Christianity Archives - Page 20 of 38

Why Are Christians Miserable?

“Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.”
Ecclesiastes 8:6

“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’”.
Ecclesiastes 12:1

“Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more”
Proverbs 31: 6,7

We attack popular and common dogma propagated by the traditionalists because it leads men to have false expectations about the Christian lifestyle.

People will try to tell you to ‘have joy’ or to ‘be happy in your faith and salvation’ when happiness has nothing to do with it.

God is much more concerned about our holiness than He is our happiness.

Happiness is a superficial emotion that can be replicated with heroin.

The exaggeration of happiness in the church leads some people to question the validity of their faith when they find themselves in a temporary state of total misery.

In those moments you say to yourself, “But I am a Christian! Shouldn’t I be happy? Look at my salvation!” But you know in your mind that those thoughts will not save you from misery.

You question your faith and you question the church as a result. You wonder how the life of a person of God could be so painful.

This is because you were not told the truth about the faith.

Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24-26).

Does that sound like a lot of fun to you?

Does suffering for the cause of Christ sound like a great party?

Men, we are confusing ourselves if we think in this manner.

It is noble to suffer for Christ, but that does not make it enjoyable.

It is fair to say that very few people in the modern Western world have truly suffered for their faith mentally, physically or emotionally.

Those few people who have suffered certainly did not enjoy suffering for the sake of suffering. No rational man enjoys that extreme discomfort for its own sake.

Christ is the only one who gives meaning to the pain we endure. It is the promise of salvation from hell and the reward of heaven that makes the suffering bearable, that is what minuscule amount of it we have today.

Men, we are weak and soft. We think that we are persecuted and that we suffer when we do not even know the meaning of the word.

The majority of our suffering is in our imagination.

This does not stop us from descending into absolute misery.

The Source

We detach from ourselves and look at our life and see all the pleasures we are missing out on for the sake of Christ. For everything we are giving up in this life, is heaven going to be worth it?

These deep questions send us spiraling into misery and depression, because we are not convinced that heaven will be worth the sacrifice, and all we know is that we are missing out on a ton of sex and other pleasures.

We are in a mental state of suffering that is the opposite of the constant happiness that the liberals promise. And we do not have any of the so-called joy that the conservatives suggest faith provides. “Is my faith even real?”, we ask as a result.

Yes it is, and being miserable is sometimes a part of it.

The misery of life, however, does not give us the right to make a big show out of it.

When Jesus instructed His disciples fasting, He told them to not disfigure their countenances like the Pharisees, but to wash their faces and go about their business normally as if they were not fasting at all (Matthew 6:16-34).

The purpose of doing good and going through discomfort for Christ is not so we can act like Pharisees and make a show out of it. We will never convert other people to Christ if our temporary misery is apparent to the whole world.

Misery and discomfort are parts of life and the Christian walk. You will not always be happy and joyous like the radical left and right wing Christians claim.

This is perfectly fine.

If you weren’t going through some kind of misery at least occasionally, you need to question if you really are a Christian. If you do not regularly wrestle with faith and doubt, what kind of faith do you have?

Answer: A blind faith.

Mantra

Misery is the proving ground of faith.

Application

Accept misery as a part of life, a temporary inconvenience on our journey to heaven.

Life is uncomfortable, especially for the modern Christian who is accustomed to constant comfort. “Pain” is why we seek refuge in our mindless habits.

We watch television, play video games, and roam on social media for hours because these things allow us to immerse ourselves in them, and in doing so we forget about reality, even if only for a moment.

These are drugs that we have learned to justify in our lives. Some of the negative aspects of drugs and drinking can be found in social media and television watching (Poor time stewardship, lack of vigilance etc.).

We cannot constantly use these medications as crutches to avoid the sorrow of life.

Why God chose to create a world consisting primarily of suffering is a question that currently does not have a good answer. Many males in the church try to answer it with “True Fulfillment” and other nonsense, but to our heart of hearts those answers never satisfy.

We know there must be more to the story of suffering that we do not yet understand.

After accepting misery, we must learn not to judge the quality of our faith based on our emotional feelings at the time.

People are afraid to accept the sorrow of life because they think they are being irreverent or insulting God by not enjoying the life He gave them.

This could not be farther from the truth.

Your emotions mean nothing. You need to focus your mind on doing what is right and taking the correct actions, rather than worrying about how you are feeling at any given time.

What God requires from us is our obedience and trust, these attributes can be taken without emotion. So whatever miserable feeling you experience, learn to ignore it.

Get a grip. Ignore your emotions. Take action. Be focused. Stay goal oriented. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Repentance – Change of Action, not Emotion

“Bear fruit in keeping with repentance”
Matthew 3:8

“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent”
Acts 17:30

Repentance is all about action. No one cares about your feelings, what you are experiencing emotionally or what chemical reaction is going on in your brain. When it comes to repentance, and when it comes to Christianity as a whole, what matters is your actions. Feel however you want, if you do not act, your feelings means nothing.

Repentance is a change of action. Beta males use the cliche “Repentance is a change in heart that results in a change in action”. Wrong. The “heart” is not necessary. Only the change in action is necessary. By saying that repentance is a “change in heart”, it is implied that some emotions should be involved. This is common propaganda that has no basis in reality whatsoever. Feelings are absolutely meaningless when it comes to repentance. If you “feel really bad” about all your sins, but do nothing to change, then you have nothing. Will feelings alone save you? No. Why? Because feelings mean nothing without action.

Repentance is not possible without stopping the sin.

Stopping an evil action is an action in itself. The best part about repentance: you do not have to feel a single thing. Just as feeling bad without taking action is meaningless, if you take action yet feel nothing, that is okay because you repented, i.e. you change your actions.

All you have to do is stop whatever sin you are in the habit of committing. And I have a surprise for you: you are not going to enjoy stopping the sin. Do you think any man wants to stop going out and having sex with different women every weekend? No. In order to repent of that, he is going to have to make a major sacrifice in giving up that sex. That is not fun. Repenting is not a fun thing. It’s not an emotional experience, even though you might mistakenly think it is after attending a youth rally or a liberal church.

Repentance for men should be a stoic experience, in which a man takes seriously his commitment to change himself.

He isn’t signing up for a fun time or an emotional experience. He is not changing with a romanticized delusion of what change is. Many men attempt to change while inspired by their emotions and they fail and fall back into their sin mere weeks later. The same beta males make New Year’s resolutions and fail.

Now all of this is not to say that all emotions are completely useless. They can be used as a catalyst for change, but I advise against this. Because the zeal and fervent desire to change that you feel at the moment will fade away quickly. That inspiration will not last. The motivation will fade into nothing. What will you use to drive your change then? When the alcohol withdrawals kick in and you want nothing more than a drink to take the edge off, where are your emotions then? Where are your motivations then? Are you having the same “moving emotional experience” you had when you first decided to change? No. You have no internal motivating factors and will thus fail in your goal of changing. You will make the same New Year’s resolutions next year, and you will fail them again. Do not base a change in behavior on a temporary feeling. You wouldn’t commit to marriage based on emotion alone (unless you are an irrational male), so do not commit to a major lifestyle change based on emotion.

Mantra

Action dominates over emotion.

Application

Cast aside the emotions and take up the strength of discipline. Acquire internal motivating factors when it comes to behavior change. It is not enough to be motivated or inspired to change. You must have internal, mental motivating factors.

Ignore how you feel at all times and set your focus on changing the behavior. You must have clear long term goals for who you want to be as an individual. You must imagine yourself as the ideal man. Picture in your mind who you want to be, then imitate that individual. Copy how he interacts with others, his work ethic, his character, his strength of mind and his discipline. When you have a clear vision for who you want to be, you have internal motivating factors.

When it comes to repentance, imagine yourself as the man who has already defeated your evil. Imagine yourself as a man who doesn’t drink alcohol and who isn’t even tempted to do so. Picture yourself as the man who doesn’t use drugs or who has complete control over his words. Visualize yourself as a man who dominates the sin of lust and has his penis under complete control. When you put these images in your mind, eventually they become reality.

Thoughts become things.

Dominate each day. Do not worry about the long term, only worry about today. Only examine the long term goal after you have progressed a great distance, then look at how far you have come to motivate yourself to go even farther. Repentance equals change. Change is action. Action must be consistent day after day after day. Commit to the change for the long run.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Profanity – Idle Words – Mindless Talk

“But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”
Colossians 3:8

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
Ephesians 4:29

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Matthew 12:36, 37

“but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
James 3:8

The problem of profanity has nothing to do with the words themselves, and everything to do with what the words mean. The church has a bad habit of focusing completely on what the “bad words” are and ignoring the root problem behind the words. Syllables, sounds and words are not sinful in and of themselves. It is what they mean that is sinful.

If we curse at someone, we are verbalizing hatred towards that person. This is the sin. Not physically saying the “bad word”, but devaluing a human being with curse words is the evil.

A person only has to cut you off on the road for you to hate him.

Someone takes too long in an aisle of a store and you are up in arms.

We manifest this anger by the use of our language. The hatred, the undisciplined tongue, and the thought behind those words make them sinful.

Profanity is also not a great choice because it aligns us with the world.

When Peter was accused of being a disciple of Christ, he tried to prove he was of the world by cursing. What better way to instantly show that you have nothing to do with any religion or Christianity other than by cursing? It is a quick and easy way to show that you are a person of the world, not a person of God. This is the only decent argument against using profanity out of mere frustration, and not out of hate for another human being.

Profanity accomplishes nothing. Scripture would classify it “idle words” (Matthew 12:36-37), or mindlessly spoken words. Mindlessly spoken words reflect a lack of vigilance in the mind. That is as far as the logic behind profanity can be stretched.

Men do not need profanity. Many use it, but they don’t need to.

There is also a large group of Christians who seem to be okay with profanity because “words are just words”. I can’t say they are wrong. They argue from this basic idea: “What makes one word worse than another?” Societal implication? Who gets to choose which words are bad and which ones are not? The inability of Christians to answer questions like these is the reason why the profanity-sympathizers exist.

Christians try to argue back and say that some words started out good and then were perverted and turned evil by the way that men were using them. This is more evidence for the idea that the problem is not the words themselves, but the meaning behind the words. Based on this argument, any word we use to degrade another person is profane. Any way we manifest hate towards a fellow human is an instance of profanity. So we must stop pointing at specific words as the problem and start focusing on the hearts of men. Stop demonizing the words that men use and instead condemn the attitudes that are the basis of those words. Words are words. Reject aligning yourself with the world.

Mantra

Words are not evil, verbal manifestation of hate towards a brother is profane and evil.

Application

Nothing good comes from profanity, so you might as well stop using those words. But remember that the problem is the heart of man, the evil of the mind and the hatred of our fellow man. Dig up the weed by the root or it will just grow back. Fix the problem at the heart or the profanity will persist for your entire life.

Cursing is difficult to stop because it becomes a mindless habit.

You get used to uttering words without thought. So awareness is going to be your best tool. Again, you must have vigilance. This cannot be overstated, because no improvement is possible without awareness, without vigilance. Get a grip on your words by thinking and be cognizant of what you say.

Once you are aware of the way you use your words, you must identify the situations when you use those words.

Do you use profanity out of frustration while driving or working?
Are you mindlessly using profanity in conversation in order to build rapport?
Are you trying to accentuate a point?

As soon as you identify the environments in which you use the most profanity, you must learn to stop yourself.

If you are mindlessly using profanity out of frustration, you lack self-control. Why are you allowing minor events like driving to make you that angry? In this case the profanity is just a symptom of your overall lack of self control. Work on controlling yourself and your profanity problem may resolve itself.
If you are using profanity in conversation, you have to realize there are better ways to build rapport with individuals. You also do not know the person you are talking to. They may be instantly turned off by your use of profanity. Using language in regular conversation is simply unsavory. It makes you look less intelligent than you are. Very few men in the world can be highly intelligent and continue to sound intelligent in conversation while using non-stop profanity.
There are better ways to add emphasis to an idea than by using profanity. Try expanding your vocabulary. If you cannot accentuate your point without profanity, you simply do not know enough words.

Men need no profanity. Discipline your tongue. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Idolatry – Modern Idols

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry”.
Colossians 3:5

”’You shall have no other gods before me. “Thou shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’”
Exodus 20:3-6

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
1 John 5:21

Idolatry is alive and well in the modern age, despite what you hear in Sunday school. You might think it was hundreds of years ago when men would worship and serve idols. We have idols today, just in different forms. Ever heard of American Idol? The name itself gives away the purpose of the show.

On a large scale, men worship money or materials and dedicate their entire lives to their acquisition. Others worship knowledge and science, and elevate man to the same level as God by believing that there is nothing we do not know. Men worship pleasure and enjoyment, or work and accomplishment. The instant we place anything above God in importance, it has become an idol. It has become a god, and we have placed it ahead of the one true God.

Most likely your idolatry is hidden.

It does not even seem like idolatry to you. Sports are one of these idols. Men devote hours and days of their lives to watching men run around chasing a leather sack of air. They build shrines in their homes with all the paraphernalia that a good idol worshiper would possess. They clock in to worship service every Saturday with extreme reverence and faithfulness to the game of games, more than they ever bring to any service of the Lord.

These men faithfully consume every minute of the game, because unlike church, watching sports is actually enjoyable to them. They never complain if the game goes into overtime, in fact, they get excited and even more into the game. But heaven forbid the worship service to the God of the universe go one minute past schedule. They know countless facts about the history of their team. They know all the statistics and are up to date on every bit of information a devoted worshiper needs to know about his sport. But when it comes to bible knowledge, these men may not even know all the books, much less actually know what the Word has to say.

This is idolatry; it is fundamentally unmasculine.

These idolatrous men have pathetic marriages. The energy they should be investing into their marriage relationship is now being spent on sports. The marriage is completely sexless and the male could fix that if he would conduct himself like a man and make himself attractive to his wife by being masculine.

Men like this are a big reason why no young men wait for marriage. Why spend your entire life waiting for a marriage that costs you everything (career/freedom.other women) and gives you no sex in return? This is the question of the young man overpowered by his hormones.

Idolatry is a disease that doesn’t always have apparent symptoms.

It does not show itself all at once, instead it slowly eats away at the idolater. It starts with a little resentment about having to go to church, because that is when all the big sports games are on television, or when you can binge your favorite show. You begin to look for ways to avoid church functions, citing “business” or some other effeminate absurdity. You justify skipping Wednesday night Bible study, because “mid week church is not really in the Bible! Why should I go?” It progresses very slowly, but in the end it has consumed your entire faith.

Maybe the idolatry disease won’t do that for you. Maybe you will be fine. It could be that you are not really idolizing those things you enjoy. Perhaps you are not taking your enjoyable activities to an extreme and worshiping them. It is possible that you are completely in control of your desires and emotions and would never worship the idols of this world. Or it could be that the virus of idolatry has already taken over, and it speaks those excuses for you. Be aware. Be vigilant. Cast down the idols.

Mantra

Idols must be cast down, they are for the weak.

Application

Destroy all idols. Gideon entered the temple of his local town and tore down the Baals (Judges 6). It is difficult to worship idols if you actually destroy them.

As human beings, we all idolize something, or we at least come close to idolizing it. This natural tendency must be mitigated and controlled. Idolatry is nothing more than our natural desire to worship something being misplaced.

We can enjoy our hobbies and the things we do to relax, all we need to do is avoid placing them above God in their importance. This is not an extreme stance.

Football is not the problem, worshiping football at the expense of your faith is the problem. We used sports as the example in this section, but people worship many other things as well:

Business
Career
Relationships
Games
Hobbies
Food
Recreation (TV)

Reject idols. Keep God first in your actions. Reject modern weakness. Be a man.

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

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