Masculinity Archives - Page 12 of 15

Social Media and Men

What are you using these platforms for? Are you using them to become more of a man, or are you using them to distract yourself?

Social Media – Where the sheep come to drink from the pool of digital validation.

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Galatians 1:10

“For they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”
John 12:43

“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”
Psalm 118:6-9

“But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.
1 Thessalonians 2:4

Instagram – Where the serf presents the illusion of complete happiness and of a perfect life.

Facebook – Where the monkey performs for the mirage of an interested audience.

Twitter – Where the peasantry labors under the delusion that their opinion is important.

YouTube – Where the sycophant lives vicariously through the fabricated lifestyles of others.

There are more social media platforms, obviously, but these are the big four, and they serve as examples of what we are to avoid as Men.

These platforms can be used for marketing or communication, but so few people actually use them for that.

What most peasants use them for is listed in the descriptions above. Instagram could be a site to promote product images, but most use it to deceive others about the state of their life, capturing a mere snapshot of a brief moment of “happiness” rather than the full image of a life, and then those same people draw validation from the number of “likes”.

Facebook could be a place to connect with individuals, plan, coordinate, but most use it as a soap box from which they rant about politics and believe they are right if they cross a certain threshold of “likes”. That is blind mob mentality and tacit approval.

Twitter could be a place for anything other than whatever garbage it is currently being used for.

Youtube can be used as an education platform, but the majority use it to live life through someone else, or distract themselves from their own meaningless existence.

What are you using these social media platforms for? Are you using them to become more of a man, or are you using them to distract yourself?

Is Instagram a tool, or is it somewhere you can see pictures of basically naked women with breasts hanging out everywhere? Are you using Facebook as a tool or a rant box for racial and political division? Is twitter a tool or an outlet for you to voice your current, irrelevant, unintelligent and uneducated opinion? Is YouTube a tool for amassing knowledge or a place where you waste the waste majority of your day?

Be a man. Cut social media. If you cannot cut it, make a determination to use it only as a tool, not for entertainment and porn.

Mantra

Use tools to build the life I want, not to escape the life I have.

Application

Every time you want to use social media, ask yourself if it is because you want to use a tool, or because you want to be entertained. If it is the latter, just don’t use it. Try to delete one of these social media accounts. Just one. See how you feel. Then systematically cut out the rest of the social media outlets. Make it happen.

Good Uses For Social Media Bad Uses for Social Media

Using YouTube to listen to lectures and sermons.	Mindlessly scrolling through other people’s lives (Makes $0 per hour).
Using youtube to learn how to build furniture, make knives or cook.	Comparing your life/body to others and getting depressed because you are a loser.
Use instagram to show the new book you wrote or piece of furniture you built.	Using instagram to check out naked chicks who aren’t your wife.
Use facebook to set up a family reunion	Use facebook to get into a giant fight with people on the opposite political aisle as you (I’m sure you’re changing tons of minds).
Using LinkedIn to find job opportunities, grow your connections and put yourself in a better business situation.	Use social media to stalk people you know so you can judge how they are living thier lives.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Demagogues – Enemies of Logic

Demagogue – a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.

“Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil roams about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour”.
1 Peter 5:8

The Church is riddled with demagogues. The basic definition applies to political people, but you are ignorant if you do not think the Church is political. You don’t have to be an office holder in the American government to make political power plays in whatever institution you are a part of. Demagogues plague the news media. No one in the news media can get paid without forcing stories that make you angry or afraid. Their funding is based on getting you to react emotionally to what they are saying.

Demagogues in the church are the foundation for mega churches.

Even the faith of most Christians is founded on emotion or tradition rather than logical fact. This is why 90% of Christians cannot defend their faith rationally and logically.

If you want a mental image of a demagogue, think of a Joel Osteen character. An individual whose message appeals to your self-interest rather than to your rational mind. There is nothing wrong with self-interest, and taking action out of self-interest (I assume you are interested in the personal benefits of heaven), but we run into problems when we sell religion cloaked in emotionalism and materialism.

People don’t listen to Osteen because they think he is telling them the truth, they listen to him because he tells them that they can have faith and salvation while focusing their entire lives on their wealth.

Again, nothing wrong with wealth. But there is something wrong with placing wealth above everything, or using God to sell a wealth-based gospel.

It’s not only large-scale churches in which this type of materialism happens. It also happens in the small Churches: the local Community Church, your local Baptist Church, you find emotionalism and demagoguery.

This fact is very common for Baptists, who tend to value the name “baptist” above the gospel. They even have their own mantra that they repeat in closed circles: “Born a baptist, live as a baptist, die a baptist”.

Does anyone see anything wrong with that type of thinking? Is there a problem with people placing their name and tradition above the truth? These individuals have huge ego investments in their tradition. They have so much pride in their name that they cannot see anything besides what they believe. What they are saying with that mantra is that it does not matter if the truth were to be revealed to their eyes, they would not forsake the name “Baptist”. John the Baptizer did not die for your sin, so why name yourself after him? This weak thinking is the result of traditionalism and emotionalism. You can call it neo-renaissance liberalism if you want. If you are a baptist, you should meditate on this.

Any speech that appeals primarily to the emotion of men is irrational.

That is the point of emotions, they are not rational and they cannot think. Arousing the emotions of individuals in order to sway their thinking is a breakdown of one of Aristotle’s rules of rhetoric. He labels these emotions as “non-essentials”, because all that matters is the facts.

The majority of sermons and lessons given today are based on feelings. This is not masculine, rather it is stupidity. Because if your faith is ever tested by fire, emotions will be inconsequential. Most church-goers never will have a heavy test of faith, though they may think otherwise.

Denominationalism has its foundation in emotionalism and demagoguery. People form new religions to suit what they feel is right, not based on what can be known based on the Word alone. Or someone in the Church gets their feelings hurt by the truth so they leave and form their own religion that better caters to their personal likes; where they can leave out the “unsavory” doctrines that offend them.

All the aforementioned situations are a result of emotions overtaking individuals. Rational thinking then takes a backseat to feelings. This must be avoided at all costs. Emotions stand in opposition to rationality, and as a result they retard masculinity.

Mantra

Be alert for those who stir up anger and fear.

Application

The Bible speaks often about vigilance and being aware of evil (1 Peter 5:8), this is because the foundation of resisting evil is awareness. You must be aware that there are individuals in the religious world who want to use your emotions against you. They aim to cause you to lose touch with rationality so that they may win you over to their camp. This can be combated by simply calling it out.

When you address someone’s tactics and bring them out in the open, they are no longer an ethereal concept; meaning they are no longer hidden in a vapor, unable to be touched.

By your words you force demagoguery into a tangible material that can be destroyed. Just as God spoke and the world was made, we may, on a significantly smaller, non-miraculous scale, speak and materialize what we have spoken. Against this extraction the enemy seldom has a defense. Demagogues rely on being camouflaged and spreading their parasitic idiocy from their hiding places.

Also, you must be aware that you yourself may attempt to use emotions and demagoguery to beguile others and win arguments. This is not how men argue. If you must resort to emotion, your argument is pathetic and should be bolstered by this strange entity known as “Fact”.

Be aware of yourself, you are not as Noble as you believe.

Facts should always prevail over emotion.

Reject Emotionalism.

Reject Traditionalism and Dogma.

Assault the arguments of the enemy with Logic.

Force the demagogue to show himself.

Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Silence: A Tool of Men

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.”
Psalm 62:5

“But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him”
Habakkuk 2:20

Noise is around us constantly. It permeates every pore, it seeps into every crevice like a disease. Noise is medication for some. Those who cannot bear the weight of silence must fill every void with chatter or some kind. Silence is called “awkward” for this reason, people cannot handle quiet because it requires them to think. Men can handle silence. Men love and crave silence, even extroverted men. They know that tremendous power rests in silence, for in it every dark query of the mind can be answered.

Sound vibrations accomplish very little, unless you are one of the few whose livelihood depends on speech or music. Most of those individuals have not even properly mastered speech themselves, and the result is that they utter empty sounds that just take up space and the attention of men.

You, however, are a master of silence.

If you master silence then you will have a great power in your back pocket. The beta is uncomfortable in silence, because he knows that through it, others can sense his thoughts. They can smell his weakness and lack of masculinity. All of his insecurities come rushing into his mind the moment he can no longer distract himself from his insufficiency by using noise. You can know a great deal about a person based on how they deal with pure quietness.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Mantra

None. Be silent.

Application

Sit in silence. Just for 120 seconds. Or take a walk outside and say nothing and do not look at your phone. Get comfortable being quiet, it is a great power. Through this quietness you are forced to deal with the darkness in your heart without distraction. You train yourself to be comfortable with it. This will benefit you when you need to negotiate or extract information from other people. If you ask someone a question and you can tell they only gave you a partial answer, just be silent for a moment. Most of the time, other people will crack from the lack of sound and tell you everything you want to know if you just give them a small moment of quiet. Silence is a weapon for better communication.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Adultery: Ignored in Christianity?

“He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.”
Proverbs 6:32

“You shall not commit adultery.”
Exodus 20:14

The Modern Church is almost to the point of ignoring the tremendous evil of adultery. If you find a Church liberal enough, you can maintain your adulterous relationship and still feign “Christianity” while clapping along to “Light the Fire”. I call these the “Adulterer’s Haven Churches”.

The man who cheats on his wife answers many questions about his individual character. He has shown that he has no integrity. He has behaved like a savage.

Adultery is not the way of Men, it is the way of impassioned boys who have no control over their penises and accompanying passions.

Here is a philosophy about adultery you will not hear about in many places: If you cheat on your wife, you don’t have the right to tell her. No, you do not deserve to tell her.

Answer me this: why would you confess to her what you have done? Don’t use the common lie of “it’s the right thing to do”; it isn’t.

If you tell your wife what you have done, all you are doing is alleviating yourself of the guilt you feel inside, and simultaneously breaking the heart of your wife.

You would only confess to get rid of the guilty feelings inside, making that “confession” and completely selfish maneuver. You don’t deserve to tell her, you deserve to go to the grave carrying your guilt alone.

Do not commit adultery. It was a simple command. The sexual needs of man have been manipulated by the world to create many great evils, adultery being one of them. We cannot sit around and pretend that having multiple sex partners is not a temptation, because it is. This is another problem with the classic teachings you hear from people. They pretend that being chaste is desirable, yet give no real, living reasons why chastity is good. Their own lives don’t represent the benefits of chastity, therefore no one will care what their mouth has to say about chastity. Who wants to listen to the miserable married guy who has sex once a year talk about the benefits of chaste conduct?

You must be a man and learn to redirect these sexual desires. We’ve talked about it before: convert all negative emotions into constructive endeavors. You must do this in order to survive the onslaught of temptation in the world.

Mantra

Keep your penis in your pants.

Application

This is simple, do not commit adultery. Yet every time we are commanded to do something, we instantly want to break the rule. This is human nature and the tendency for free will to move towards evil. As with all evil, adultery begins with thoughts of the mind. Thoughts become reality if given enough time to develop. “Desire when it has conceived brings forth sin” (James 1:15).

You have to win this fight early. You must give no mental ground to the Devil. The second an evil thought enters the mind, you must crush it instantly, and then redirect your mind to some other kind of work. These thoughts have no place in your mind.

You cannot be friends with other women.

I know this is an extreme stance to take and many will disagree with me. It can be difficult to accept this, and it is okay if you choose to ignore it. Just know that in this case, I am an extremist. And when it comes to sexuality, extremism is the high ground, and it is the safest path.

Friendship can become sexual in an instant, especially if you have been in a prior relationship for some time and the fire has died down. The new person seems extra funny and exciting. You start to think she is more than just a friend, that she is interested sexually. You start noticing her body more. The slide down the slippery slope begins. Eventually you are thinking about and visualizing having sex with her. At this point you have gone too far (Matt 5:28).

The reason Christ tells us not to think about having sex with women is because He knows that “Thoughts Become Things”.

Thought becomes action. Action becomes a habit. Christ the neuroscientist knew that we cannot tell the difference between imagining sex and actually having sex.

You cannot even get to this point in your relationships with women. Do not be alone with women. I would urge you to consider avoiding all contact outside of evangelism. Be honest with yourself, look in the mirror and you will know why you interact with women. Very few men talk to women unless they have an angle.

You have to understand yourself as a man. Your sex drive will get you into a massive amount of trouble if you are not extreme about controlling it.

I am a lover of freedom, but the way I govern my body should resemble a totalitarian dictatorship. You must declare martial law on your body. You must rule your body and mind with an iron fist.

Be a man; Do not have sex with someone who is not your wife.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

“Challenge” – The Cliche`, Effeminate Christian Buzzword

“Let me challenge you to be a good Christian”. What a profound, groundbreaking statement.

Not every slightly difficult task is a “Challenge”.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed”.
2 Corinthians 4:8

We hear about “challenge” far too much in the church. Some round faced, Low-Testosterone loser gets up before the assembly and gives a “devotional” talk or sermon with precisely zero challenging ideas in it. Then some other eunuch will get up after him and say “Thank you, brother, for that challenging lesson”.

Really? This is what has become of challenges? Challenges are supposed to be something that is actually difficult to think about or accomplish; hearing yet another effeminate, emotional sermon about the infinite grace of God is not exactly a War Cry.

The word “Challenge” implies obstacles, difficulty or even the desire not to embark on the challenge because of how difficult it is. Not every lesson given by a college kid with less Bible knowledge than a single-celled organism is a “Challenge”. We have grown up in the 20th-21st century without any violent religious persecution. This prolonged peace and ease has resulted in an epidemic of weak men who think everything is a challenge.

“Let me just leave you with this challenge tonight”.

“Let me challenge you to be a good Christian”. What a profound, groundbreaking statement.

These phrases and any others like them should be trampled under the foot of Man, for they are not challenges, they are the manifestation of pseudo-spiritual emotionalism. If we are constantly being challenged, then why is no one in the Church improving? They remain spiritually, emotionally and physically stagnant. They do not improve their minds or their finances. They do not improve their bodies or their souls. The only thing most young men improve at is the ability to sneak girls into their dorms at the so-called “Christian Universities”. Yet we are still being “challenged” all the time. In order for a person to improve, they have to be stressed outside their current abilities or they will never have anything to adapt to – This is called the Overload Principle.

We must challenge the modern definition of “challenge”.

In the old days when you challenged someone, it was a duel, a fight, a legal argument, something men participated in. A Challenge is a dare, a call-to-arms, a difficult to achieve goal, which implies that there is possibility for pain or for loss. That is something boys in the church know nothing about anymore. So stop using the word “challenge”, because the probability that anything you are dealing with is challenging is low.

At one point in history, men your age stormed Normandy’s beaches, charging into a storm of lead with the near certainty of death in the back of their minds. Many of those men were very young, sometimes 16 years old, and they lied about their age and said they were older so they could join the military because they felt a sense of duty. They had unparalleled courage and strength of will to charge into the face of death. They had unimaginable selflessness to give up another 80 years of living for the sake of the ideals of freedom.

And now you sit here complaining about how hard it is to finish that English degree.

Because the presence of true challenges is low, you must seek out challenges, for it is within the challenge and the pain that we grow as individuals. Seek and destroy real challenges and improve yourself. And until you are willing to truly push yourself to be better through discomfort and the application of work ethic, discard the word “challenge”, it’s a cliche` Christian Buzzword. Be a man.

Mantra

This is not even difficult.

Application

You are going to have to actively seek out difficulty if you want to grow. All the comforts of the modern age have softened males. Seek out the most difficult task at your work and do it. Crush the most difficult task at the beginning of the day, do not leave it till the end of the day.

Get yourself in the gymnasium. We can simulate difficulty and adversity on our terms when we go to the gym, which makes it an incredible tool for the mind. Before you even start your training you must decide that you are going to push past the discomfort in your body and drive yourself to be more. Tell yourself that once you feel pain, you will push yourself for two more repetitions. Then the next training session with the same exercise, push yourself to three repetitions past when you feel discomfort. In this way you build your work ethic.

Work ethic can be built, but it will not happen sooner than a month.

Most likely it will take even longer than six months of focused work to build any respectable level of work ethic. But if you put in the time and build the work ethic, your capacity to do work will grow. You now have the ability to do greater volumes of work for longer periods of time. Work ethic is one of the foundational principles of success. If you can develop the ability to push yourself physically, it will have a spillover effect on your mind. Over time you will be better able to push past mental barriers and mental discomfort in the same way that you pushed past mental and physical barriers in the gym. It is not a difficult thing to comprehend, you simply have to do the work.

Get up. Do the difficult things, and you will find that eventually what you once thought was difficult is now easy. And the tasks that betas in the Church call “Challenging”, you will be able to mock with your personal accomplishments.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

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