Category: Christianity

Wealth

Wealth is not evil. The attitudes of men are evil.

“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life”.

1 Timothy 6:17-19

“You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day”.

Deuteronomy 8:18

There is nothing at all wrong with having wealth. Job was wealthy (Job 1 – Job’s character and wealth). So was Abraham (Gen 13:2). Highly righteous men in the Bible had great wealth. The difference between them and the rest of the world is that the righteous did not and do not place their wealth above God. 

Weak men in the Church demonize wealth. They conflate wealth and worldliness. They also conflate poverty with virtue. You cannot correlate these things. 

There are plenty of evil, greedy poor people.
Also, there are plenty of righteous generous wealthy people.


There is nothing wrong with accumulating wealth. Wealth in the hands of the righteous is better than wealth in the hands of the wicked. 

Some weak men in the Church will conflate wealth and evil in an effort to justify their lack of work ethic. This is a great evil. Men of God should have an unparalleled work ethic in all things, as they should be doing their work “as to the Lord, rather than to man”(Colossians 3:23/Ephesians 6:7). This does not guarantee wealth, but it does ensure that you will be satisfied with your work day. Extreme wealth is not necessary in life, though it is not wrong if you achieve it.

Not having wealth in life does not magically make you righteous.

I have heard such statements from the pulpit many times, “I’m not focused on the things of this world”. “I’m not materialistic, so I’m not wealthy”. The problem with these statements, again, is that they assume that not having wealth means that one is righteous. This is not the case. The same people in the Church might also make the absurd statement: I would rather have virtue/righteousness/holiness than wealth”. Not only are those people lying in an effort to look good, but they just so happen to not be righteous either.

The people who say “I would rather have righteousness than wealth” are the same ones who say “I would rather have brains than brawn”. The only people saying they would rather have brains than brawn are fat people with neither brains nor brawn. Every time you hear that statement it is made by some obese diabetic who is trying to devalue the physical success of a fit man. 

In an attempt to make themselves feel better, unfit people demonize the fitness of others.
In an attempt to make themselves feel better and more righteous, poor people demonize the wealth of the successful.

This is extremely inappropriate and intellectually dishonest.

This statement is my speculation, so take it with a grain of salt: God would not assign wealth to those who could not handle it well. If God knew that you were the type of individual to be corrupted by wealth, or to assume that you earned everything yourself with no help from God (Daniel 4:30), then it would be in His best interest to not give you great wealth simply out of love for you (remembering that love is an action, not an emotion). 

So perhaps you are not wealthy not because you don’t work hard, but because you do not have the temperament to handle wealth righteously. It could be that if you were given wealth, you would place it above God and fall from grace. 

Mantra

Wealth is not evil.

Wealth. Money

Application

First: The key to managing wealth is to build the character today that can handle the pressure of wealth later.

Start viewing yourself as the overseer of your possessions, rather than the owner. This isn’t just some pseudo-spiritual nonsense that people in the church who have no money try to make you believe. If you take a managerial view of your finances, that level of emotional and mental detachment allows clarity of the mind that leads to better business decisions. 

Think of the general who elevates his perspective high above the battlefield. This general is not influenced by his emotions in the same way as a man on the front line of the battle. You must have this same level of emotional detachment when it comes to wealth. 

When we aren’t emotionally attached to our possessions, we do better when managing them. 

Second: work as if you were trying to build a fortune, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t.

Make as much money as you can, but be wise in what you do with it. Invest in things that better you or that better others, instead of cheap pleasures. When you invest in people or your own character, the return on that investment is greater satisfaction than anything you would buy for enjoyment. That’s not to say don’t enjoy things, you need to enjoy things (Ecclesiastes 2:24). Invest in books that will cause you to improve yourself, in workshops or seminars,  hobbies and skills and in family. Spend time and money on things that are positive for the mind.

Do not invest in cheap toys or prostitutes. Do not buy things to keep up with your neighbors. Trying to “out-lifestyle” others is a surefire way to financial failure in 95% of cases. 

Weak men in the Church are in the habit of glorifying a boring and sorrowful life. Enjoy your life, but be wise. Be a man.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

Achieve as a Man by Making Everything into a Goal

It is hard for men to motivate themselves without the presence of some kind of desirable end-state goal. It is even harder for them to motivate themselves if they do not have some kind of painful punishment to avoid. For this reason you must make everything a goal, no matter how small.

Without a goal, man has nothing to aim for, and he will miss every time if he aims for nothing.

“A desire accomplished is sweet to the soul”.

Proverbs 13:19

It is hard for men to motivate themselves without the presence of some kind of desirable end-state goal.

It is even harder for them to motivate themselves if they do not have some kind of painful punishment to avoid.

For this reason you must make everything a goal, no matter how small. Doing this is guaranteed to make even the tasks you hate slightly more tolerable.

If you are someone who likes statistics, this can be done by counting up all the tasks you have to do and converting to a percentage.

Easy, quick, and now you have visible, measurable progress on your goals. To do this, divide the number of tasks you have completed by the total amount of tasks you have to do. If you have 50 tasks and have completed 13 of them, then you are 26% finished with your tasks. [13/50= 26%]

The best way to make everything a goal is to try to improve at every task you are doing.

Ask yourself:
  • “How can I make this action more efficient?”
  • “How can I do this faster?”
  • “How can I get this done using less resources?”.

Switch your brain from “hating your job” mode, into “problem solve” mode.


Once that problem solving area of your brain is activated, you will spend less time thinking about how much you hate your job, and eventually you may become so efficient that you can switch to another job instead. 

Accomplish goals. Weak boys set vague goals and don’t see them through to the end. If you make a goal, keep it, or don’t waste your time making that goal. Nothing satisfies the soul like the progress towards a goal, and then finally the achievement that goal. So make everything a goal and maximize the natural “high”.

Mantra

I will be more efficient. I will look for ways to be faster, more productive, smarter, and a more valuable person.

landscape photography of snowy mountain
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com



Application

Switch from job loathing mode to problem solving mode, as mentioned before.

Constantly look for ways to improve the system, then actually follow through and improve it.

Make sure your goals are as clear as glass. You will never achieve goals that are vague.

Small goals count, but they must be clear.

Even if your goal is to fold letters perfectly, that is fine, you have more clarity with that goal then most weak men have in their entire careers. 

Break down every task into all of its component parts.

Start working on the most important piece of each task first and then move on to the next one.

Concentrate on completing each small part as perfectly as you possibly can.

If you have to write a paper and you know it needs a paragraph of introduction, three paragraphs of body, a paragraph of conclusion and five sources of information, then write all these down in a list, or a table and check them off as you go.

Paragraph of Introduction
Three paragraphs of body
One paragraph conclusion
Five research references. 


You can break these tasks down into even smaller tasks.

Break each paragraph into 6-8 sentences. Break the research references down into their separate categories and then break the actual reference down into its component parts of the name of the source, title, author, date and publisher.

Even in this simple example of writing, you can make one large task a collection of small tasks that you can push through and achieve.


Everything in life is achievable if you break it down into small, easily accomplished pieces. 

Conduct yourselves like Men.

The Wager of Faith

Men of faith wager their lives on the existence of an afterlife. Is that a good gamble?

“But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”.

1 Corinthians 2:9

There is an old philosophy from Blaise Pascal that acts as a fail-safe for our faith. It’s called “Pascal’s Wager”. It states that what you believe about the afterlife is a gamble, because you cannot truly know what will happen after death. The main point is that one should behave as if God exists, because the possibility of eternal punishment outweighs any benefit of atheism.

So the atheist wagers that there will be no God, and no afterlife.
The Believer wagers that there is a God and as a result there is an afterlife. 

Both cannot prove what they think in the present moment, that is why it is a wager. Pascal argues that The Christian’s wager is better or safer than the atheist’s.

If the atheist is wrong, he goes to hell. If he is right, he goes to non-existence. His wager is a win-lose scenario, a 50/50 chance of his gamble working out in his favor. 

For the Christian: if he is right, he goes to heaven and eternal pleasure. If he is wrong, he goes to non-existence.

His belief is a win-win scenario, a 100% chance of the afterlife working out in his favor, because there is nothing wrong with non-existence. In fact, some might find the idea of non-existence more pleasing than the idea of heaven. This is a result of the way that weak people in the Church have decided to describe heaven. In reality, men don’t want to sit around singing “Days of Elijah” on an endless loop for all time. That is how the Church describes heaven. That is one reason why men don’t find the idea of heaven very motivating. Some may even leave the Church because of this.

This entire wager is a buffer for us as weak men. We will doubt our faith, doubt God, doubt the afterlife, but this wager can be a tool that we use to combat the doubt. I know there are some pusillanimous people who will freak out when you try to use anything besides mindless “faith” and emotional “belief” when it comes to your motivation to do what is right. Many days you will have to conjure up some sort of external motivation. 

Hell deters us from evil. Pascal’s wager deters us from leaving the faith. Use this tool to maintain the faith when you are particularly weak. 

Mantra

Faith has no downside.

Wager. Gamble

Application

Use the wager to beat your doubts. When your emotions begin to fail you, use your rational mind to maintain the faith. Pascal’s wager is designed to appeal to the rational mind. Use the wager to remind yourself that your “gamble” about the afterlife has the best possible outcome. 

It is in your best interest to behave as if there is a God. No immediate pleasure is worth eternal punishment. Always be mindful of that.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Read On

Apply

To Apply knowledge is the only true form of learning.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

James 1:22

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People walk into the Church building, sit for an hour or two, then walk out. They learn nothing and make no changes to their daily actions. Their life goes on from week to week in this same manner and they still think they are doing what is right. They live a life of ease with no application of knowledge. Constantly “learning”, never applying. 

What they do is like going to law school, passing the bar exam yet never stepping into the courtroom. Or going to college, then medical school, residency and internship and yet never applying what you learned in a medical practice. Christians live the same way, going to Church at all the “right times” and in all the “right ways” while wearing the “right clothes”, yet never actually doing the things they need to do. 

The Bible is a book of actions, not one of weak emotions.

Pathetic men are the ones who sit in the pews week after week and still do nothing with their faith. This is wrong. The Word is a Weapon, a Sword that must be used against enemies. It is not good enough to know what to do and it is not enough to want to do it, it must be applied. The best workout plan in the world will do nothing to transform your body if you don’t actually do the workout plan.

Weak men talk.

Real men Do.

Be a Man.

Mantra

To apply is the only acceptable behavior.

Application

How do you apply the philosophy of application? By doing. It’s not complicated. It is consistent action over time. That is what brings victory in any endeavor. 

Whenever you are learning a new skill or reading a new book, try to absorb something you can immediately start using in your life. If no behavior change takes place, then we aren’t really learning. 

Applying what we know also accelerates learning. Because by testing our new knowledge, we can determine if it is true or not. Whatever you are doing, you must apply it. Resist the urge to read books just for the sake of reading them. Avoid doing things to try to look “cool”. Apply knowledge so you improve as an individual. 

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

The Importance of Dark Moments

When you experience a dark moment, do not be discouraged, for those dark moments are strength training for your mind and emotion.

Men pride themselves on being stoic. Men consider themselves masculine when they can control their emotions and reactions in all settings, public or private. Modern culture is trying to undo this by telling men that “it’s okay to cry” or to “get in touch with your feminine side”. This feminization of men is not a change for the better. Feminization does not help men deal with dark moments.

Darkness. Dark

While it is usually not a good idea to Repress emotion, is is vital for men to Suppress emotion and desire. A man must Suppress his sexual urges in society. A rapist is an example of a man who has stopped attempting to control those urges and gives into them completely. It is important for a man to suppress and redirect his anger and violent thoughts. A murderer is an example of a man who has given up on trying to control or redirect his anger.

Suppression of emotion is not simply important for men, it is vital to the function and survival of society.

Man grows his ability to suppress and control his emotion by experiencing moments of darkness.

For most modern men, the moments of “darkness” are nothing compared what men in the past have dealt with. A man might get stuck in traffic for a few hours and have to spend extra money somewhere and call that moment “dark”. While men of the past charged into storms of lead, staring into the face of death without flinching. Nevertheless, every dark moment is important, not matter how intense or feeble is may seem. Because without the darkness, we can never fully appreciate the light. Without the darkness, we can never improve our ability to control our emotions and thoughts in difficult situations.

The process of becoming more masculine or improving the ability to handle darkness is a process without a final destination, like many of the skills men can build.

Modern culture exclusively thinks in binary, black-or-white terms. This two-sided, simple thinking is not the case in reality. Just as someone who has trained his body for two years is in better shape than someone who has not trained his body at all. And he who has trained for five years is in better shape than he who has trained for two years. So also men become more masculine and stoic on on a gradient scale based on what darkness they deal with and for how long they deal with it.

“Small” moments of darkness improve the man who has not endured many dark moments. But that same small, dark moment may do nothing for the man who has experienced years of darkness and is mentally strong. There are levels of masculinity that can be trained and improved just like men train and improve their physical strength.

When you experience a dark moment, do not be discouraged, for those dark moments are strength training for your mind and emotion.

You improve your mental strength and resilience by enduring those moments that seem to last forever and bring nothing but pain and suffering. You grow your ability to handle greater adversity by handling small adversity. No man should be made fun of because he strains against a small dark moment. Just like no man should be mocked because he just began to train his body and strains to list 50 pounds. You improve by handling yourself in those small situations and by controlling your emotions in the small details of life.

How do you react when you get stuck in traffic for a few hours?

What is your reaction when you lose a little money in the stock market or on a bad purchase?

How do you react when you break something in your house?

These are small details that do not matter all that much in the grand scheme of life. But these are also events that bother the majority of men.

You must improve your ability to handle adversity with strength and power – This is done by elevating your perspective, removing yourself from unnecessary emotion and changing your thinking. This can only be done through practice during small moments of darkness.

Know that without dark moments, we cannot hope to improve as men. Just as a muscle will never increase its strength or endurance until it is pushed beyond the levels of its current ability, so also we will never improve our mental and emotional control unless we experience dark moments that are beyond our current ability to handle.

Darkness is the strength training of the mind.

The next time you experience darkness, do not be discouraged, but be excited because you are now improving your mind.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Page 32 of 39
1 … 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 … 39