians Are Spiritually Retarded

Most Christians are spiritually retarded. Now I do not mean this in the medical sense. I do not mean they have an actual mental disability. And I certainly would not want to hurt the delicate sensibilities of anyone who finds that word “offensive”. What I mean is that literally, Christians are retarded. They are delayed. Their understanding is far behind where it should be given the amount of time they have invested in the church and religion.

You can easily test this for yourself. Go to any random church member and ask them basic Bible questions.

“In the Bible, where can I find the qualifications for an elder?”

“Where is the story of David and Goliath Located?”.

“Where is the sermon on the mount?”

“What are the rules for marriage and divorce?”

“What Does Christ say about worry?”

Now you may not be able to answer these questions yourself, which should give you a hint as to where you are in your development. But the most concerning fact in the spiritual retardation of Christians is the fact that they are doing nothing to improve themselves. Not only are they retarded, but they are content to remain retarded. They are content to sit in a pew week after week and learn next to nothing. They are content to change next to nothing about their lifestyle. And they are perfectly happy just floating along in a stream of contentment and emotionalism for their entire Christian life.

I am pro-contentment. But we should never be content about where we are in our spiritual development.

We should never be content without our current level of spiritual maturity. Most people are happy right where they are so they never improve. They use the godly admonition of contentment as an excuse to justify sitting back and doing nothing about themselves. This is human nature, but it is also Christian nature. The days of the protestant work ethic and have died and been buried. Now Christians sit around and try to find any biblical backing for a lethargic lifestyle.

They attack money as “the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) so they can justify not working hard on their careers. They attack the physically fit because “bodily exercise profits little” (1 Timothy 4:8) as an excuse to never improve their bodies. And they use contentment as an excuse to never push their own physical and mental limitations. Christians are always looking for an easy excuse to avoid some sort of labor, especially the labor of thinking.

Christians have done the same thing with their spiritual growth. Instead of constantly working to improve themselves, most people are content knowing that God will forgive them or that His grace will cover them. So they never do anything to grow or improve. Why should they?

Really, at the end of the day, there is no external incentive for learning more about God. Or perhaps there is an incentive, but we never talk about it in the church. Because people might get angry if you suggest they need to work and improve their spiritual knowledge.

There is also no negative motivation; nothing for Christians to run away from.

We do not call each other out for a lack of knowledge anymore. If someone knows nothing about the Bible, he can live his entire Christian life without anyone ever knowing. He will never be asked to teach a class. He will never discuss any spiritual matters inside or outside of the classroom. When it comes to conversion, he will be unable to articulate the “reason for the hope that is within him” (1 Peter 3:15). But he can live this way for decades because no one will ever ask him to demonstrate his knowledge (or the lack thereof). No one will ever ask him to prove himself as a Christain man and demonstrate what he knows and the knowledge he has gained over the years. He knows this and he is content with this, so there is no need for the common man to improve.

The common man sits content in the church pew maintaining (or rather decaying) his own spirituality. This is an epidemic in the church and something must be done about it.

Solutions

Require knowledge demonstrations in the church. When kids are given standardized exams in the feminine-dominated, state-sponsored indoctrination camps known as public schools, no one bats an eye. Everyone knows that tests, while inadequate in many ways, is a decent way to test the knowledge and understanding that kids have about a particular subject. Why not have something similar for the church?

It would not even have to be a test of a public nature. But there could be exams provided that test the knowledge of Christian about different areas of the Christian lifestyle. This could include basic Bible knowledge, topical knowledge, apologetics, etc. Anything that comes to mind can be tested. And we know from research that testing, or forcing the mind to recall information to articulate it to someone else is one of the best possible ways of increasing knowledge. We learn when we recall. We learn when we explain a concept to someone else.

These tests would not even have to be public in nature, though that may be useful since most people would not take advantage of the tool without some sort of pain to run away from. The hardcore among you could require test scores to be made public. Or oral examinations could be used. Anything Is better than sitting on our rear ends doing nothing, as we commonly do these days.

Create groups of men who test each other’s knowledge through questioning.

Every man should be able to clearly articulate and defend his own faith. But how many men do you know of who are able to do that? I know of only a handful in each congregation.

But when men are forced to do combat in the secular world, this is exactly how that combat will look. When you discuss something of a spiritual nature with a person of the world, you are forced to articulate your point to them in a convincing manner. If you cannot articulate it, you look like an idiot.

The Christian who cannot articulate the reason for the hope that is within him is spiritually retarded.

All training should look exactly like the situation you are training for. If real-world combat requires a man to give an articulate description of why he believes what he believes, then a man should train for that event. A man should plan what he will say and how he will say it when he is approached with any of the common questions of a worldly person.

Can you clearly articulate your faith? Can I clearly articulate mine? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. And if the answer to that is “no”, we need to accept that in our current position, we are spiritually related and in desperate need to improve.

Do not sit idly by, whittling away the hours and days of your life without making any progress towards your goals. Do not be idle and make no progress on your spiritual progress. Never use your Christianity as an excuse to be lazy. Most men do this, and you have a responsibility to be unlike most men.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Saul’s Decay of Humility

How often is it that men start off their lives great yet finish in disaster? What is it that causes that disaster? Why do some men begin with excellence and end poorly while others begin with nothing and finish as great men? What happens with men like Saul?

There is never only one reason for anything. All we can do is examine the trends and try to build an idea of what happened.

This happened for the famous Bible character Saul. Saul was the first king of the Israelite nation. The Bible tells us he stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the nation in height (I Samuel 9:2). 1 Samuel 9 & 10 tell the story of how Saul was chosen to be king and his coronation.

What is interesting about Saul before he took the kingship was his incredible humility.

The Bible tells us a few brief stories that show how Saul was humble. On the day that Samuel tells Saul he will reign over Israel, he responds with humility, saying that he is not a man of import in the land.

“And Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?”
1 Samuel 9:21

A few chapters later in the book we will be granted a glimpse into Saul’s coronation. When the Israelite nation was ready to crown him as their king, where was he? The Bible says he was hiding in the equipment.

“When he had caused the tribe of Benjamin to come near by their families, the family of Matri was taken, and Saul the son of Kish was taken: and when they sought him, he could not be found. Therefore they enquired of the Lord further, if the man should yet come thither. And the Lord answered, Behold he hath hid himself among the stuff.”
1 Samuel 10:21-22

Yet it will only take 5 more chapters of 1 Samuel for Saul to have the kingdom torn away from him because of his mistakes. While it is not clear how much time passed between these sections, it was long enough for Saul to lose his humility. Many people will latch onto this instance as one of those “Power corrupts” moments. But perhaps that is only a part of the story.

Saul was the first king of Israel. There was no previous model on how to be a king and how to manage that kind of pressure and power. Who was expecting a new king to behave differently than Saul did?

They could have modeled the pagan nations and their style of government. This is what Israel did when they demanded a king in the first place. That does not mean a man will know how to handle that power, however. It was a completely new position.

The fact of the matter is that Saul lost his humility.

Even Samuel would note this when Saul was losing the kingdom, saying that at one point Saul was once “little in his own eyes“. And by that, Samuel likely meant that Saul had humility before he was king.

“And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?”
1 Samuel 15:17

Samuel delivered this message immediately after Saul returned from a battle. A battle in which he was commanded to destroy everything. Saul was to take no prisoners and completely destroy the nation. But he elected to keep king Agag alive and spare the best of the animals for sacrifices, or so he claimed.

Notice the language that king Saul uses in 1 Samuel 15 when he is confronted by Samuel. First Saul gives himself the credit. When he sees Samuel he proudly boasts that he can complete the command of the Lord. Yet when Samuel asks about the sound of animals in the background, Saul immediately turns and says that the people wanted to keep those animals. So when Saul thought he was keeping the command of the Lord, he gave himself full credit. But the second he noticed disapproval in the voice of Samuel, he knew he needed to implicate the people in his wrongdoings. Saul ignored God and did what he wanted, and this would cost him the kingdom.

Let us look at the exact account in the bible.

Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, ¹¹“I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the Lord all night. ¹²So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel, saying, “Saul went to Carmel, and indeed, he set up a monument for himself; and he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal.” ¹³Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.”

¹⁴But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?”

¹⁵And Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”

¹⁶Then Samuel said to Saul, “Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”

And he said to him, “Speak on.”

¹⁷So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? ¹⁸Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ ¹⁹Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”

²⁰And Saul said to Samuel, “But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the plunder, sheep, and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”

1 Samuel 15: 10-21

When Saul wanted praise he took full responsibility for the victory. when Samuel had to correct him, Saul blamed the people. As you know the story, this book of the Bible ends with Saul’s death on the battlefield. Let’s revisit the first question we asked. What causes a man to end like this?

There is never just one explanation because there are too many variables to consider. All we know is Saul was once a humble man who gained a kingdom and gained power too rapidly and it broke him. What is the point? Humility can decay, which is why it is vital to maintain humility and watch for any drop of ego that might be creeping into our lives. there is no faster way to destroy ourselves than with ego.

Related: Humility

God Has Not Given Us a Spirit Of Fear

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.“

2 Timothy 2:17

I have heard this verse thrown around a great deal this past year. I think it is important to understand the context of what Paul was saying. In fact, it goes beyond thinking – I know it is important to examine the context in which passages are written. Otherwise, we run the risk of misapplying the verse to a situation where it is not related.

During the 2020 Pandemic, people threw around this verse talking about how we “shouldn’t have a spirit of fear“.

“We shouldn’t be afraid. God has not given us a spirit of fear”.

I agree with the sentiment but they are misapplying what Paul was saying in this verse.

When people were using this verse they were talking about being opposed to wearing masks. Saying that, “If God wants a virus to take me out, then a virus will take me out“. I was as opposed to mandated masks as much as anyone, even as a scientist, but that does not mean I throw caution to the wind thinking that “whatever God wants to kill me can just go right ahead and kill me“. That is the mentality of hyper-conservative people who think that every move of the left is an attempt to stamp out all freedom. While on the complete opposite side of the spectrum you have the “masks at all cost” people.

I do not like extremists when it comes to group beliefs. I like personal extremism and intensity, but when groups get together and concentrate this extreme energy into a mob, it is not good for anyone. Previously I wrote in two separate articles that beliefs radicalize when they place the belief itself above God. Groups radicalize when they do the same thing.

Related: Radical Liberalism.

Related: Radical Conservatism.

All of that is beside the point. No matter what side of the political or religious spectrum you fall under, applying 2 Timothy 2:17 willy-nilly is inappropriate.

A Bible professor once made the statement in a lecture, “When studying the Bible there are three important things. Context, context, and context. The immediate context of the verse, the immediate context of the book and who it was written to, and the context of the book in relation to the rest of the bible“.

We often do not like looking at the context because that means we have to do a little background research about the book, chapter, and verse we are studying. It means we cannot take our first impression of whatever the text is saying and believe it right off the bat. It is easier to do that because it liberates us from the work of thinking. But the consequence is that we frequently misunderstand the bible.

Therefore, the context of 2 Timothy is this: the book was written by Paul to Timothy who was at a church at the time. The central theme of the book is “Christians must endure hardships for the cause of Christ“.

Back in the first century, this meant literal persecution. So when Paul is telling Timothy and the church that “God has not given us a spirit of fear“, it was specifically related to Christian persecution.

While it would be incredibly easy to call a pandemic “persecution“, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Last I checked the government was not putting Christians to death. And the majority of the population still had access to food and water. At the risk of sounding flippant, there was not much real suffering on a global scale. Sure, there was death and starvation, but it was a small percentage of the world. Most people still had food, water, and shelter and never lost these things.

We did not have the degree of persecution that Paul or the first century Christians were dealing with. They were being tortured and killed for their beliefs. And Paul still needed to write to them and encourage them that God had not given them a spirit of fear.

So let’s understand the context of these verses. Yes, it is true that God has not given us a spirit of fear. But this verse specifically means that we should not be fearful regarding the hardships of Christianity. And I would not call a virus a hardship that faces Christianity.

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