Complaining is the verbal manifestation of the victim mindset. When we complain, we admit that we lack control over ourselves and our circumstances. We complain about the way life is working out for us or what the government is doing on any particular day. Through words, we point our fingers at others to justify why our lives are not the way we want them to be.
While I tend to lean conservative, this is one trait that conservatives and liberals both share in common: the victim mindset. Here is the basic flow of thought: if I complain about something I am saying that it is bad in some way. As a result of that thing being bad, my life is not as good as it would be. It is literally the act of blaming my current situation on outside circumstances that I cannot control.
Men must take complete control over their lives.
They must take ownership of everything they are and everything they have done up to this point. If my life is not the way I want it to be, it is no fault of the government, my parents, or society. It is my fault for basing my actions on the ideas and expectations of others rather than forging my own path.
As men, we must get out of the habit of complaining and be better leaders. Many times, people do not notice when we do not do something. They certainly notice when we take action or make mistakes. Everyone knows when someone in the church gets pregnant or has engaged in some other unsavory behavior. And everyone knows when people do good deeds such as feeding the poor or studying scripture with people (mostly because the people who do those things cannot help but boast about it to others). But very rarely is it noticed when some behavior, specifically a negative behavior, is lacking.
For example, how many people notice when someone does not gossip? We certainly notice when they do gossip, but do we ever take the time to appreciate when they avoid that behavior? What about stealing, do we ever notice when people do not steal? Usually not, but we certainly will have something to say about it if we found out they have been stealing from their work or from the church.
The point is that we rarely notice when people are virtuous because of the negative behaviors they avoid engaging in.
We do not notice when people do not complain unless we are actively looking for it and appreciating it. Becoming a man who never complains is often a thankless task. People will not pat you on the back for it like they will for the man who lost 50 pounds. The reality is that many may actually dislike your change because you are refusing to indulge in the effeminate behavior or complaining that they enjoy.
Whenever we as men make a change, it may spark some admiration, but it will kindle a forest fire of envy, jealousy, and backstabbing. That is the unfortunate plot of men and success in the modern, hyper-safe world. We are constantly jockeying for position, for a better place in the dominance hierarchy, so to see other men climbing the ranks touches the nerve of jealousy within us. It should not be this way, as a better-skilled man is worth more to the tribe and to the camp. We should be glad when other men improve their skills and are better able to contribute to the whole. But because the world is safe, there are no wolves outside the camp, and no shortage of food, we become jealous of those men who ascend the ranks of society when we should be congratulating them.
As they climb the ranks, we start complaining behind their backs.
We can talk about their lack of character or their negative personality. Or we can use one of the favorites of the greedy poor which is to say that a man who is becoming successful in the world is doing so because he is materialistic and worldly. “Yeah, I would be that successful too if I were not so busy focusing on the Bible and spiritual matters. If that guy spent half the time that I spent in the bible, he would not have time to be that successful”. The greedy poor love that false logic.
Complaining is the antithesis of gratitude.
The grateful mind is focused on what is going right, on blessings, and on positivity. The complaint-filled mind is focused on what is wrong, what others are doing that is damaging impacting society, on curses and negativity. It is a mentality that the God of War hates. Remember that God has killed his people who complained in the Old Testament (1 Corinthians 10:10, Numbers 11). That should give you an idea of how seriously the God of War takes the evil of complaining. Despite everything He has done for the Israelites, they still found something to complain about.
So, what do we do to change our negative, anti-masculine habit of complaining?
I – Awareness
It starts with awareness. We can never stop a behavior if we are unaware of it. The problem is, like with most of our behaviors, we have put the habit of complaining on autopilot. It has entrenched itself so much into who we are that it has a mind of its own. If we cannot go even a few hours without complaining about some situation outside our control, then we need to cultivate the habit of awareness.
Becoming more aware is as simple as saying to yourself, “I am becoming aware right now”. Or you can set an intention in the morning to catch yourself when you start to complain. It will be hit and miss at first, but over time you will begin to cut off the habit of complaining more frequently. If you continue to command your unconscious mind to become aware of when you are complaining, you will soon build the habit of becoming aware of your complaints rapidly.
II – Replacement
Habit change does not occur in a vacuum. So, what are you going to replace complaining with? As mentioned earlier, the antithesis of complaining is gratitude, so why not start there. Once you catch yourself in the complaint habit, stop yourself and list 2-3 things you are grateful for instead of complaining.
If you are deep into the habit of complaining as most people are, you will not see any change for a reasonably long time. You will not feel different by practicing gratitude for two days. But given enough time, if you continue to cut off your negative behavior and replace it with gratitude, you will start to rewire your mind. You will train it to be more grateful and thankful for blessings. You will begin to take more ownership of your life and understand that there are things in this world that are completely outside your control. This a mentality of power, not one of weakness. Most men in religion do not have this mindset, so you will be one of the few.
III – Get Away from People who Complain
You have to control your environment. The alcoholic will not recover from his alcoholism if he hangs around alcoholics. The drug user will never dry out if he hangs around his drug-abusing friends all day. Even so, the person who complains will not recover from his habit unless he can put some distance between himself and those who indulge in that negative behavior of complaining.
Do not think you are more powerful than you are. You are subject to the negative influences of those around you. So, if you are trying to fundamentally change yourself, you need to give yourself time away from these people to allow for maximum progress. If you cannot avoid them completely, minimize the time you spend with them and do your best to direct the conversation to positivity or something that they cannot complain about.
Simply talking about the Bible may be enough to cut off their habits. This also may get you uninvited from a significant number of events. Sadly, even many Christians do not like people who talk about the Bible, especially if those Christians are in the habit of complaining. Your spiritual focus is a burning light and makes them uncomfortable.
Controlling this habit is an exercise of self-control. If you can master the habit of complaining, you will be better skilled than most men in religion. You control your life and run your day, not vice versa. Train your self-control by never complaining again.
It surprises many people to hear that depression is common among Christian populations. This may lead them to ask questions like, “Well what is the point of faith if you are still going to be depressed? What causes depression in Christians?” Good question.
Religion is not an anti-depressant. While it does give meaning to suffering and provides the standards of behavior that lead to peace, it cannot magically cure depression. Religion is not a magic pill that makes everyone’s problems go away. While it is common for religion to be depicted that way, there is still work that must be done on an individual basis. And this is what most people do not want to hear. They want religion to be the one-size-fits-all cure for every negative emotion and malady known to man. While that is a noble desire, they want this for the wrong reasons. They want religion to remove their need to work on themselves and remove the burden they have to work through their own problems. They approach religion with a socialist mindset, expecting to receive without first having to give.
Still, even with all the benefits of Christianity, you may be wondering why Christians can be depressed.
What causes depression in Christians? How can people with the hope of salvation be tormented in mind? This is no exhaustive list but let us look at a few common reasons.
I think these are generally the minority of depression cases, but many people have chemical imbalances that require medicine to be treated. While I always admire people, who at first try to manage their depression through non-medical means, for a small percentage of the population this simply will not work. Unless they are willing to take the time to identify each hormone and neurotransmitter that may be responsible for their depression and then find out how to increase them naturally and repeat that for a period of months, they likely will remain the same and their depression will be unchanged. It is hard to tease out which hormones can be responsible for depression.
One of the big ones is serotonin. Almost every hormone has multiple jobs and one of the jobs of serotonin is mood regulation. Many of the common anti-depressants you may have heard of impact serotonin in some way. Selective-Serotonin reuptake Inhibitors, known as SSRIs, stop the body from reabsorbing serotonin before it has had its full chemical effect on the mood. Another class of drug is the Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors, or SNRIs, which act in a similar way but also impact the uptake rate of norepinephrine, which is a chemical cousin to adrenaline.
The point of that was not to drown in details of drugs but rather to identify one of the big hormones/neurotransmitters responsible for depression.
Given that we know serotonin can play a role in depression, perhaps we can find a way to increase serotonin without the use of these drugs, which are overprescribed and often have annoying side effects.
The Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience in an article entitled “How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs” identified four possibilities: Meditation, bright light exposure, exercise, and a diet with increased tryptophan content. You can glance through the paper yourself for more details. But if you think you are low in serotonin, try these interventions first before moving on to more powerful alternatives.
Jordan Peterson also notes in his first rule for life that standing up straight with your shoulders back naturally produces serotonin.
Serotonin is not the only hormone involved in chemical depression, but it certainly is an important one.
II – Expectations
The world expects Christians to be happy, floaty, perfect human beings. The second Christians do not match the world’s idea of them, they are ridiculed. “I thought you guys were supposed to feel, act and think in X, Y, Z ways. Wow, you guys sure are a bunch of fakes”. There is no tolerance in this world for Christian people even from those who demand tolerance for themselves. Especially not when it comes to mental health.
If word gets out that a significant percentage of your local church is taking some sort of mind-altering drug to manage depression, the secular culture will have a field day with it.
Even in the church, there is no safety (as we will mention more in the next section). Christians expect their fellow Christians to be strong and powerful. Men expect other men to be masculine and never struggle with mental challenges. While it is noble to aspire to that level of extreme mental control and to hold high expectations, this comes at a cost. Now if a man does not stack up to the expectations of others, he is isolated and thinks he cannot even seek help from other men. Men should be inspiring one another to get there instead of expecting perfection from the womb.
Men must be forged from fire and steel over a period of many years.
We should not expect them to be perfected the moment they begin to take their first steps on the earth.
With heavy expectation comes two possible responses: the first is that a person lives up to the standard and succeeds. The second is that a person completely rejects the standard and everyone who imposed expectation on him. This may not happen instantly; it could happen over a period of years. Many Christians hold a shaky faith for years only to be crushed by some outside event later in life. This causes them to reject the faith and to do so with indignation.
High standards are good, high expectations are less good. A standard shows us what we should stive for while expectations tell us to get there or suffer the consequences. What cause depression in Christians? Unrealistic expectations.
III – Isolationism
Many Christians feel the need to hide this struggle. Depression is right up there with pornography in regards to the size of the stigma associated with it. Men feel that they cannot talk to other men about depression. Jim Kwik has noted this stigma as well and stated the following about mental health, this is my paraphrasing of his words: “It is okay to say that your knee or arm is hurt. But there is much less social support and acceptance if you say that your soul or mind is hurt”. He is absolutely right. There is very little support for “fake diseases” like depression and anxiety. So, men resort to suffering alone.
There is an even greater stigma when it comes to men being depressed. Again, men are expected to be impervious to all outside forces and have unbreakable wills. I would love if that were true for every man, but it is not. It is part of the reason Spartan Christianity exists, to provide tools and resources for men whose religious upbringing failed to make them the men they need to be in today’s world. Men should aim to have iron minds and be immune to depression and every struggle, but it will not happen instantly, and it will not be a fun process.
What causes depression in Christians? Isolation. Feeling like they are the only ones with their struggle.
IV – Helplessness
The majority of religion provides no tools for men to create themselves beyond “just have faith and pray”. Another chip off the religious socialism block.
Religion expects men to have iron wills but does not give them the tools with which to create those wills. You cannot treat every single mental, physical, or spiritual impairment with faith. There is still work that must be done on the part of the individual to create his own strength through the power of his thoughts. His church rarely gives him direction in that work, so he floats aimlessly on the waves of life and fails to improve himself. He is the same helpless, depressed man year after year. What causes depression in Christians? Helplessness. An attitude that is wrongfully encouraged by modern religion.
Something that turns off a lot of young men from Christianity is the fact that most Christians prefer weakness to strength. It is as if for some reason they actually prefer being weak. Whenever there is a choice between weakness and strength, they will choose weakness. Not only will they choose weakness, but they will think they are being righteous for being weak!
Just like many Christians have equated virtue with poverty and wealth with materialism, so also many Christians have equated weakness with righteousness. For some reason, it is righteous to suspend punishment, worship softness, and be emotional. Men default to weakness by choosing to wallow in emotionalism and vulnerability and call it “spirituality”. It is difficult to say where we have gone wrong, but it is easy to see we have a lot of work to do on this front.
Occasionally I mention what I call a “Viking Faith”. Vikings had gods and religious practices as most humans have had for thousands of years. They made sacrifices, had worship, and prayed to the gods. Yet for some reason, Vikings were able to be highly religious and still be considered masculine warriors and men to be held in high esteem. Yet Christians are often considered to be weak, soft, and powerless. What is the difference? I think there are many differences between the Viking faith and the Christian faith, of course, and that is a topic for another article. Some of them are requirements of scripture but other differences have come because men have chosen to be weak. Not only to be weak but to boast about weakness and glorify effeminacy.
Besides worshipping weakness, many Christians also prefer defensive versus offensive positions of war. They gravitate towards commands and scripture that tell us to give a defense or resist some power. Weak Christian men are always playing defense, never going on the offensive. It is a shame that so many men simply default to weakness and yet think they are doing something great.
When faced with a dichotomy both of spirituality, scripture, or masculinity, men will default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness. This must be corrected.
Here are a few of the instances in which men will choose what appears to be weaker.
“But in your hearts revere Christ as LORD. Always be prepared togivean answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”
It is a great passage, and I am not at all trying to pit Bible verses against each other in this article. However, when do you hear a verse explaining the other side of the story? One of my personal favorites is 2 Corinthians 10:5-6.
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.”
What is the difference between these two verses?
The first one puts Christians in a defensive position and the second puts them in an offensive position. I have mentioned before that it is extremely important for us to go on the offensive instead of constantly playing defense. When all we do is answer questions and defend ourselves, we make little progress in evangelism and we build little respect for our names. However, when we go on the offensive and attack another’s ideas, we put them on the defensive. The only way to cast down arguments is to attack. This is not a defensive maneuver it is an attacking maneuver. Though the best strategists can seamlessly blend offense and defense, we as Christian men need to work on being offensive.
I believe that men default to the 1 Peter passage because they twist it to give themselves license to be weak. I will remind you of our core statement of this section. When faced with a dichotomy of action, Christian men will almost always default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness.
Neither passage is weak nor is about weakness, but weak men have twisted 1 Peter to justify their cowardly behavior.
They are too scared to go on the attack, so they live their entire lives just defending themselves.
Correct this by forcing others to defend themselves. To crush an idea, you need to demonstrate that it is faulty. This cannot be done from a defensive position unless that defense has been carefully crafted to lead a voracious opponent into a trap. Tactfully use defense to lure out your enemy them ambush their philosophy from all sides. Make their defeat so devastating that they never challenge you again. If possible, you must crush them in front of as many witnesses as possible. Put them to shame.
1 Peter 3:16 ~ “Keeping a clear conscience, so that those who slander you may be put to shame by your good behavior in Christ.”
II – Lamb of God Vs. Lion of The Tribe of Judah
“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
How many times have you heard the phrase “The Lamb of God”? Likely you have heard this quite often. Sure, it is important to hear this because it symbolizes the fact that Christ traded his life for our sin.
But how many times have you heard about “The Lion of The Tribe of Judah”.
I would venture to say that you hear about this far less than you hear about the lamb. Why? Because Christian men love when their Savior is soft and loving. If he is a lion, the deadly warrior animal, it does not give us the same “warm and fuzzies” that we got with the lamb analogy.
Weak men do not want our savior to be a lion, they would rather Him be a lamb. This is another instance where men default to weakness. And this does us no favors with the secular world. Can you imagine trying to share the gospel with someone and talking about the Lamb of God? It does not make our God sound very powerful.
I understand that the gospel is going to be “foolishness to the world” (1 Corinthians 1:18), but that does not mean we have to contribute to that perception by our actions. Christianity is a hard sell as it is, let us not make it harder for ourselves.
The perception of the lamb of God also makes us a laughingstock among masculine men.
I have seen a Viking-type shirt that says, “I would rather be a wolf of Odin than a Lamb of God”. If men were not busy floundering in their emotions and vulnerability, they would have presented the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. But because they prefer weakness, because they worship the feminine and praise it above all else, because any time they are faced with a dichotomy they default to weakness we now have negative PR from shirt companies.
You can correct this by choosing to focus on the Lion that is God. For a period of time, remove from your mind the analogy of Christ as a lamb. Remember that is only meant to symbolize the sacrificial nature of His life. It is not meant to reflect who He is personally. This is the key point of these passages.
When John the Baptizer called Christ the Lamb of God it was because everyone knew what that meant. People were constantly sacrificing animals to cover their sins. It was the perfect analogy. There would not be one single soul confused and thinking, “Oh it is because he is weak or has the personality of a lamb”. Absolutely not! That type of modern thinking is disgraceful. While most Christian men prefer weakness, you must prefer strength.
Remember that you worship the Lion.
III – God of Love vs. Man of War
One of my favorite descriptors of God comes from the Old Testament. Right after the Red Sea collapses on the Egyptian army Moses and the people sing a song. In that song comes one of my favorite verses in all of scripture.
When was the last time you heard that one quoted from the pulpit? You may not have even known about the existence of that verse. Because it is a bit too aggressive for the hordes of feminized men that pack out the mega-churches week after week. It is a little bit on the aggressive side. You might expect to hear something like this in the lyrics of a heavy metal song, which as every good mother explains to her son, is “devil music”.
(Here is a good example of why that is bogus.)
However, you hear the contrasting statement nearly every time you talk to other Christians or attend church. “My God is a God of love”.
Again, this is completely true, God is a God of love. But we focus so intently on His love without first understanding what love truly is and also without understanding the necessity of His discipline.
If you had a decent father growing up, one of his tasks would have been to administer discipline to you. This was usually in the form of corporal punishment and was authorized by scripture.
“Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell.”
The fewer beatings you earned, the more feminized you likely became. And if you did not receive much discipline then you probably also do not view God as handing out much discipline. This is because our view of God is shaped by our view of our earthly father. If your father was a disciplinarian, this is how you view God. If your father was lax and let you get away with everything, this is how you view God.
What we can clearly see today is the result of the majority of fathers refusing to discipline their children.
Now, most Christian men do not see God in light of his requirement to discipline us. It is bound within His very nature to correct us and keep us focused. The Bible teaches that if we are not disciplined by God then we are illegitimate, bastards.
“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”
We have a generation of young men who view God as their buddy. They have no respect for Him just like they have no respect for their own father. This is what a lack of discipline leads to. Discipline leads to self-discipline which leads to success, both spiritually and physically.
Correct this weakness by viewing God as a man of war. Perhaps it is just my personality, but I would much rather follow a man of war into the battles of life than follow the false image of what Christians have made God into. He is not soft or weak, but many religious people have made Him that way to suit their personal tastes and needs.
Call out any who would reduce God and equate Him to the weak, pathetic men of today. This is another example where Christians prefer weakness over strength.
IV – Forgiveness Vs. Judgement
Another example of a modern weakness is displayed when we talk about forgiveness and punishment. Somewhat a continuation of the last point, Christians want to focus so much on forgiveness to the extent that they neglect God’s Judgement and Discipline.
They do this because they know they are making no attempt to truly live correctly. They need God to be a God of forgiveness so that they do not have to take His commands too seriously. I mean it is only our eternal destiny at stake, why take it too seriously anyway?
The forgiveness-focused attitude is a favorite among Catholics, who have no affiliation with the church of the Bible. If you have the resources, you can even pay for your sins with money. Or you can buy someone else out of purgatory – imagine that!
If God is nothing but forgiveness, then I have no need to put effort towards being disciplined. Because at the end of the day all my sins will be forgiven anyway. If this is true, why even try? Why work so hard to stay sexually disciplined or to avoid drugs if I can erase my criminal record through the forgiveness of God?
Again, I need to make the point that I am not minimizing the importance of forgiveness or trying to pit passages of Scripture against each other.
The purpose of this piece is to show how our standards have decayed because Christians prefer weakness. When Christians prefer weakness over strength, they fail. They contract the disease of socialism of the mind. By convincing themselves that they have to do no work but can still have a piece of the collective “salvation pie”, they become soft and entitled.
Correct this by embracing the judgmental side of God. This is not meant to be negative, but to be a reminder to hold yourself to a very high standard and actually work to do what is right. Do not have a lackadaisical attitude when it comes to your faith. There is no place for weakness in any part of your life. You must prefer strength and have that firmly in your mind. Attack any philosophy that promotes weakness over strength.
And you may say “But forgiveness is the true strength”. Very modern and progressive of you. But something can be “True strength” and feminine or weak at the same time. It depends on how you are contorting the scripture to suit your needs. Do not use forgiveness to cover up the weakness.
V – Mercy Vs. Punishment
Another permutation of the previous point but important enough to state. In the church, we have concentrated so much on the forgiveness and mercy of God that we have forgotten all the instances in which He punishes those who disobey Him. You need to never forget this. While modern religion paints God as 100% merciful, you know the truth. Hold yourself to a high standard. Limit your need for mercy. Of course, we all will still need mercy, but we should not use it as a credit card for sin.
VI – Old Testament vs. New Testament
When was the last time you heard a lesson from the Old Testament not rooted in the Psalms or some positive prophetic verse taken completely out of context? I would venture to say almost never. Christians prefer the New Testament because it seems “more reasonable” than the OT. The OT has an “angry God” but the NT has Jesus who people love to latch on to. Not because they love all His words, but because they love the ones they choose to love and forget everything else.
In the OT there was a lot of war, conquering, violence, death, and punishment. We do not need to forget this. All of that was important. It laid the groundwork for the Christianity we have today and also gives us a portrait of God. Goes does not change, He is still that man of war that we read about in the OT. We do not need to forget this.
But because the NT has a lot more to say about love and other emotions, people prefer it over the OT. We, humans, love having warm and fuzzy feelings stirred up within us. But we do so at the expense of maintaining any semblance of strength and personal power. We have done the same in our preference of the NT over the OT though both are important.
Correct this by increasing your study and discussion of the OT. Do not let people marinate in the NT at the expense of gaining a complete view of the portrait of God.
Conclusion
All these points are meant to illustrate how we as Christians prefer weakness over strength. Perhaps not all of us, but many in the modern churches today. People want to make their church a social club and hang around doing nothing all day, learning nothing but still feeling good about themselves. No one wants to do work anymore.
You can be the first of a new generation if you want. You can strengthen your own mind, gain power, and become masculine. Even though most Christians prefer weakness, you must learn to prefer strength over weakness and you will be head and shoulders above everyone around you.
I hear a great deal of talk in religion about how people should want to do what’s right or how they should want to go to church. People should want to go to heaven or want to behave “appropriately”. I’m here to tell you that you do not have to want to go to church. You do not have to desire to do the right thing. You do not have to want to do anything because Christian living is all about action. We will explain why by diving into a little bit of science, so please bear with me.
Every feeling and emotion can be reduced to various hormones and chemicals in the body.
This includes the emotion/sensation of wanting to do something. In fact, the biochemistry of desire is actually quite well understood. While many chemicals and hormones play a role in “the want factor“, the main one we will discuss is DOPAMINE.
You may be very aware of this chemical as it is the focus of many self-improvement gurus, articles, and books. We will briefly describe it here in case you are not aware of what this chemical does. This is not a flawless scientific description, but it should give you the basic idea.
Dopamine is the “wanting” chemical. It is a neurotransmitter that regulates goal-oriented behavior and cravings. When we engage in some action that is pleasurable or rewarding, we release dopamine. For example, when we take a big bite out of chocolate cake, our brain says, “Wow, this is delicious. There are a lot of calories in here, so you should remember this for later. This food will aid us in survival”. That is what happens when dopamine is released and the brain remembers the pleasurable activity. Then when cravings for chocolate cake come up a few days later, that is your brain telling you to engage in that dopamine inducing behavior.
Here is the basic principle: Dopamine is tied to a reward.
We release dopamine when we are rewarded for doing something making it more likely that we will do it again. This is how good and bad habits are formed. Without dopamine, we cannot experience the feeling of wanting to do something.
Now if we are punished instead of rewarded for a certain behavior, we do not release dopamine. And because we were punished, it becomes less likely that we will engage in that behavior again. Remember that point, because it is the basis for refuting every individual who says:
“Johnny, you should want to do what is right. You should want to go to church, save yourself for marriage and go to heaven”.
A standard religious individual who has thought through precisely zero of their own philosophical positions.
Rewarded actions are likely to be repeated and punished actions are likely to be avoided. This is built upon the first and most foundational principle of human nature – self-interest. The desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
To release dopamine and therefore associate pleasure with doing an activity, there must be a reward for doing it. So let me ask you this, is there always a reward for doing what is right, saving yourself for marriage, or going to church?
NO
Church can be draining. Many times I leave feeling worse than when I arrived.
You can save yourself for marriage only to marry a frigid prude, which happens to many religious men who mistake “attraction” for “arousal”.
Or you can do the right thing and actually suffer for it, everyone knows this.
You can take the right action, be punished for it, and therefore release no dopamine in association with those activities. Because of this, you will not have a desire or craving for these activities. When it is painful to go to church, you will not want to go there. If you are punished for doing the right thing, you will not desire to repeat those noble deeds.
However, all that being said, you can still do what is right without wanting to do it. You can behave righteously without having the dopamine-induced craving to spur you on. So many in the religious world want to tell you that an emotional, dopamine-based desire for church or righteous behavior is required for you to do what is right, but this is not true. You do not have to want to do what is right, you simply have to do it.
Because it is possible to want to behave righteously and still behave immorally. It is also possible to want to behave immorally but still manage to act righteously. Which case is better? Obviously the action-based case. Feelings do not matter, only action matters.
Maybe with time, the desire to do what is right or to attend church will resurface, but do not worry about that right now. Just worry about taking action, because at the end of the day that is all that matters.
A verse you have likely heard your entire life is John 14:6, “I am the Way, the Truth and The Life and no man comes to the Father except through Me”. What I tend to find when this verse comes from the pulpit is that it just passes right on by most people and they “check out” of the service. Perhaps if we replaced some of the words, not as an attempt to change Scripture, but as an effort to clarify its meaning, then we could better understand this verse.
The Way: Instead of “the Way” we will call it “the Path”. A path is an established roadway of sorts made by continuous travel. Christ tells us that He is the Path, implying that it is through Him that we arrive at a certain destination. This is further demonstrated at the end of the verse when He explains that no man comes to the Father except through Him. The conclusion being that Christ is the Path to God.
The Truth
Christ says that He is the truth. Follow this pattern of thought with me for a moment. What is the truth but the opposite of a lie? And what is a lie but a falsehood? A falsehood is a fake, it is the opposite of reality, therefore, truth is reality. No Christ is the Path to God, and He is also the Reality. He is the One who existed from the beginning of the age. He is the consciousness that many of the “spiritual but not religious” group think exists in the universe (John 1:1).
During the trial of Christ, Pilate asks Him the pivotal question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), but unfortunately Pilate did not stay long enough to hear the answer. We know that the Word of God is Truth (John 17:17). Meaning the Word of God is reality itself and in it is no falsehood (Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2).
The Life
Colossians 3:4 demonstrates that Christ is our life. He is our existence and our focus, or He should be. Christ as the Life is the defier of death who defeated death once and will do it again for all of His faithful.
The Light
One additional note is that Jesus is the Light. John 8:12 says that “I am the Light of the world”. The light is something that clarifies and reveals. The light can clarify and reveal The Path, and God’s word “is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).
In summary, in John 14:6 Christ says “I am the Path, the Reality and the enemy of Death”, and in addition to this He is also the illuminator, the clarifier of truth. Remember who you are serving – it is He who is the defier and destroyer of death.
