“Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
Courage is deficient in the religious world today. Men are too scared to share the gospel, too scared to teach it to their kids and then they wonder why the church is shrinking in the United States. The church shrinks because no man possesses the testicles necessary to evangelize.
Courage comes from taking the actions most men are terrified of taking. Men do not have to stop being afraid, they just have to take action regardless of their fear. The problems arise when men use fear as an excuse to not do what they know they should.
You do not get a reward for being scared. No one pats the back of the fearful man, or looks at him with admiration and inspiration. No man is excused from acting righteously just because he is scared to do so. It is wrong to let fear keep men from being virtuous, but it is not wrong to be filled with fear. Fear is a tool.
All negative emotions should be transmuted into positive actions.
Men do not face many situations today that are as fear inspiring as what the Israelites encountered when they prepared to conquer Canaan. They were told to have no fear as they were heading to battle (Joshua 10:25). They had to fight hand-to-hand and eye-to-eye with their adversaries. Death by hand-held weapon would be most painful.
Men are commanded to stand face to face with what they fear, and attack it. They must charge at the source of their terror and cast it down at their feet, destroy it and replace it with strength and bravery. This is the goal. Even if the fear cannot be eliminated, men can become braver and stronger.
Courage is an action.
Men have no courage while they are sitting on the couch. Men have no bravery from thinking about what they should do. The courage only comes when you take action. Like anything else in your faith, you must take action for it to be effective. Faith is not possible without action, neither is salvation. If a man wants courage, he has to assault his fears and face them by his own free will. While courage is an action, fear is just an emotion.
Mantra
Courage is growing in my mind. Fear has no place here in my thoughts.
Application
Put yourself in the middle of what you fear. You must face your fear voluntarily, it cannot be forced upon you. You must choose of your own free will to have courage and experience what you fear, this is how courage is built. Do not expect overnight results in anything you try to do. Sure, some people can radically change themselves overnight whilst embodying pure motivation, but that is usually not the common man. Get to work today. Slowly build your courage over successive days of efficient action. This is the only way to build anything: one brick before the next until you have a house. Grow your courage. Expand your possibilities. Improve and sharpen your mind. Eviscerate your fear. Strengthen your will. Be a man.
“The way to make people resilient is by voluntarily exposing them to things they are afraid of and that make them uncomfortable”. ~ Jordan Peterson.
Identify Fear (Fear of talking to others)
Identify the smallest action you can take in facing that fear (Looking at pictures or reading actricles about talking to others.
Plan the action (Write down a few things to say to someone else)
Take Action (Talk to the other person. Go over your lines and work from there).
Some men resent the birth of their children, as it reduces the amount of sex they get in marriage. Some men resent their families, since they are the reason he has to grind away at the 9-5 that is eating his soul. Many men resent the church, more than they would care to admit. Worship is an inconvenience to them. It takes away their Sunday, one of their only off-days from work and forces them to exist around people that annoy them more than any other people.
Contempt is a deadly disease closely related to holding a grudge for an extended period of time. Because both exist within the individual and can live for years without him even knowing they are there. You might feel the slight gnawing feeling every time your alarm clock goes off on a Sunday and you have to get dressed to be around people who claim to wear the name of Christ but in reality take no action for their faith.
Chronic contempt eventually leads man to forsake the church.
Eventually, the weight of the monotony, boredom and restriction disintegrates the mind until man can take no more. He resents the church for robbing him of his freedom. Everything they want to do in life has been taken away by God with the promise of something better, some future reward, if only they can learn to wait and restrain themselves.
This restriction is the breeding ground for contempt. The feeling that we are missing out on the few things in life that are actually enjoyable: Sex, alcohol, drugs, freedom are what the God appears to take away from man. Man believes he has a hope for salvation, but in his heart of hearts he knows that he has no idea what will happen on judgement day. He knows the God who destroys without mercy, and assumes that he himself will also be destroyed without mercy. Man rejects the church because of these thoughts. He rejects the church because of contempt.
Men don’t just get up and leave the church because of some huge argument, a church split or personal problem. They leave because of the slow decay of contempt that has been rotting their faith for years. The resentment for the church and its people grows daily, until one day the man can take no more and he leaves the church. This was not an overnight transformation. Very few great trees fall because they are split by a lightning strike, most fall because of the slow decay of insects feeding on them until one day they no longer have the structural support to stand. Such is the way of the contemptful man and his faith. We must avoid this poison of contemptuousness at all costs.
Mantra
Contempt is a slow death that must be eliminated.
Application
Take a good look in the mirror, into your soul and search out the contempt you may have within yourself. If you are not self-aware, you may not notice the damage that contempt is doing to you over time. Awareness, again, is key. Vigilance is the only way to take note of the disease of contempt and attempt to purge it from the soul.
In many cases, the awareness alone will cure the contempt, in other cases you must trace your resentment to the root.
Why are you resentful? Possibly because God has placed massive regulation on the way you can live, and it seems like your freedom is taken from you. This is a source of contempt for many a man. But remember, anything worth gaining requires restriction. A tremendous physiques requires dietary restriction. To become a doctor requires restrictions on time and enjoyable activities to make time for work. Nothing great is ever built without restrictions in other areas of life.
You must master this and rearrange the thoughts in your mind. Change the routine of thought into something else. Hotwire those thoughts before they follow their set pattern into death. Be a Man.
Identify the source of your personal contempt (Having to go to church/restrictions on sex etc.).
Trace the source of contempt to the root by asking and answering questions in your mind (why do these restrictions make me feel contemptful? Am I mad about the restrictions on sex or am I simply embarrassed because of my chastity? Maybe the problem is my embarrassment).
Begin undoing these thoughts in your mind. Cut them off from the source and do not allow the thoughts to even start. If they do start, short circuit them by running through your questions from #2 and recognizing the irrationality of those thoughts.
Too many men are unwilling to learn from the world. They avoid reading secular texts or digesting worldly philosophy. They do so at their own peril and only reduce the growth of their minds.
You have probably heard statements made in the church like “Why remember song lyrics? If you can remember those then you should be able to remember plenty of Bible verses”. This is a real statement a minister said to me when I was young. While that is true, the implication is that you should not be learning anything from the world.
Church members will do the same thing if you start reading secular philosophy. Heaven forbid that you should read Nietzsche or Neil DeGrasse Tyson since they do not agree exactly with everything we say. By that logic, these same people should discourage American Generals from studying Asian battle tactics or some other enemies strategies. You cannot defeat the opposition if you know nothing about them.
This type of mentality in the church has retarded the mental and argumentative growth of its members.
They no longer know how to rationally argue their points and attack the views of the world, and their knowledge is limited to that which they may acquire in the church (which isn’t much, as scientists tend not to be Christians).
We have a great deal of knowledge about the world available to us. It would be asinine to try to confine everything we need to learn to what we can glean in the church. There is no way for us to live and survive in the world if we only relied on other Christians for knowledge. They don’t know everything. This is not irreverent or disrespectful, it is true.
Legendary Japanese Swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote “If you know the Way well, you will see it in all things”.
Not only is this a quote that most Christians don’t know because of their unwillingness to read secular texts, it is also a great insight to Christianity itself. While Musashi was writing about the Way of war or swordplay, it can easily apply to the Way of Christianity. If you know the Way of Christianity well, you will see it in all things. You will see Christian principles in all the secular texts you read and in the worldly philosophy you encounter. Unfortunately, most Christians do not know the way well, so they see it in nothing.
There are a plethora of secular men who conduct themselves in a moral manner that are good role models for the Christian. This is because God has instilled a natural morality in man even if he does not follow the Way. Some individuals in the church would fear if you were being inspired by the “heathen”, which only reveals their ignorance of reality. In a church where there are no longer masculine role models, no longer any real men, no longer any free thinking individuals, you must be inspired by men of the world. Combine their admirable traits with your faith to be the man that the church needs, and repopulate the church with men, and purge it of the effeminate, corpulent eunuchs who wrongfully refer to themselves as servants of God.
Mantra
To grow in knowledge is to destroy the enemy.
Application
Know the way. You must first know what you believe and why you believe it before you can learn from all possible sources in the world. Do this, and you are ahead of 99% of modern day so-called Christians.
Start reading secular works of philosophy, there are plenty to choose from, and they are packed with wisdom that you otherwise never would have known about by simply listening to mindless religious men. This knowledge will make you more capable in argument and in cultivating your own philosophy. You must discover what it is that you believe to be true, otherwise you will be destroyed. Learn your philosophy. Gain Knowledge. Be a Man. Learn from the world
Pick up any book by Friedrich Nietzche/Ayn Rand/Stephen Hawking and start reading it. Learn to reason through their works with your own mind and discover your own counterarguments.
Absorb power through secular philosophy. You will always be limited in your growth if you are limited to religious writers.
Combine secular knowledge with your faith. Combine elements that you read with principles in scripture to create a hybrid philosophy as strong as titanium.
“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.”
“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.
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.
