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Using Virtue to Justify Poverty

By equating poorness with righteousness, people can use justify their poverty by turning it into a virtue.

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”
Proverbs 13:22

“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.”
Proverbs 22:7

“You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”
Deuteronomy 8:18

“I’m only poor because I’m not greedy or materialistic”. “I choose to focus on God rather than on material wealth”. These are statements that are made by poor Christians attempting to justify their poverty by turning it into a virtue. This is one of the most disgusting things you see in the church today. Anti-wealth ideology rapidly propels young men away from the church, because weak religious individuals make it seem that there is no way to be successful financially and be a Christian, because allegedly all “good” Christians are financially broke people filled with emotionalism.

Look up the most popular verses about money or wealth. The first results are never the Proverbs that teach you principles for how to properly manage your money, instead it is always the verses telling us about the evil of the world or the “bad things” money can do to a Christian. Undoubtedly those articles were written by people with no money. Any time men try to discourage behavior by saying “bad things will happen to you if you do this”, rest assured that they have no logic or reasoning behind what they are saying and can only resort to fear mongering and other assorted scare tactics.

Let’s take a look at a few of the common myths propagated by not so well-meaning Christians:

Myth #1: “I’m a good person because I have no money. Obviously I’m not focused on the material things of this world and that is why I have no money”.

Myth Rebuttal #1: Your poverty does not magically make you virtuous. Religious people who say, “I would rather be spiritual than have wealth” are the same people who say “I would rather have brains than brawn”. The only people who make such statements have neither.

Great faith and great wealth are not mutually exclusive.

Being poor does not automatically make you a good Christian. Ever heard of Abraham? He was very wealthy (Genesis 13:2). Ever heard of Job? He was tremendously wealthy, and was made twice as wealthy after his trials (Job 1 & 42). In fact, his character is even more impressive because of the way he acted with his wealth. Because it’s one thing to have good character and be broke, it is another thing entirely to have good character while being the richest man in the land. The same principles applies to pride: it is easy to be humble when you are a loser, it is much more difficult to be humble when you are a champion.

Abraham and Job were two of the most righteous men to walk the face of the earth, and they had enough earthly possessions to last multiple lifetimes. This idea in the church that being poor is something that is good and reflects good human qualities is not only stupid, it is immoral because it is a bald-faced, anti-Biblical lie.

Myth #2: “I don’t have money because I’m simply not a greedy person”.

Myth Rebuttal #2: Being poor doesn’t mean that you are not greedy for material wealth. There are plenty of poor people who are greedy for money and plenty of rich who are also greedy for money. Simply possessing money does not confer greediness. Just because a man is poor does not exempt him from the sin of greed. It’s not the amount of money in the bank that makes someone greedy, it is their view and attitude towards money.

Furthermore, of all the people in the world to have money, shouldn’t the Christian be the one to possess it? Wouldn’t money be better used in the hands of the righteous than in the hands of the worldly? If so, why are Christians so adamant about remaining in poverty, and justifying it by calling it “virtuous”?

Myth #3: “I don’t have money because I followed my passion. You know, I was just called by the spirit to go into youth ministry, so I did. And that is the reason I am poor, because I focus on spiritual matters in my work”.

Myth Rebuttal #3: The reason you think you don’t have money and the real reason you don’t have money are very different. You have no money because you know nothing about money and refuse to work hard or do valuable work, not because you are righteous.

Sure, you may have “followed your passion” to do what you want in life, but look where that got you. Poorness is a result of the poor decisions in the critical period of youth when you decide what skills you need to develop to build a career. You listened to what your parents had to say (who themselves had no money, a reflection of their lack of knowledge about the subject of money) about going to school and getting good grades so you could be a good little cog in the wheel of business. Like a good boy you did what they said so you could earn a paycheck, rather than build a company and be the one cutting the paychecks. You studied English, history, psychology or some other useless subject in college and landed a job making barely over minimum wage and wonder where you went wrong.

Bad decisions, not virtue, create poverty. Or maybe you fall into the camp that believes that God directly gives money to people. In which case, why hasn’t He chosen to give money to you? Perhaps because He knew you could not handle it, that you could not be faithful to Him with that much money. Such a truth would deliver a fatal blow to the idea that poverty is for the virtuous.

Myth #4: “Well Jesus had no money”.

Myth Rebuttal #4: True, but he also did nothing that you are doing. His mission and purpose were clear from the beginning of the earth, while you had to give $30,000 to a college so you could “find yourself”. Jesus wasn’t sitting around texting on a thousand dollar iphone or sleeping in on the weekends. He wasn’t sitting around gossiping with His friends or complaining about the state of the world or who the current emperor of Rome was.

If you are going to compare yourself to Jesus, you have to do so in every avenue of life. Jesus was a carpenter, are you? Jesus never did anything wrong, how about you? He worked constantly and left little time for leisure, what about you? You might say, “Those things are irrelevant to the modern Christian life”; the fact that Jesus had no money is not relevant to your life either, so don’t use it as an excuse for poverty.

Mantra

Poorness is not virtuous.

Application

Build wealth. Become financially literate. If your parents were poor or middle class their whole lives, they know nothing about money. If they knew anything about money they would not have remained as poor or middle class individuals. This is why you have to learn about money now and change your family tree. Invest money in assets that put money in your pocket instead of investing in liabilities that take money out of your pocket. It truly is that simple.

You must dump the idea that poorness is synonymous with virtue, and that wealth is synonymous with greed. This is not what the Bible teaches and it is the propaganda of radical conservatives who have never made a lot of money or radical liberals who earn a handful of dollars an hour as a social worker.

Christians should be the ones possessing the wealth of the earth, not the evil. There is nothing wrong with working hard to earn a lot of money. Nor is There anything wrong with working very little and making your money work for you. There is nothing wrong with wealth, it is all about your attitude towards your wealth. Make money. Reject radical conservative and liberal propaganda. Become wealthy. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Train The Body

By Training the body a man also trains his mind. Men must not make excuses for why they do not train and must constantly work to improve themselves.

To train the body a man also trains his mind. Men must not make excuses for why they do not train.

“But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
1 Corinthians 9:27

Religious people make more excuses for being physically inactive than anyone else. They use the age old excuse of “not worrying about the shell of the body” or calling physical exercise “selfish”. These are the same people who want to call the body a “Temple of the Spirit” whenever it suits their particular narrative.

The lethargy in the religious world is insane.

A portion of the church is obese. You might even call many of them “gluttons”. While it is true that they are not participating in 13 course feasts complete with vomiting out the food just so you can make room in the stomach for more food, it is also true eating until it is painful to move is not a great thing to do to the body, and that is something many religious people do on a daily basis.

People avoid exercise in general because it has the immediate punishment of pain and discomfort combined with a delayed reward: i.e. the results. This cycle is a recipe for a behavior that is unlikely to be repeated. We as humans hate to do things that cause pain in the present and only reward us in the future, this is why we enjoy immediate gratification.

Eating has precisely the opposite effect: Instant gratification of the pleasure of eating and the delayed punishment of fat gain. This is the formula for a behavior that is continued as a mindless habit, and people do not even notice the negative effects of it until it is too late. All the deadliest habits are this way: Smoking, drinking alcohol to excess, sexual promiscuity, television and most drug types.

Christian people need to get up and take better care of their bodies. Scripture speaks of our body being a temple of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) and of the body being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). There are too many people in the church preaching about living the Christian lifestyle and avoiding the fact that we must take care of the body as good stewards of it. They do not include this principle because most of them are quite fat, this is not rude, it is fact. This is also why you almost never hear any sermons preached on the topic of gluttony: because the majority of Christians would be guilty of that sin!

KEY TO HUMAN NATURE: You will notice that even the most hardcore religious person will water down certain commandments if he/she chronically violates them. You do not hear about gluttony because most Christians are gluttonous on a regular basis. You may hear a sermon that suggests it is okay to worry, because the teacher wants to justify the fact that the crime of worry is simply accepted in modern society. The list can go on for miles.

Some of these Christians like to say “I would rather have brains that brawn”. In 99% of cases, people who use that phrase have neither brains nor brawn. KEY: “brains and brawn” are not mutually exclusive. What they also don’t know is that there is almost nothing better for the mind than to train the body. The scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience reports in a 2018 study Exercise-Mediated Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus via BDNF a confirmation that exercise has “numerous neuro-protective and cognitive benefits, especially pertaining to memory and learning related processes. One potential link connecting them is exercise-mediated hippocampal neurogenesis, in which new neurons are generated and incorporated into hippocampal circuits”.

New research shows that exercise can generate new brain cells, casting serious doubt on the age-old theory that brain cells cannot be regenerated once lost (which was just a trick parents used to get their kids to watch less television). Based on this research, exercise also protects the few brain cells that people have left.

If you want to live a long life, you need to train your body. Being a couch potato is not helping you extend your lifespan.

The man who trains the body, you will develop a mental resilience that is unlike any other. He can program his mind to endure pain, thereby raising his pain tolerance through intense exercise. Why not take advantage of the mental training that exercise provides?

“Why not be a smart guy and have a huge deadlift” – Jocko Willink, Former US Navy SEAL – From Jocko Podcast 28

Mantra

To train the body is to train the mind.

Application

You have to get to a gym and train your body. If you can’t afford a gym, you need to get to work on body weight exercises and cardio every single day. We live in an age where there is no excuse to be ignorant on any subject. The internet has the answer to every question you could possibly have, so lack of knowledge is no excuse for being fat.

Choose a desired exercise type (Strength training/calisthenics/cardio) (I urge you to stay away from moderate intensity exercise like jogging or circuit training unless you are having a rest day or just starting to train for the first time. If you are going to train the body, you need to have intensity and train like a man. A few intense 20 second sprints would be better than a mile jog).
Start with the smallest possible step (If you are just beginning to train, be intense in your training but do not go all out until you have conditioned your body to handle that type of effort. Leave a few repetitions in the tank on each exercise for at least the first 2 weeks).
Add more work slowly over time (Once your current exercise starts to feel comfortable, you must add intensity back to it. You can add intensity by: Decreasing the rest periods between sets, increasing the weight lifted or increasing the total sets and reps completed).

Every single day you must make progress on yourself.

Do not focus on how fast you can get to your goal but focus on making exercise a habit every day. Exercise is a non-negotiable item. There are no high-performing couch potatoes in the world. You have to make sure that no matter what comes up, you are doing at least something to promote physical well being.

Get up.

Train.

Progress.

Be a Man.

Sample No Equipment Beginner Full body Workout: Research exercises online if you have not heard of them. Perform full body work Every other day

Complete as many sets as it takes to meet repetition requirements (AMAT). Break up the sets if you are concerned about injury.

Muscle Burn = Good Pain

Joint/Bone/Ligament Pain = Bad Pain

Exercise	Sets	Repetitions
Wide Arm Pushup	AMAT	75
Air Squats	AMAT	125
Tree Pullup	AMAT	10
Plank	AMAT	90 seconds total
Calf Raise	AMAT	100

Sample Cardio Workout

Exercise	Sets	Repetitions
Warmup Joints	Until Warm	Until Warm
Short Jog	2	100 Yards
Sprints	5	20 seconds

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Train the Mind

In conjunction with the idea of using rational thought regularly, we must train the mind to be efficient, clear and filled with a large supply of knowledge to draw upon.

We must train the mind as it it were a physical muscle. All Growth originates from thoughts.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-6

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Proverbs 4:23

In conjunction with the idea of using rational thought regularly, we must train the mind to be efficient, clear and filled with a large supply of knowledge to draw upon. We must be in top mental shape in order to cast down every argument that stands against our faith (2 Corinthians 2:5-7).

Christians do not take the need for mental fitness seriously enough. They Never train the mind.

We become content with the status quo of the day: wake up, watch TV before work, hit our job, come home for more TV. Maybe occasionally we toss a little bit of book reading in there to feel good about ourselves or so we can brag to our friends. No one trains the mind these days, and those who do are worshiped. Those who train the mind regularly then have a chance to display their developed skill that makes the average man scoff and say, “I wish I was smart like that guy”. It has little to do with intelligence, and everything to do with work ethic and training the mind every single day.

You want to know where dementia comes from? Lethargy of body and mind. The American States with the most dementia deaths are also the ones that are the least physically active . Decay of the mind will come to us all, but we can slow the spread of that evil by training the mind every single day, consistently, without fail, just as you must train the body every day. An out of shape body is the physical manifestation of an out of shape mind.

Dump the idea that training the mind should be fun. The least fun, most difficult things are done the least, but have the best return on investment.

You have several options for training your mind: adding knowledge to the mind constantly is one of them. So you read and learn new things. You expand your mind with the knowledge others have worked hard to discover. You learn by linking new information you want to learn to facts you already have in your mind. The more you learn, the easier it is to gain even more information because you constantly expand your mental network, thereby have more knowledge to link new facts to more quickly. This is the compound interest of knowledge.

Train through math or logic exercises.

Math is built on logic, so training either one of these would give overlap to the other. Math is rumored to be able to physically thicken the brain. This is yet to be definitively proven by science, and may be an old wives’ tale, but the idea that the brain grows when trained should at least inspire us to consider taking action.

Train the mind by learning strategy.

Learn how to play chess, and in doing so you will learn how to play life. You plan several moves ahead and anticipate what the enemy will do. This can then be used in interpersonal relations with individuals. If you have an idea of what people will say to you, you can plan the best possible response ahead of time and avoid embarrassing yourself. If you know every atheistic argument better than the atheist, you can have every rebuttal planned and in place and ready to eradicate those arguments from the face of the earth.

You train the mind through meditation and focus exercises.

In the genre of mediation are several techniques or subgenres that you can train in to develop your control over your mind. The “Do nothing” method, the “observation of thought”, the “Focus on the breath”. For concentration, research access concentration, as “woo-woo” as it may seem, you should consider it and train in it. These are the essence of the control of the mind.

Good stewardship does not apply merely to our money, it applies to our mind. Would you let a car sit in the garage for 30 years with no maintenance and expect it to crank up and run perfectly? No you would not. Do not do the same thing with your mind like so many of the weak.

You hear the weak men say all the time”My mind isn’t what it used to be”, that is because you are not training it. The mind doesn’t grow while one sits around watching television. Sure, there are legitimate medical cases in which cognitive ability is impaired and nothing can be done about it. However, these are the exceptions. Most of us have no excuse to avoid training the mind, we should look in the mirror and behold the lazy man. Let’s get to work training the mind while we still have the opportunity.

Mantra

The trained mind is the path to success and peace.

Application

Pick one area you want to train the mind in and start immediately. Just establish the habit of training every day and never take a day off. It does not really matter what you do in the beginning. If you are being honest with yourself, doing a crossword puzzle would probably be more mental work than most men are currently accustomed to doing.

Once you are in the habit or working every day, then add the more difficult things. Start learning some math on your own, even if you hated it in high school. Even working in a book of logic puzzles is good for the mind.

Practice meditation by focusing on your breath and observe the thoughts that enter your mind as if watching them as a spectator of your own mind. Get to work learning new information or a new language. Just write phrases on flash cards and carry them with you.

Memorize scripture. Train your mind to remember faster, it can in fact be trained. Whatever you are doing, do it heavily, with intensity as a man.

Destroy your goals.

Build the mind you want you have through consistent action each day.

Focus on your skill.

Be a Man

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Think – How to Be Rational

The ability to think unemotionally is a rare thing in the religious world. Blind faith is rampant among the religious and it plants itself in opposition to rational thought.

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. “Eat and drink!” he says to you”
Proverbs 23:7

But his heart is not with you.”

“I think, therefore I am [Exist]” – Rene Descartes

The ability to think unemotionally is a rare thing in the religious world. Blind or weak faith is rampant among the religious and it plants itself in opposition to rational thought. Problems spring up from individuals that could readily be solved by the simple application of thought, but no one wants to think. Thinking is too difficult for the common religious man. This is a pathetic and sad state of existence. It does, however, mean that anyone who thinks at all is farther ahead than 90% of his fellow religious friends.

Thought is our only weapon against the world. We have been commanded to be peaceable, as much as is possible (Romans 12:18). We do not kill people who disagree with us, that is left to the inbred Arabic pedophiles known as radical muslims. The way we reach out to the world is through rational thought.

Much of the religious world has resorted to emotionalism, because this is what tends to draw people in.

No one wants discipline, discomfort and philosophy. No one wants to take up his cross (Matthew 16:24). Everyone wants free and easy salvation. Everyone wants abs in three minutes a day on some great new product they saw on an infomercial. These easily accessible ideas and products pander to the lethargic nature of man, the nature that wishes to conserve energy to survive. The Lethargic nature of human beings wants to avoid any kind of strenuous thinking. Therefore, you must think.

Thought defends us from the devil and his demons who will play on our irrational minds, lazy nature, emotions and fears in order to manipulate us. Any emotion that reduces rational thought should be ignored when making decisions. All that should be allowed is the truth. Aristotle, in his book Rhetoric, describes all emotions in argument as “non-essential”. All that is essential is fact. Anything that moves a judge to pity, anger or some other emotion is non-essential and even dishonest.

Emotions will override our rational thinking every time, which is why emotions must be ignored almost always. Again, emotions must almost always be ignored, this cannot be stressed enough. Thought is our weapon against not only demons, but against radical conservatism and radical liberalism. With thought we banish weak arguments from the religious world and promote a culture of action-based faith rather than emotion-based faith.

Mantra

Thinking over feeling.

Application

Change the way you speak. If you are making an argument and you begin your statement with, “I feel like…” then you have a problem. Start your sentence with “I think that…” instead.

No one cares how you feel.

Your emotions are not logic.

You need to be thinking through your arguments and philosophies, not feeling through them.

Think before you begin speaking. Do not start talking unless you are certain you have something valuable to say and won’t make yourself look like a primate. There is no shame in having a large gap of time between hearing someone else make a statement and then answering them. Take time to formulate your thoughts.
Always start your statements with “I think”, never “I feel”.
Follow a bullet point outline in your mind. What are the main points of what you are saying and how do you connect them together? Do this even with brief statements or thoughts. (Obviously this does not apply to single line statements).

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Free Will

The question isn’t, “Is there such a thing as free will?” The proper question is, “How much free will do I possess at any given time.

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9

“If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.”
John 7:17

Free will is a strange concept, and something people argue over constantly. The arguments over the existence of free will likely span from a lack of precisely defined terms. People who believe in free will and others who do not are usually arguing over two different definitions of free will. Free will is not black and white, there is a large volume of gray area between these two extremes. That gray area is where the reality of free will lies.

The question isn’t, “Is there such a thing as free will?” The proper question is, “How much free will do I possess at any given time.

Binary extremes free will do not exist except in psychopaths. Most people fall into the gray area of making their own decisions while simultaneously being influenced by outside variables. For example, when deciding whether or not to steal, man first decides whether he wants to steal the item or not. Then, however, the thought of punishment for stealing enters his mind and affects his decision. The man who would have stolen has now changed his mind because of an outside variable like punishment. Or this man thinks about the reward of stealing, in this case it would be the new item he would “own”. Free will influenced by outside variables is in the gray zone.

We do not decide to do things based solely on our free will, but also based on the outside variables like punishment and reward. Some people might say that this man is using his free will to reason out consequences, and perhaps that is a valid argument. By using free will this man determined that the risk of punishment for an action was not worth the possible reward. However, we must be careful not to confuse rationality with free will. Even though the man wanted to steal, he was stopped by his rational thinking.

What man does is never what he truly wants to do, he makes decisions based on the reward and punishment circuitry in his mind.

People in the religious world try to say that we make decisions of our own free will, that we choose to do what is right based on our free will alone. Well if most Christians are merely running from the potential of extreme punishment of all time and doing good even though they would rather be doing evil, are they really using free will? Or are they behaving the way humans should behave, by making decisions that best benefit them and their survival at that moment in time? Most religious people do what is right to avoid punishment, not because they desire to do what is right.

This is the state of free will: Yes, we do make decisions in our own rational minds, but they are heavily influenced by outside circumstances such as how we are raised, our level of emotional morality, but more powerfully by the punishment or reward that comes based on our action.

We act out of nothing other than self interest; Every action is rooted in it, and it is not sinful to be self-interested.

Thinkers like Sam Harris argue that because we can detect some form of brain activity mere milliseconds before we make a conscious choice that this somehow proves that free will does not exist. That does not seem like enough evidence to prove that free will does not exist. Sam Harris also falls into the realm of extreme black and white views on free will. He absolutely believes that free will does not exist in any form. We believe that it does exist, but that it can be heavily influenced by external variables.

Mantra

I am making the best decisions for myself.

Application

Be constantly aware of the variables and environmental factors that influence your decision making process. We have some level of free will to draw upon. How much free will we have seems to be based somewhat on personality. Some people are complete rule followers. They follow rules even though we don’t want to, but because they will be punished if they do not. We have to eliminate this type of thinking. The decisions we make should be completely our own, as much as is possible. We do not want to take action merely because of consequences, we want to take action for the sake of taking action. This is the nearly impossible ideal to work towards. However, we should still aim to make good decisions for intrinsic reasons as much as we can.

Identify your desires and temptations. (You want to go to college)
Look at the results that draw you to action. (There are promiscuous women at college/there is potential to make money)
Contemplate how you are affected by these variables. Realize you are being drawn initially to the result of an action. Then those desires are moderated by your rational thinking. Therefore, use rational thinking as quickly as possible to short-circuit your unwise desires.

Master yourself. Do what is right. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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