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Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.”
2 Timothy 2:3 & 4

One of the problems with most men is the fact that they have negative self-talk and do not demand enough from themselves. We fail ourselves often because our standards are not high enough. In fact, most men cannot even reach low standards, much less the maximum standard that is required of a Christian man. What men need to do to combat this is to develop their inner drill sergeant.

A drill sergeant is a man who pushes army recruits through the army boot camp. A drill instructor is one who pushes marine recruits through the marine boot camp. You can watch a handful of videos online and see that these instructors seem like they are totally insane, but what they are doing to the men is completely controlled and calculated. Let us examine a few of the purposes of a drill instructor or sergeant and then learn why we must develop our own drill instructor in our minds.

A Drill Instructor Simulates the Panic of War

One of the purposes of boot camp is to get men used to the mayhem and chaos that they will experience in combat scenarios. Drill Instructors cannot give the men the actual experience of launching live fire (i.e. real bullets) at them, but they can give them the next best thing. Battle sounds, screaming, smoke and hard training can give men a basic introduction to combat.

A Drill Instructor Simulates Stresses and Hyper-Stimulates the Senses

Combat is no place for Zen meditation. Calmness and coolness under pressure are learned by being put under pressure, not by meditating on a soft pillow in a cool room with nature sounds coming from a noise machine. A drill instructor has to make sure that men are adapting and adjusting to combat sounds and stress. Men need to learn how to be calm during dangerous scenarios. The ability to be cool when you are in imminent danger is the type of skill that saves lives.

A Drill Instructor Accepts No Excuses

Blood could be dripping off your face. You could be vomiting on the ground or you could pass out from heat or dehydration, but it does not matter. You are expected to finish the job, training scenario or drill. Because even if you are bleeding, puking or passing out, the enemy will not call a “time out” and fan you back to consciousness while squirting water in your mouth. Men must learn to handle the physical demands of war or die. Drill instructors know this and will accept no excuses.

A Drill Sergeant Pushes Men Beyond the Limits of Their Limits

It is one thing to “go to the limit”, as if any of us truly knows what that is. But it is a completely different scenario to be pushed so far beyond your current “limitations” that you wonder how you could have been holding yourself back all these years. A drill sergeant will do just that for you. He will show you that the point where you thought you could do no more was just the beginning. He does not do this to torture you, he does this to show you that your limits are far beyond where you think they are now.

A Drill Sergeant is Brutal on The Men

Men are never physically assaulted by their drill sergeants, but that does not mean that they are given mental rest. The sergeant speaks to the men like dogs and trains them to ignore any outside stimulation. The only way the recruits can become hard is if they are treated brutally.

A Drill Sergeant Makes the Men Tougher

No one comes out of bootcamp as soft as they were before. That is the whole point of the training. You do not want to send men to war in the mental and physical condition that were in as civilians. Men must get tough if they are going to kill other men.

Recommended Reading: The Masculine Desire For War

Mantra

I will never accept “Good Enough” from myself.

Application

Even if you are like me and have never served in the military, it is still easy to appreciate everything these men endure for the greater good. It is easier to be grateful for the military now that we have countless documentaries that have recorded what these men went through and accomplished in their lives. You will find that thankfulness comes much easier after you watch a few video clips of men going through boot camp and being screamed at and trained at high levels. When you gain knowledge of the difficulties that others face in their lives, then it is much easier to be thankful for your own life and its luxury.

What you must do today is work to develop your own drill sergeant in your mind.

It does not matter what you think you are capable of now, you need a voice in your head that will always tell you the following truths:

You are not working hard enough, you can do more.
You have not reached your limitations; there is more effort left in your tank.
Whatever your current work output is, you should double it.
There is no honor in being weak and apathetic.
You have the responsibility to lead other men; would you follow yourself?
Your character is not good enough, work harder.
Your strength is not enough, train harder.
You must contribute more value to the world, learn and apply yourself.

The second you begin to feel yourself getting weak, you should imagine your sergeant is in your head and examining your current effort. Is he impressed by your intensity or embarrassed by your weakness?

The easiest place to learn to apply this principle is in your physical training. You are performing your exercise of choice and it begins to be painful. You reach your “limit” and consider stopping for the day.

Pull Out the Mental Drill Sergeant

That voice in your head should be screaming at you by this point. “This current level of effort is completely unacceptable. Is this how you take advantage of your freedom, by quitting like a pantywaist? No. You are better and stronger than that. Keep moving.”

Note: this is not negative self-talk. You are not telling yourself what a failure you are. You are telling yourself how much more you are capable of and expect of yourself. By telling yourself that there is more that you can achieve and that you are capable of working harder, you learn to tap into that extra work ethic you have buried in your mind.

You can eventually apply the same techniques to your spiritual life.

The minute you feel yourself slacking in your spiritual disciplines, unleash the sergeant. “Do you really think reading one single Bible verse is making you more spiritual? You are better than that. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you ‘don’t have time’ because you have plenty of time. You would not expect to improve your body by training for one minute, so do not expect to improve your soul by reading for 8 seconds. Work harder. You are capable of more”.

Apply the same principle to other areas of your life. If you find yourself losing control over yourself (Note Galatians 5:22) then you should be hearing the voice in your head: “No real man loses control over himself. You are capable of commanding your emotions. If you want a better life, then you better start controlling yourself. Have some character and improve because this current behavior is unacceptable”. You get the picture for how to apply this. It does not really matter what you are saying to yourself in your mind as long as it drives you to work harder.

Learning to push yourself in this way does not happen instantaneously. The biggest mistake so many people make when beginning any new technique or habit like this is that they expect instant, massive results in exchange for minimal effort. What you should aim for is small amounts of progress each day.

If you pushed yourself farther and harder than yesterday, then consider the day a success.

If you got your mental drill sergeant to yell at you a little and drive you harder, then consider the day a success.

By making small progress every day, you will eventually look up and notice that you have completely left your peer group behind. Now you need a new peer group of men who want to perform better and achieve more in their personal lives and careers. So, get moving now and leave your peer group behind. You do not want your life to be limited by their influence on you.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Good Conscience

“Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a good conscience; in all things desiring to live honorably”.
Hebrews 13:19

“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
1 Timothy 1:15

“Holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith”
1 Timothy 1:19

While good consciences are over-promoted in the Church, we still cannot leave them out of this discussion. Because even though there are instances of bad consciences mentioned in the Bible, there is also much scripture recording the existence and importance of a functioning conscience.

Note: some scriptures that speak about a this promote the idea that conscience must be maintained (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and that if left to its own devices the it would lend itself to evil, much like the very nature of man. If you are going to use your conscience regularly, you must be sure that it is good, working, and actually pointing you in the right direction. Because, as we have noted, if your it is evil, defiled or seared, it will lead you directly into the mouth of sin.

A well functioning conscience can be a great tool, because instead of having to think logically or run a cost-benefit analysis about an action, you can listen to that “little voice in your head” or that “feeling in your heart”.

This is not possible for all people. Many people don’t have any internal direction, so to tell them to listen to a voice inside their head is absurd. But if you have a good conscience, you can use it as a quick tool to discern between good and evil.

While not everyone has a good conscience, acquiring one should be a goal of the Christian man. Apostles have written about having a good conscience and have attested to its value and usefulness.

This does not contradict the other sections about conscience. All conscience types exist in people.

Mantra

A good conscience is efficient for life.

Application

Even though conscience is necessary, having a good conscience is still a noble and worthy goal. Even if merely for the advantage of being able to make moral decisions faster. I cannot tell you how to acquire one.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Read on! Next: The War Against The Self

The Defiled Conscience

“To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled”.
Titus 1:15

This verse speaks primarily about the unbelieving man, implying that purity of mind and conscience is contingent upon belief in the Word. This makes logical sense, as the Word is filled with various moral directions. But God also instilled a sense of morality in most men, regardless of whether or not they believe in him.

Why does God include moral directions in His words to us? Because without that direction, we would not naturally know how to behave. Our nature pulls us towards evil (Promiscuous sex/theft etc.), and the Bible commands us to resist this nature. This is a key idea: the conscience itself must be cultivated, because otherwise it lends itself to sin. What good is a conscience that points us in the wrong direction? These men have defiled, dysfunctional consciences.

The conscience can be polluted.

Each of these sections on conscience should teach us that the conscience itself is malleable, which means it can either be made into a tool, or corrupted into an evil-seeking device. This is one reason why we should not put too much trust in conscience, because we cannot always definitively prove that it is pointing us in the right direction.

The main point of our discussion about each of the conscience types is this: Conscience itself is not action, it is not a substitute for action, and by itself it will never gain salvation for your soul. Salvation can only be acquired by taking action. Neither faith, hope or good intentions can save you if you do not follow the simple salvation outline in the Bible. Obedience based action must be taken in order to claim the free gift of salvation. Whether or not your conscience is good or bad does not matter if you are not taking any action.

Mantra

Action is greater than feelings.

Application

Action will always override any emotional feeling you have. Conscience is an emotional tool, and should be treated like any other emotion. We should not deify conscience, for salvation is not found in it. We should not promote the necessity of conscience to other people, because we do not know what state their conscience is in. If we tell an individual with an evil or defiled conscience to “listen to their conscience”, they will end up doing evil.

This is your task: reject the dogma of the mandatory conscience. You will give account for your deeds, not the way you felt about them. Take action. Do good. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men

The Evil Conscience

“Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Hebrews 10:22

How could this be? A conscience that is evil? The traditionalists are going to faint when they hear about this! Could it be that there is such a thing as a conscience that directs man to do what is evil instead of what is good? Absolutely. Just as it is possible to have a broken compass that points east instead of north.

The Old Testament talks about men whose hearts desired nothing but evil continually (Genesis 6:5). These men were later annihilated by the flood. Think about Sodom and Gomorrah: do you think those guys were interested in doing what was right based on their conscience? They were only interested in sex with any man or woman they could find. Don’t be surprised, this is what the heart, mind and conscience of man can degenerate into.

The conscience of man can be such that instead of leading you to do what is right, it leads you to do what is evil. Again, like the Seared Conscience, you can either develop an evil conscience or be born with it. The difference between the seared and evil conscience is that a seared conscience is devoid of guilt or without regret from doing what is wrong, or the conscience itself is silent; an evil conscience, however, directs the heart of man towards evil instead of good, doing the opposite of what a normal, functioning conscience would do.

In theory: A good conscience keeps us from doing wrong because it is a voice within that directs us towards the right action.

An evil conscience desires for us to do what is wrong constantly, and because of this desire, there is no guilt associated with committing whatever evil deed your heart desires.

You would be surprised to hear that such a conscience is actually quite prevalent in the Church. Because it is easy to do evil and still walk into the assembly like there is nothing wrong. This is popular at highly liberal churches, which I tend to call “Adulterer’s Haven” churches, because many of them ignore the teachings of Christ on divorce and remarriage and allow anyone with an unscriptural marriage to enter their assembly.

An evil conscience will keep you sinning and give you no reason to change. All the popular tools of change endorsed by the Church (Guilt/Shame/Conscience/Fear) have been taken out of your toolbelt. According to them, you will not be able to progress. Without an overwhelming sense of guilt, how will you change?

This statement gives you a bird’s eye view into their ignorance of the subject. No emotion is necessary for change to occur, even though emotions can help on the path of change. However, guilt is uncommon for men, as it tends to be primarily a female emotion or one experienced by weak beta-males.

Men, you must grow, train, progress and improve with or without emotional help.

Few modern men know this. You aren’t going to feel like going to work every day, no one does, but you go anyway. No one is going to feel like working out every day, but you do it anyways. No man is going to feel like listening to and loving their wife every day, but they do it.

Men take action regardless of how they feel at the time. Regardless of all emotion, men must press on and do what is right. They must work, improve, train and move towards being the fully formed and functional men they need to be. Reject the weak man’s idea of conscience, embrace the rigid strength of discipline unaltered by feeling.

Mantra

Reject conscience, embrace action.

Application

If you have an evil conscience, you must do the opposite of what your conscience tells you to do. It is as simple as that. If your conscience is evil, it is pulling you towards evil action, so you must resist your conscience and oppose it in order to do what is right. Again, it does not matter if you feel like doing what is right, or if you want to, or what your motivation is, it only matters if you do what is right or not. What are your actions? They can be good or evil regardless of what kind of conscience you have.

Again, and at risk of being overly redundant, reject the idea of the necessity of conscience.

Conscience is a tool to be used for change, but change is possible without this tool. This is a principle fact of life. You must do what is right regardless of emotional states, including the emotional state of a conscience. You must focus and take action. Do what is right. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Seared Conscience

“Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron”
1 Timothy 4:2

“Trust your conscience”, your grandparents used to tell you – As if your conscience always tells the truth. “What does your conscience tell you to do?” your parents ask you when you ask them a difficult question about the course of action you should take; as if conscience is a sentient being that can answer you, instead of a mere emotion. The conscience is a minor feeling that rests in your gut.

What if your conscience has been damaged? Should you trust it then? Should you listen to it then? What if your conscience is not functioning and is temporarily, if not permanently, broken? Should we listen to the emotional dribble of a voice in our head which has been marred by scorching hot metal? No. This is classic dogma propagated by people in the church too weak and afraid to challenge the traditions that have been passed down through generations.

Your father taught you about conscience, just as his father, and his father before him, yet they were all dead wrong.

They all taught you lessons contrary to scripture. They failed to teach you about the reality of perverted consciences, of evil, vile and disgusting consciences. Preachers do not talk about seared consciences.

Some consciences are seared over ages of repetitive sin until nothing but a fragment of what once was a good conscience is left in the mind. The voice of this conscience is frail and fragile, and it can have no more influence over a man.

However, even more frightening than this are those who were born with a seared conscience. From birth they possess a dysfunctional moral compass. These people are classically known as psychopaths or sociopaths. To deny the existence of these individuals is to deny reality.

Maybe it was something in their genetic code. Perhaps the same way that diseases and mutations occur from the genes of an individual, so also a seared conscience generates from the very DNA of a man.

These individuals do exist in the Church today, and they have no idea what to do because they are taught that conscience is mandatory.

And those are just the individuals who feel guilty about their broken conscience, which itself seems to imply that there is some form of a conscience present. But do not confuse guilt with conscience. Those with damaged consciences have no internal, emotional guide, no Christian example, no role model of who to act like because the weak people perpetuate the myth of the obligatory conscience. This is a disgrace.

Defiled consciences (Titus 1:15-16), evil consciences (Heb 10:22), irrelevant consciences (Acts 23:1) and seared consciences are real entities. And guess what? You can receive salvation even if you possess one of these conscience types.

“Impossible!”, cries the traditionalist, “You must have the conscience to act morally”.

Wrong, you must simply know which actions are moral and which are not in order to act morally. Morality is not an emotion. It is an evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of an action based on logic. An evaluation that can be performed with or without that emotion known as ‘conscience’.

Mantra

Action is more important than any feeling I may feel.

Application

Again, purge your mind of the idea that conscience is necessary. It is simply another emotion that is a tool for growth, but not a requirement. Reject traditional conservatism that propagates the necessity of conscience. The irony of this is that the genre of Christianity so renowned for rejecting the emotionalism of liberals still preaches the necessity of the emotion of conscience.

Reject the liberalism that wallows in all emotions and deifies conscience as the gateway to change and righteousness. It is possible to ‘abstain from every form of evil’ (1 Thessalonians 5:22) without feeling positive or negative emotions about the experience. Obliterate all ideas of the requirement of conscience from your mind.

Again, all that matters is action.

What actions are you taking?

What are you doing?

Are you growing in skill?

Are you progressing in knowledge?

How can you prove to yourself that you are making progress?

These are the important questions. The answers to these questions are the answers that matter, not whether or not you are feeling like doing the right thing or not. Take action. Make progress. Do not get bogged down by the emotions of the weak beta male pew warmer. Be a Man.

This is your task: Work again on rejecting the dogma of the necessity of conscience.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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