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Learn Lessons From Secular Men

Christians think we should only model ourselves after other Christians, and never after secular men. That would be to our detriment if we were trying to learn how to be successful in the world.

“Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.”
1 Corinthians 10:11

“If you know the way broadly, you see it in all things”
Miyamoto Musashi

Most people in the Church would shriek in horror if you so much as mentioned the idea that you have men who inspire you who are not Christians.

You are inspired by a non-religious war hero? “How dare you!”

A secular athlete inspires you to take better care of your body? “Heretic!”

A successful man of the world provides a good model for material success? “You materialistic fiend!”

The thinking in the Church is often so dogmatic and narrow minded in many facets that it handicaps the faith socially. No one wants to be around those “weird, religious people”. Who wants to spend time around people who constantly demonize the world instead of improving it.

I think there absolutely is something to be said about being a “peculiar people” as a result of behaving righteously, but we take it to a whole other level when we go out of our way to be peculiar.

It’s the difference between someone who studies to get a good grade and someone who studies to understand a subject.

In going out of our way to be peculiar we have placed the peculiarity itself above the Christian disciplines and practices that cause us to be peculiar in the first place. We make peculiarity the goal instead of making righteous the goal. Our focus should be on being Christians first and foremost, and a by-product of this lifestyle just so happens to be peculiarity.

All of this to say, it does not rob us of our peculiarity when we learn lessons from secular men, either historically or ones who still live. It is not wrong to learn from secular men, we do it all the time. It is not wrong to be inspired by secular men, because often secular men are more successful than religious men. This is a result primarily of statistics, because there are far more secular men than Christian men. It just so happens that successful people are more likely to be worldly. This does not mean we cannot still be inspired by them.

The second reason for worldly men being more successful than Christian men is the fact that the majority of 21st century Christians lack the work ethic of our Christian forerunners in earlier centuries.

People use the Bible’s command to avoid worldliness, greed, and materialism as an excuse to justify their slothfulness.

We should also remember that lessons come in two primary parts: Learning what to do, and learning what not to do. We can learn both kinds from men both inside and outside the church. Every man is a walking lesson, regardless of his spirituality. Just because someone does not have salvation does not mean we cannot learn from them. Why do you think we study history? Be a man by learning from all men.

Mantra

Every moment has a lifetime of lessons.

Application

First you have to rid yourself of prejudice. You think you are better than others because you possess salvation. Wrong. You are just as much of a loser as them. What are you without salvation? Nothing? Then your worth has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the gift of salvation that has been given to you. Rid yourself of ego; embrace humility.

Find some role models who inspire you. You may have a hard time finding great role models in the Church.

Every Christian wants to tell you to have good role models, yet none of them want to be role models themselves.

List out men who inspire you. Write them down as a list and then to the side of each name write out the characteristics you find inspiring. No single man can be a role model of everything. Take all the traits you find most admirable and then think about what that would look like if one man possessed them all. You are now visualizing the ideal man. Try to imitate this Ideal Man every day, and you will find that you improve.

Every interaction with your fellow man is a learning opportunity. You will either learn how to be or you will learn how not to be. Both are equally valuable because they catalyze action. Learning is rooted in awareness and vigilance. You cannot capitalize on learning opportunities if you are not aware of their existence. Once you notice the lesson, you must apply it. Without these two foundational principles, growth will be limited. Be a man, learn always.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Ego: A Defining Trait of a Weak Man

Ego is a hallmark of the beta male. Church youth groups are teeming with ego, you can smell it on them. Wherever you find ego, you can be sure you have found an individual with significant insecurity or stupidity.

Ego is a hallmark of the beta male. Church youth groups are teeming with it and you can smell it on them. Wherever you find ego, you can be sure you have found an individual with significant insecurity or stupidity. The confident man has no need of ego. Ego is an outwardly expressed overcompensation for inner emptiness.

“Pride comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.
Proverbs 16:18

“The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled).”
Isaiah 2:12

Ego is what some refer to as “bad pride”.

There is a good type of pride that is fulfillment in your work. There is the negative pride of ego that leads you to believe you are good at something or better than someone. Men who have even a small amount of self awareness know they can constantly improve, and so they reject any type of ego.

There are different levels of ego. The mildest is the boastful form.

This form is found in the lowest of all males; the males who no female would ever mate with. They have the need to talk about themselves or their “accomplishments”, as if anyone in a one-thousand mile radius even cares at all. These men are deluded about how impressive their accomplishments are.

Young men brag about what sport they play (because doing what hundreds of thousands of other males do obviously sets them apart).

They brag about how many girlfriends they have had or how much money they are making. They boast in superficial accomplishments that no one will remember in ten minutes, much less ten years.

Middle aged men brag about their kids. The older man’s children absorbed his entire life so now he is forced to live vicariously through them. He has no pride in what he does, only in his kids. These men do not understand how uninterested in his kids all other men are.

Older men brag about what they did ‘back in their day’ in order to justify their lack of success in the present moment. Low-level ego is spread across all age groups. Low-level ego is a marker for low character and low intelligence.

Another level of ego is the person who gets offended constantly.

Why are your ideas so important that you must be emotionally “Offended” when someone else has a different idea? Why are your philosophies so intertwined with your personality and character that an individual cannot question your ideas without questioning your personally? Here is the answer: your ideas aren’t important; consider putting your ego to death.

KEY: Any idea that is weak and built on unstable grounds must be supported by combining it with emotionalism. Atheism is a prime example of this. Atheists hold beliefs that blatantly violate natural law (Big bang = 1st & 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, possible Newton’s 1st law, Law of Causality. Spontaneous generation = violates the Law of Biogenesis), and as a result, they are forced to become militant and emotional about their faith in order to justify it. You see this in modern politics as well, where men attack each other’s character instead of questioning one another’s ideas using rationality and a genuine desire for the truth, instead of a desire to hit the opponent with a zinger.

More subtle levels of ego would include simply being defensive at criticism. Why are you being defensive? Ego. Why do you dislike criticism? Ego. “But I have a highly sensitive personality”, no you don’t, you have a weak personality and a huge ego.

Even if you are sensitive, no man may justify his failure or a negative character trait by blaming his personality, that behavior is for the weak.

Ego is the mark of a boy, not a man. Become a man by putting the ego to death or you will die.

Mantra

I walk in humility, and my ego is fading to dust.

Application

Awareness of your own ego is going to be one of your best tools for bringing it under your power. Notice yourself boasting about your petty accomplishments, getting offended by the statements of others or becoming defensive at their criticisms. Noticing your problems is a key to victory in the war of converting those problems into power.

Some men may even find that simply by becoming aware of their ego, it went away. Men who notice it are often so disgusted by how it truly looks that they stop letting their ego determine their actions. They are able to see themselves from the outside.

How am I appearing to others?
How will this statement be taken?
Am I talking about myself in conversation?
Is my tone arrogant?

These are all questions you must ask yourself regularly to exercise the muscle of self-awareness necessary to bring your “bad pride” into submission. Ego stands in the way of your ability to gain power, both personal and worldly.

Shut down your negative character traits one at a time.

Start by killing your boasting habit if you are on that level of character development. Kill that form of ego before moving onto the more slippery and subtle manifestations. Whatever you do, utterly destroy that ego from the face of the earth.

When you interact with others with ego, do not get annoyed. Know that you have found a person with profound weakness of character. This is a man who is either insecure, stupid or both. There is no point in attacking this person directly, you will only enrage him. The way you help this individual is by taking indirect routes of attack and flanking the ego. Do not say to him, “You are really arrogant. You need to work on that ego”. You will only create an enemy if you do this. Instead, outline the benefits of being a man of humility. You have to appeal to the other person’s self-interest or they will not care what you have to say. Just know, that unless a man is willing to change and reduce his ego, there is very little point in trying to help him.

Conduct yourselves like Men

Consistency

Maintaining your good habits every day is a key to success.

Consistency beaks inconsistent intensity.

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
Galatians 6:9

“When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.
Daniel 6:10

Are you still committed to your plan to change yourself into a more masculine and capable man? Have you kept reading this book each day? Have you applied the ideals of masculinity and focused your mind on becoming a better man? Or like so many other weak-willed, weak-minded individuals in the Church, have you given up because the change is too hard or because you simply missed a day of Bible reading? Streaks in and of themselves do not matter if you are not improving in a way that can be measured.

Men, consistency and intensity will destroy volume every day in terms of sheer production.

There are some men who read large chunks of Bible a couple times a month, but they will lose out to the man who reads a chapter every day. Men who are “weekend warriors” with their physical training are almost never fast, strong or intelligent.

The weak cannot stick to their goals. The weak talk about “challenge” and spiritual nonsense the instant before they utterly fail as men and fail in their efforts to change themselves. Maintaining your good habits every day is a key to success. No matter how small the habits are when you begin, and no matter how much you are doing currently, what matters most is being consistent with those habits every single day.

You do not miss days; missing days is for the weak. You are not “too tired”; tiredness is for ancient men. You are not “too busy”; being too busy is nothing more than you either lying to yourself or being too weak to tell other people “no”. You don’t have “other things to do”; reorder your priorities or be forgotten forever.

You do not have any excuses; excuses are for beta males who look for anything but themselves to blame for the way their lives have turned out. This is your life, take ownership of it and be consistent every day into transforming it into something great. You will be making exponential progress while the betas in church manipulate the virtue “contentment” to justify their laziness and complacency in their own lives.

Mantra

Every day, consistency, focus, and progress are in my hands.

Application

If you are having trouble with consistency, cut out all habits except one and focus on it every day until you can do it automatically and without fail. Automaticity is the key. You want to build a habit to the point where it takes very little effort to start it. This automation does not make the habit easy, it just makes it easier to initiate the habit every day. Your physical training may be very difficult, but it should not be a massive internal struggle to show up to your training grounds.

You can build this automaticity by making your desired habit extremely small.

If you are trying to read Scripture every day, you need to start with one verse per day. This strategy flies in the face of what almost everyone in society does. They want to begin with some monstrous goal and they are shocked when they fail and cannot sustain the discipline. The key to consistency is to be start so small that it seems insignificant. You are not directly building the habit of reading Scripture every day, you are actually building the habit of consistency. This consistency will serve as the framework for the other habits you will start.

Always add additional work slowly.

Do not add more Scripture until you can handle it. Once you can handle one verse a day, move to two verses a day. If you cannot sustain two verses, go back to one until you build the strength to handle it. It may seem silly to suggest that people cannot handle two verses per day, but remember that if you are like most Christians, you have not been able to sustain even one verse per day for most of your life. Lay one brick at a time. Don’t worry about the end state, worry about developing consistency.

Conduct yourselves like men.

The Masculine Desire for War

Weak men in the Church have a habit of denying reality. They deny the innate need of man to wage war against something – against anything – to raise his sword and utterly destroy an enemy that stands before him, even if that enemy is himself. The desire to kill is in the nature of man.

“a time for war and a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3:8b

“You are my war club, my weapon for battle— with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms.”
Jeremiah 51:20

“Contend, LORD, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Take up shield and armor; arise and come to my aid. Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me. Say to me, “I am your salvation.” May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame, may those who plot my ruin be turned back in dismay. May they be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away; may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them. Since they hid their net for me without cause and without cause dug a pit for me, may ruin overtake them by surprise— may the net they hid entangle them, may they fall into the pit, to their ruin. Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD and delight in his salvation.”
Psalm 35: 1-9

Weak men in the Church have a habit of denying reality.

They deny the innate need of man to wage war against something – against anything – to raise his sword and utterly destroy an enemy that stands before him, even if that enemy is himself. The desire to kill is in the nature of man.

The Church wants to repress the warlike nature of man in the same way they have repressed the sex drive of men for hundreds of years. They fear both because it takes away their power and control over the younger generations and over the “uncontrollable” drives of man. This is incompetence at its finest.

What happened when the Church repressed sex and refused to even mention its existence? Did it successfully suppress men’s sexual urges and increase overall sexual purity or did it cause men to push back even harder saying, “I am not listening to this blithering, the men in the Church are just as miserable as I am. I’m not waiting for sex”.

KEY: Every time the Church wants to suppress some alleged “evil”, that same evil grows even faster.

Not only does it grow, but it becomes dark and all consuming in the minds of those who suppress it until the Church loses the war against that evil. Waitingtillmarriage.org shared some data that suggested only 20% of the members of highly religious communities are successfully waiting for marriage. Does it look like sexual repression is working for the Church?

Repression does not work with sexual drives, and it will not work in subverting your warlike nature. If you are not a man who is going to engage in a real physical fight, the best you can hope for is to find a personal war into which you can channel your barbaric desire for bloodshed.

Fight your evil nature. Wage war in your work and destroy mediocrity. You must have something to fight, so make your war result in the construction of positive qualities of character.

Mantra

I Destroy whatever stands in opposition to me with strength.

Application

The internal anger you feel and the desire to go to war are incredibly powerful forces that you must channel into a constructive pursuit. If you do not channel them somewhere, they will destroy you from within. The easiest way to redirect your warlike nature is to channel it into something physical, such as training. Get your lazy, weak minded self into physical exercise. You cannot fully be a man if you do not possess some level of strength. There is no excuse for a man to be weak. It doesn’t even matter what kind of training you do, just do something. That physical training will then spill over into mental fortitude.

Wage war in the workplace. When you begin to tire and mentally accept mediocre work, call upon your aggression.

This emotion will override the desire to quit or to be lazy. When you are typing that essay for school and you want to stop, conjure your warlike nature and type as if the words you are writing are weapons. When you are exercising and approaching muscular failure, call upon your internal warlord. If you cannot channel aggression with something as simple and silly as typing an essay or training the body, you will not be able to channel it at all. Then that extreme energy will force an outlet in some unproductive endeavor like promiscuity or drugs.

Practice controlling and directing your internal energies on small tasks, and you can then easily apply it to large tasks.

References:

Mike. “4 Cool Statistics About Abstinence in the USA.” Waitingtillmarriage.org, 30 Nov. 2012.

The Crutch of Accountability

Accountability is useful up to a point, after which it becomes a crutch.

“But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load.”
Galatians 6:4-5

“He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.”
1 Corinthians 3:8

Accountability is overrated, and it is the opposite of ownership. Accountability means someone needs help from others to get things done or to stay disciplined. People won’t stop looking at porn unless they have “accountability”. They will not commit to disciplines and do the work without some kind of accountability hanging over their head.

Now I am not attacking pure, isolated accountability; I attack the ideas of men who use accountability as a crutch rather than a tool. Men who cannot do anything without someone having to babysit them.

Ownership in Christianity is the ability of the individual to be autonomous in his integrity and character.

The Man does not need to be chauffeured around by his accountability partners, he is self-moving. He does not need the support group to stick to his disciplines every day.

Accountability partners exist merely to alleviate the guilt you feel when you fail to be disciplined in your life. Fail to quit drinking? Confess to the accountability group and the guilt is gone. Fail to quit having sex with women who are not your wife? Confess it and you are free. There is nothing wrong with confession, but if you confess like that then you are using confession as a tool to alleviate your personal guilt rather than a tool to improve yourself.

Are there situations in which men really need help, situations where men truly cannot move on their own? Yes. And I am not attacking those situations. But are those situations the majority? No. They are the exception, not the rule. Most men simply use those situations as an excuse. They say, “Well that’s me. I need the support group. I need the 12 week rehab program”. No, you need ownership. You need discipline. You need to stop outsourcing your discipline to other people like the rest of the naked mole rats around you.

If you condition yourself to only do what is right, to only work when you have accountability, then you are setting yourself up for failure.

Because there will arise tremendous tests in your life and you will be unprepared. Why? Because you had too much accountability, and not enough ownership.

Your character does not have the structural integrity to stand on its own against the hurricane of temptation, so you crumble. Excess of accountability weakens men. It converts them to weak boys. Men don’t sit around talking about their problems, they just take action.

Stop the accountability, you don’t need it. Start taking some ownership. Invest in yourself rather than in the group. Then in time you will be more valuable to the group, should you choose to go back.

Mantra

Own your problems. They are only yours.

Ownership. Responsibility. Accountability.

Application

Take personal responsibility for every single detail of your life. You are not allowed to place one drop of blame on anyone but yourself for the way your life currently is. If you don’t like the way your life turned out, look in the mirror at whose fault that is.

You have to commit to small disciplines every day. Take responsibility for your own behaviors and actions and start working to improve yourself. Build disciplines that you keep always, without fail, this is the construction of character. Performing these disciplines alone, with no help is the result of ownership. And Ownership is the very thing you need. You will never get to a point where you can stand on your own in great endeavours unless you begin to be disciplined every day in small endeavors that no one knows about.

That’s right, tell no one about your disciplines.

No one needs to know unless they ask directly. This strategy opposes the popular “Tell everyone what you are doing so they can hold you accountable” philosophy. If you need external motivation to complete your disciplines, you do not have enough ownership.

Memorize scripture daily.
Read no less than a minimum fixed amount of Bible every day .
Read a fixed amount of secular non-fiction, informative literature each day.
Train the body.
Write.
Think.
Contemplate and Meditate.

Have discipline in any of these areas, then add more discipline.
Keep to these disciplines with no help from “accountability partners”.

Be a man. A man can be a man without help from other weak men.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

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