Category: Christianity

If fun is the goal of your bible study, you will get nothing out of the study except fun. You will forget everything you “learned” and you will not benefit.

Nothing has to be fun in order to be productive.

I have been to a few bible studies where it became very apparent that the purpose of the “study” was socialization. We “studied” for about a half-hour and followed it up with two and a half hours of socializing. Now there is nothing wrong with socialization, but that is not the purpose of something called a study.

The goal and purpose of a bible study is to increase the knowledge of the Bible. Sometimes that is enjoyable and sometimes it is not. It does not matter either way. This is because study and training, even the study of biblical subjects, can be likened to your training in the gym. Sometimes it is fun to train and other times it is a drag. Sometimes you are motivated and the process is enjoyable, and other times training is simply focused work. At times you may have to spend most of your focus and energy just to maintain a moderate level of effort.

None of that matters. How you are feeling before, during, and after your study is irrelevant.

What matters is if you accomplished the goal you set or not. Did you complete the appropriate volume of work or not? Are you making progress towards your end-state goals or are you becoming stagnant?

The philosophy of liberalism teaches you that you are good just the way you are. The philosophy of the hardcore Christian should be one of constant improvement. Day in and day out you are taking steps towards your goal. No matter how small or insignificant those steps may seem, you are taking steps. That puts you miles ahead of the person who believes they are fine just the way they are. Those people have sat down and may never get back up to work towards their goals.

Productivity in the study of the Bible will never be limited based on the fun-ness of that specific activity.

You have to study hard enough to induce learning, and that is not always fun.

Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman talks about effort and learning in the podcast linked above. One of the most interesting things he notes is that when you are studying or trying to learn something new if you want to enter a period of time of aggressive, focused learning, you have to first walk through a barrier of mental discomfort. When you are first settling in to learn and are getting frustrated with the material, your brain releases epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline. This epinephrine release is what gives you that feeling of frustration and mental agitation.

But if you continue to press on and work through that feeling, you can enter a period of relative smoothness. It is not that your work suddenly becomes effortless, but you are no longer “out of the groove“, so to speak. You are in the groove and ready for efficient action.

Imagine that, in order to enter a state of hard focus, you must walk through that initial period of agitation and frustration.

And any human being who has attempted to learn something and has hit that wall of frustration knows that it is not fun.

But when it comes to our Bible study, we want everything to be all happy and fun and fine and dandy. But if our goal is results, mental improvement, and an increase of the knowledge of the Bible, we need to acknowledge that we will have to walk through those moments of frustration in order to get in the groove of working.

You have to train hard enough to induce muscle growth, and that is not always fun.

How does muscle growth relate to bible study? Here’s how:

Most people are familiar with the fact that if you want muscle growth in your body, you have to train hard enough to trigger the muscle growth process. In Exercise Physiology this is called the “stimulus threshold“. The basic idea is that you have to push to a certain level of effort in order to “flip on the light switch” of protein synthesis – otherwise known as muscle growth. And below this threshold, you will see very little, if any, muscle growth for your alleged “efforts“.

I postulate to you that your Bible training must be the same way. It must be to a certain intensity so that an increase in Bible knowledge is stimulated. You must push yourself so you can “flip on the lightswitch” for learning any subject, most importantly the subject of the bible.

If you decide not to train hard in the gym or in your study, you simply will not improve, it is as simple as that.

And this is where those who subscribe to the philosophy of liberalism find themselves time and time again. Theirs is a philosophy of comfort and ease. “Why push yourself to improve when you were built to fail?” the liberal may rhetorically ask. The merits of that argument can be discussed on another day, but the results of that attitude are brazenly apparent.

When you approach your study with a lackadaisical attitude motivated by the hippie-like philosophy of liberalism, you will not make any improvements for years. You may “read your bible every day“, allegedly, but you will make no progress. Because you simply did not push yourself hard enough to give your mind the necessary stimulus for growth and improvement.

When fun is prioritized over faith, you have the dysfunctional youth group model where no one knows anything.

The priority in the Bible study training model should be the improvement of biblical knowledge. When fun is made the priority, no one improves. And people fail to improve for years at a time while being around others who fail to improve for years at a time.

We call this the “youth group” – where fun is prioritized over faith. Where parents believe that 2 youth activities per week will stop their kids from having sex before marriage. And it comes as a great shock to them when their kids leave the church because they had no substance or foundation for their faith. They had no intensity imposed on them by their teachers. There was no need for the improvement of the individual because there was no enforced accountability – as low-value as accountability is.

But what will always happen is people will resort to the type of “work” that provides them with the most comfort in their lives. They will never pursue what seems overtly difficult or what will require the most effortful work.

This is why people gravitate towards the philosophy of liberalism – because it is one of ease and comfort. It is a philosophy of social acceptance and personal acceptance. There is no need for you to work on yourself and improve in those groups. Everyone is just as broken as you are, why move on and improve yourself and your life?

Fun should never be prioritized over your faith. The priority should be discipline, personal obedience, and personal improvement. The priority should be on the systems that create results rather than on the social events that provide nothing.

Set rigorous standards for yourself. Push yourself to read and focus more.

I – Start with the reading – read a small volume of Bible each day.

A small amount of Bible reading is better than no Bible reading. Even better is a small amount of bible reading combined with intensity. Arnold Schwarzenegger has famously stated that he could do one set of one exercise for one muscle and have it be more productive than someone else’s entire workout. He attributed this to the focus and intensity with which he would approach that single set. Another bodybuilder, Mike Mentzer, popularized a training protocol of one set per muscle per workout, as few as 2 times per week. Each set consisted of an all-out, max intensity effort that pushed the muscles to absolute failure.

Your Bible study can be the same way – put massive effort into a smaller volume and you will make progress. An extremely intense reading of ten verses will be more effective than a cursory reading of 4 chapters.

II – Incorporte memory work – you need to be writting the commands of God in your mind.

Do this through the focused work of memorization. Start with the aggressive bible verse collection.

It is popular in Bible study to do these cross-reference exercises where you link various passages to other passages in the Bible. This is a good exercise. But even more valuable is the memorization of Bible passages. There is no faster way to cross-reference the Bible than to have the entire length of the passages in your mind.

III – Hold yourself to a higher standard of behavior. Do not associate with people who mock at the strenuous life.

Enjoy the strenuous life as a man. You need to dive into the work with focused intensity. Others may look at your effort and what you are doing and try to discourage you. Some people will always try to discourage you from training too hard, working too hard, or trying too hard to succeed. This is only because your work ethic makes the feebleness of their work ethic painfully obvious to them. They never want to work, so they do not want you to work either.

If you start working you call into question their lethargy. They are forced to acknowledge that they are either lazy or that you are crazy for your effort. And much of the time people will remain in their fixed mindsets and call you crazy for your effort.

You must reject these people. Split from the pack. Do not worry about being a part of the group, you do not need the group. Your main concern is with the improvement of the self. If the group comes into conflict with that goal, you need to separate yourself from the group. Invest in your effort and it will pay you dividends always.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Leftists are everything they hate about religion. They do not necessarily hate what religion actually is, but rather what they think it is and how it is portrayed by popular culture. Leftists have no idea how to hate what religion is because they do not truly know what it is. It is difficult to hate a position you fully understand even though you may disagree with it because you can relate to the humanity of the individual holding the opposing view.

It has been said that people hate what they secretly know they truly are. Everyone has heard stories such as the preacher who ferociously spoke out against homosexuality yet later turned out to be a homosexual himself. While it is not always the case that we secretly are what we are strongly opposed to, sometimes hatred can a symptom. What leftists are actually hating is their own reflection in the mirror.

Some have postulated that Hitler himself was a Jew. Thus his life’s work was destroying the external representations of his internal, self-directed hatred.

Many times it is true that people are what they hate. And this is certainly true of people who are on the political left. Please note I mean the far political left. It is possible to be slightly left of center or even a little farther and also be a rational person who cares about those he/she disagrees with. But if you are just to the left of center politically, beware, the people on the far left may eat you. They eat their own, as we will discover later.

For the purpose of this discussion, the far left is socialism/marxism and it is these radical leftist positions are that we are speaking about. These groups hate God and they hate religion. Hillary Clinton wants you to keep your religion at home. Which for most people just means business as usual.

If only these far-left groups knew that they manifest all the behaviors they hate in religion today. Let’s take a look at this.

I – Leftists preach and Proselytize

“Be like me if you don’t want to be punished by the gods of shame and pop culture”.

Leftists are very concerned with spreading the idolatrous religion of leftist ideology all over the world. You have never witnessed this level of religious zeal anywhere else in your life. Like malignant cancer, they force their ideology onto anyone they find and are constantly making disciples as they go.

Even though leftists hate when Christians try to share the gospel with their neighbors, they feel fully entitled to spreading their doctrine of pseudo-equality and hatred to everyone. And if you do not listen, they will label you with some kind of “-ism” to shame you into compliance.

The Baals of modernity are the government, the environment and the self.

Leftists are always telling people why their way is the best way. Usually, the explanation is laced with more emotionality and gaslighting than rational thinking. And the gospel of the left is very contagious considering they are recruiting laymen at a rapid rate. This is understandable, the doctrine of unfairness and victimhood are appealing. Though they are never satisfying, they are nonetheless incredibly addictive.

Once people start down this road of victimization and blame, it is very difficult to get them to turn back. Because they will never realize that it is their flawed ideology that is leaving them unfulfilled. Instead of changing their ideology, they simply demand more payment. Some call it “reparations“, others call it “support“. However you want to label this behavior, it is human beings attempting to avoid working while still eating and maintaining maximum life pleasure.

It does not matter how empty they become, they will always try to fill the void with government subsidies, handouts and immorality. Rather than change their diseased ideology they persist in mediocrity and victimhood forever.

Leftists hate when you talk about your God, but they can never stop talking about their own gods. It is wrong for you to preach and proselytize, but leftists can engage in these behaviors as much as they want.

II – Leftists Impose Restrictions on Behavior and Limit Freedom

“You Can’t Say This! You Can’t Do That! Oh, and you can only eat these specific foods!“

If you were to sit down and try to name the 5 most common complaints that worldly people levy against Christianity, the restrictive lifestyle would undoubtedly make the list. If you have a discussion with anyone in the world about the gospel, you will likely hear some version of the phrase, “I want to do what I want” or “You Christians never get to do anything fun“. Perhaps not in those exact words, but you will still manage to discern that this is what they really mean.

The two driving forces of all human activities are the desire to avoid pain, and the desire to gain pleasure. Our efforts to spread the Christian lifestyle are essentially a sequence of attempts aimed at convincing people to give up a life of pleasure in exchange for a life of pain. While that may sound like an exaggeration, it is exactly how the people of the world view Christianity. It does not matter what reality is, how individuals perceive reality through their own biased lens will determine their ultimate impression of that reality. Therefore, it does not matter if the Christian lifestyle is not as painful as people believe it to be, the fact that they perceive it as painful and difficult will turn them off from the idea of religion.

It is true that there are lifestyle restrictions included in the Christian teachings.

Christian doctrine has rules and regulations about how people are supposed to behave. If you want to be a Christian, there are certain behaviors you must be willing to give up. You cannot use certain words of profanity or gossip. Also, you have to give up some of the pleasures of the world. The Bible places restrictions on sex (which I argue is the primary driver of atheism). There are many so-called restrictions on freedom that God requires of His people.

However, these restrictions exist to give us a better life. What appears to be a restriction is almost always a guardrail protecting us from the consequences of the restricted behavior.

As much as leftists claim to love freedom and desire to do whatever they want, they nonetheless create their own lifestyle regulations that they impose on everyone. Leftists have the same behavioral restrictions that any religious group has, and they enforce them with the same religious zeal. Unfortunately, instead of being guard rails protecting people from pain, the arbitrary legislation of the leftists is nothing more than one power maneuver after another. Leftists impose mindless rules to see who they can get to follow them. Will you bend and break to the mindlessly generated rules and restrictions of the mob? Every law of the left exists to find out if you will contravene or conform.

Many of the leftist rules exist regarding speech. There are millions of rules for what you can and cannot say in the public square. It does not matter if something is a verifiable fact of reality, if it offends someone’s delicate sensibilities, it is a restricted word. The same people who say “words are just words” when it comes to profanity will say that other words are “off-limits” or “offensive” in the very next breath.

They also have additional laws about what you are or are not allowed to think. Imagine that! They will charge you with “unconscious bias” or something of the sort without any proof whatsoever. All they have to do is fling mud at your name and your life and career can take serious damage.

Modern leftists have thousands of things you cannot say, do or even think, yet they still call religion “restrictive“.

To use”offensive” phrases like, “There are only two genders” is enough to have you strung up by leftists. While these people point fingers at religion for being restrictive, they have hundreds of fingers pointing back at themselves.

III – Leftists want You to act a specific way

Along with placing general restrictions on the vast majority of behavior, leftists also have specific ways they want you to act. Mostly this includes keeping your faith to yourself and not expressing the natural disgust that is felt when two homosexuals display their lust in public or on national television.

If you do not comply with the leftist laws of behavior, you are condemned.

This is a slight variation on the leftist restrictions on behavior. But instead of only telling you what not to do, they also want to tell you how to act. Basically, any semblance of self-direction or freedom is something that a leftist wants to trample beneath their feet. Do as you are told or suffer the consequences.

IV – Leftists publicly shame those who do not obey their commandments.

If you should dare to defy the mob of leftism, you risk being shamed into oblivion. These same leftists who hate any kind of shaming, especially shaming rooted in religious principles, will use it as their primary weapon against each other.

You are not allowed to shame people who are fat, homosexual, female, or black, but feel free to shame anyone who does not comply with your leftist dogma.

The left has innumerable commandments. These commandments are disorganized and contradictory. Notice that this contradictory nature of their commandments is one of the same false accusations they levy against the Bible. And the person who sins against one part of the leftist law is guilty of it all.

And it does not matter who you are, if you violate these laws, you will be destroyed. But there do seem to be a few people who are immune to such accusations. If you are a leftist who is high in political office, you are allowed a few infarctions against the leftist gospel. Because leftists cannot afford to shame you yet as they desperately need you to remain in power in order to push their vile legislation in the public arena.

Unless are you are able to make your way to achieving the title of “leftist saint” (think Barack Obama), the second you are finished with your time in office you will have to account for your evil deeds.

V – Those who “sin” are cast into outer darkness where there is no career possibility and they are never allowed back in

There is no chance for repentance or forgiveness with leftism.

You do not have to go far to see people losing their careers, livelihoods, and lives because they violated one of the many thousand vaporous no-nos of leftism. It does not matter where you fall on the political spectrum, if you are not completely absorbed in the radical left, you will get eaten.

There is also no statute of limitations on your sins. If you did something that violated the mob rule of the left in your teens, you are accountable for it today in your 30s. There is no grace or forgiveness with the left. Again notice this is one of the chief complaints that the world levies against religion. The same leftists who hate religion because of the component of judgment are incredibly quick to cast judgment and sentence damnation to anyone who differs from them.

VI – Leftists worship the idols of big government, mother earth, and the self.

One of the arguments for the existence of a Divine Creator is the programmed religiousness that human beings have. Everyone worships something. Christians worship God and atheists worship themselves, sex, or money. Leftists also have idols that they bow down to and treat with the utmost reverence. These idols are the government, “mother earth” and the self.

If you say a word against the government, you are a blasphemer and will be ridiculed and exiled from leftist circles. Leftists believe that the government can solve any and every problem, given enough resources. And if they have to take your resources to pay for the legislation because they have no resources of their own, so be it. Leftists believe in centralized political power so strongly that they will sell their own freedoms to have the god of government take care of them. Rather than think or act for themselves, members of the left will abdicate all liberty simply to maintain security.

Individuals on the far left also worship the earth.

The idolatrous religion of environmentalism is the purest form of this worship. The environmentalists believe that any and every measure should be taken to save and preserve the earth from the environmental sins of the human beings who live on the planet. They will gladly sacrifice their own lives, well-being, and freedom to preserve the earth that they assume is decaying due to human action.

Leftists love to worship the earth, and this earth-worshipping religion is nothing new. Humans have been worshipping the creature rather than the Creator for thousands of years, and environmentalists are simply the current iteration of that religion.

The people and historians of the future will look back on the people of the 21st century with the same quizzical perspective as we look back on the pagans who lived thousands of years ago and worshipped the earth.

VII – Leftists suggest there is only one way to “salvation” (Big government and globalism).

Leftists are monotheists. Their god is the government. There is salvation through none other than the federal government. Whether you want to be saved from your poverty or from the consequences of your poor life decisions, the government will help you out. They will facilitate your existence through funding and they will force your neighbors to pay for your children. And if you do not want your children, the government will try to force your neighbors to pay the expense of killing your children.

There is no other way but the way of globalism and government. They are willing to give up all freedom in exchange for the eternal flow of resources. Even if that means only having enough resources to feed themselves for one day at a time.

Leftists believe in no borders and governmental, globalist “salvation for all” who come and bow to the government. Human beings are built to segregate. Different cultures and ideologies were meant to exist. These cultures show us what philosophies lead to prosperity (capitalism and Judeo-Christian values) and which ones lead to poverty and death (Communism/socialism). Leftists would see the destruction of all boundaries and differences between peoples. It is interesting that the members of the ideological left who are so interested in “diversity” are so bent on dumping all of humanity in a cultural blender and mixing until thoroughly homogenized.

VIII – Leftists demand total unity

As mentioned previously, the left praises diversity with their words but they worship abject, mindless unity by their actions. While preaching about the virtues of diversity, they actively and violently reject any and every semblance of a diversity of thought.

For leftists, diversity only goes skin deep.

If you do not have the right skin color, your freedom and ability to think are suppressed. It does not matter if you have ideas of your own, those are irrelevant. Only diversity of skin color matters. And even if you do have the correct skin color, the moment you speak against the leftist dogma you will lose the privileges afforded you by your skin. You are only protected inasmuch as you also comply with whatever you are told.

IX – Leftists are hypocritical (AOC’s green new deal and plane usage)

The world accuses Christians of being hypocritical, but they have not even seen their own hypocrisy. Their hypocrisy is so substantial that it makes them the laughing stock of the world.

One of the purest examples of this hypocrisy is Alexandra-Ocasio Cortex and the green new deal. While she demands that everyone limit their vehicle usage, she flies on planes and violates all of her own principles. Understand that being a hypocrite is more than just making a mistake. It is more than simply failing to live up to a high standard. Being a hypocrite is to preach a specific standard of behavior and then actively live a contradictory lifestyle to that standard.

X – They can eat their own

Comply with the mob or get eaten. This is the law of the jungle. The instant you as a left-leaning individual betray the central dogma of the leftists, they will eat you. Unless you make a great effort to continue to be as radical as possible, you will soon find yourself too far right for your leftist friends to tolerate. At this point, they will eat you. It does not matter who it is or how long they have been on the left; if a leftist is not in perfect submission to the most up-to-date radical policies, he/she will be destroyed.

This happens to comedians, actors, and businessmen. No one is immune from the effects of leftism. No one is safe from being attacked and eaten by the leftists who eat their own like hamsters.

XI – Leftists use passive aggression as their primary weapon.

The worst aggression of all is passive aggression. Individuals who resort to passive aggression are too cowardly to fully step into their position, but not smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Most people accuse religious people of passive aggression and poorly calculated political maneuvers, but really the blame is to be laid at the feet of leftists.

Leftists make every one of their positions into a vapor. You cannot attack it because it is poorly defined. They lack the clarity of thought to articulate with precision their position and goals. They do not know what they want, all they know is that they are willing to destroy anything or anyone who disagrees with them. And they will do this for no other reason than to quash every bit of resistance to their ideology.

A position that can be clearly articulated can be attacked. I do not think leftists are smart enough to directly and purposefully use the vapor strategy. I believe they accidentally use this strategy because they are too stupid to express in simple terms exactly what they want and what they believe.

So they resort to passive aggression because they have no real position with which to be actively aggressive.

XII – They rely on the god of government to provide for them

Christians trust in God. Leftists trust in government. Most leftists want to let go of the wheel of their own lives and allow the god of government to take care of them instead. They do this even though they ridicule the religious for this same reason.

Christians are stupid for praying to God for their daily bread, but will gladly support political positions that end with them standing in a bread line.

XIII – leftists hate those who do not believe exactly like them.

Secular people accuse religious people of being xenophobic. Allegedly, Christians hate “the others” and should be attacked for this. Though this is identical to the behavior leftists engage in. They hate anyone who does not join their cause and blindly follow them as they march into oblivion in the name of nothing.

Conclusion

You can likely now see the striking similarity between leftists and religion. This is because leftism is its own religion. Leftists simply do not call it “religion” because that is a “grimy” term that would make them sound too much like a cult. The religion of leftisms grows, but at least now you can see that everything that the left hates about religion is something they themselves also engage in.