There is no subject the church is more popular for than hell. In the modern day, the talk of hell has slowed down because no one wants to “get their hands dirty” and speak about the punishment that awaits the evil. On the few occasions that we do hear about hell, it is almost never correct. Men speak about “burning in hell”, as if hell will be physical fire and physical pain. The fact that people think hell will be a literal burning sensation shows how little they are willing to think critically about the Word of God.
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
No man knows what the afterlife will be like, but we can deduce from scripture some fundamental truths.
We know that, according to scripture, we will cast off the physical body for a more perfect spiritual body. If this is the case, what will be left that can experience physical pain? We have no more nerves, our pain receptors are done away with, therefore we could not possibly feel the same physical pain that we feel on the earth.
What is left is spiritual pain that affects the spiritual body. Spiritual pain must be much deeper and more painful, because the only way to describe it is to compare it to the pain of being burned with fire, one of the most painful experiences known to man.
This is done in the same way that heaven is told to have streets of gold and jewels and precious metals everywhere. Do you think this is the literal description of how heaven will be? Will heavenly roads be lined with physical gold right off the periodic table of elements? Probably not, but this biblical illustration is an analogy to help us visualize how glorious heaven is by using materials we are already familiar with and appreciate. So also, the pain of hell is made real in our minds by comparing it with the forms of pain we already understand: fire
For this reason, hell is a spiritual pain, and will likely be worse than being on fire, but who can truly know before they get there?
The key for us to never find out what it is like, this is done by acting like men and taking noble and righteous action each day. We can avoid the entire debate of whether or not hell is a physical burning or what the pain is like by simply choosing not to go there. We choose not to go to hell with our actions and the way we conduct ourselves, which is why it is not redundant to continue to remind you to Conduct Yourself Like a Man.
Mantra
Avoid the Spiritual death, act with righteousness.
Not What Hell Will Be Like
Application
Rather than being burned by the fires of hell, use the reality of eternal punishment as a motivator to continue to press you towards what is right. There will be many times in life where doing what is right is not convenient and not fun, but the reminder of consequences for our actions keeps us on the path.
In contrast, it is damaging to the mind to only be motivated by wanting to avoid punishment, but this is where many Christians find themselves.
Heaven does not sound that appealing to many Christians, but hell sounds horrible, so we do what is right as men and stay on the straight and narrow (Matthew 7:14). We must retrain our mind to desire heaven and also want to avoid hell. When we combine both of these motivations into one, we are much more efficient and mentally stable.
Correct the thoughts that enter your mind by becoming aware of them, and then by redirecting them.
You own your mind, you tell it what you want it to think.
You must command yourself into a better pattern of thinking.
“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
The meaning of motivation is literally “ a motive to act”, but men have turned it into something completely different. To the world, motivation is when you feel like taking an action. All the stars align, you are pumped and excited to go to work or to go train and you go out to pound the stone of discipline while spurred on by your warm and fuzzy feelings.
We as men know these occasions of motivation are rare and that they cannot be relied upon if our goal is to be successful.
You are only occasionally going to feel like keeping to all your disciplines. Only rarely will you desire to make those small sacrifices of discipline. The weak are the ones who wait for the stars to align before they take action. Men take the initiative and do the work when it is still inconvenient to do so. Men of character and strength improve themselves every day, not just on the days that it “feels right” to work. No Man judges whether or not he should take an action based on how he is feeling emotionally at the time.
Motivation is fickle, it is here one second and gone the next. Motivation should never be relied upon as your reason to act just as the emotional feeling of love should never be relied upon for any rational decision making. Both motivation and “love” can be here one second, and gone the next – but discipline always remains.
However, all that being said, we should still seek out motivation in the form of role models or stories that inspire us.
We should ingest a positive visual diet filled with motivation. In doing this we build a stockpile of motivation in our minds for whenever we need a boost.
Stories of men overcoming the odds and staring down their own personal adversity no matter how great or small it seemed to the world.
Examples of men who have achieved greatness in their chosen field serve as motivation to do well and they are out reminders for what is possible if we are willing to work.
When our minds and bodies are failing, we turn our minds to our role models, to the men who inspired us to take action in the first place, and we become energized to do even more work, to go even farther in our disciplines, to behave with increased masculinity and be more focused and determined in all that we do. We should fill our minds with men we admire and whom we want to be like. We must embed their words and philosophies in our minds and work to embody the spirit of the masculine Christian man.
The internet has placed dozens of excellent mentors at our fingertips. We no longer have an excuse not to improve in any facet of life. There is no justification for not knowing how to do something. There is no reason that we should not have any men to look up to.
Mantra
I am my own motivation.
Application I
Replace motivation with discipline. This can be done by forcing yourself to take action when you are not motivated. There is no simpler or easier way to become disciplined. You do not need to be the man who requires motivation to take action, you want to be the man who completes all of his work regardless of his personal feelings. Cast aside emotional motivation and take up the Blade of Discipline. Take the actions you do not want to take, that are uncomfortable, even painful but that bring the most profit.
Application II
Acquire mentors who inspire you, whether you know them personally or not does not matter. Here are some suggestions for men you can find online or in books:
Jocko Willink (Leadership/Discipline/Masculinity)
Jordan Peterson (Thinker/Lecturer/Writer)
Robert Greene (Thinker/Writer)
Elon Musk (Work Ethic)
I am not vouching for the morality of these men, some of them use profanity quite often, but they each embody a version of a masculine spirit and are great at what they have chosen to do in life. You do not have to copy their morality, only their skill and masculine characteristics.
You might look at this list of suggestions and tell me “There are not that many (if any) Christian men on this list!”.
That is correct, and it is because Christian men have this bad habit of being mediocre and forgotten. Christian men tend to be average and fail to achieve great things in life. Show young men a Man like Job or Abraham who gathered wealth and character and was still righteous and you will find another role model for them. But most Christian men are content to justify their failure by suggesting they are more spiritual for not focusing on worldly possessions.
Most Christian men do not have a psychotic work ethic.
The majority of Christian men do not gather great wealth.
Most Christian men are “theoretical success” rather than “experimental successes” (They say things like, “If I were X person, I would do X, Y and Z”, when in reality they would do none of those things because they have no idea how to manage anything which is why they are failures).
Your job is to break this mold of mediocrity and be a Christian Man who is also a respected Man of valor. We have no right to not use our time wisely and be great at our selected skills. When you pick a mentor for yourself, you must listen to him every day. Listen to his podcasts or speeches and lectures and actually try to apply some of the principles you hear. Try to embody a great and more focused mentality by being inspired by these men. Look at how other men act, and then act like them.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Every man approaches death with every day that he lives. We have been physically dying from the start of life. At some point we truly realize the reality of our approaching death and we are forced to come to grips with it. Whether or not we actually do get a grip on the truth of it is up to us.
Most people never get a grip, so they ignore death, treating it as something afar off and never preparing for the day when they must die. Every day, we as men have to prepare for the reality of our death. There is nothing we can do to avoid this engagement. We have a few years to gain mastery over our mind, to command our thoughts towards life and death and then to live a noble life. It is difficult to act rightly if we are constantly overwhelmed by fear of death.
Old people say that young people do not consider death.
I consider mine every day, multiple times per day, and you should as well. You must consider your death every day without fail and try to understand how limited your time is. This will keep you focused because you know there is only so much life to live, after which you must give an account of how you used your time. In reality the old are the ones who do not consider death and spend much of their remaining life fighting to delay the inevitable end. Also, many people live as if they were already dead. Their lives are in a state of death. The robotic lifestyle of most religious individuals is a representation of this fact.
We decay as we live by the process of aging, and we spend a fortune trying to delay this aging. Every kind of skin product and every “special” diet are tools people try to use to preserve their youth. No man accepts how he ages, he always wishes to stop it or slow it down. Every attempt to slow aging is just action taken because of the fear of death. We fear death because we do not know what lies beyond it.
As Christians we hope there is an afterlife, but do not be confused, no one has died and then come back to tell us what is really on the other side.
This is why it still requires an element of faith to be a Christian and have a hope for the promise of life beyond death. Christians do not want to hear this, they think you can know for sure what lies beyond the doors of death. If that is true and you can know what happens after death, why are we still afraid of dying?
We want to think that we have been told exactly what will happen upon death, but really, we still do not know, and this is why we are afraid. This explains why we have “hope” regarding the afterlife and not “knowledge”. If we knew what was coming, there would be no need for faith.
We believe that the Word of God has been revealed to us and in it are descriptions of a paradisiacal afterlife. This not only gives us hope beyond this present life, but lessens the fear of death for some men.
Death can spring out of any place at any time and snatch us from this life.
Often we make the mistake of assuming we have time on our side. We never think that we will be a casualty in a car accident, or that we will die in some ridiculous event that had a 0.1% chance of happening. We always think we will live to a ripe old age and pass away in our sleep. This is not the case, our time could be over today. This could be your very last day on the earth. As you put down this book and get ready to head to work, you could be T-boned by a semi that ran a red light and be killed instantly.
That is a dark idea to meditate on, but it is a possibility. A car wreck that kills you is a small possibility, but still something that happens to random individuals every day. They only had a “small possibility” of being killed in a wreck too. And how many of them planned on and prepared for their death that day?
We must also meditate on the fact that our loved ones will die, this is an even darker thought.
The thought of the death of our wives or parents is very dark and brings tears to the eyes, but that is a day that is coming and we must prepare for it. Even if they live to a ripe old age, they will likely die before you, and you must be ready to handle that sorrow. Your wife may die before you. Your partner for life may be snatched from you before you are prepared.
This is one of the highest points of human suffering, to lose those we love to the abyss of death, not knowing where they are or if they are okay because “God Judges the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). We as Christians believe they are in paradise, but we still fear because we do not know exactly where they are in space and time. This is a natural fear, it does not project lack of faith.
We must be mentally ready to handle a funeral and final goodbyes to our family members.
We must be equipped to handle the sorrow while still conducting ourselves like men on that day. The most masculine men I have ever known have been ones who lose their wife and yet are still at the worship service the very next Sunday. They do not take time off from their highest responsibility to grieve or be sorrowful, there is plenty of time for that. They mourn publicly, grieve at home, and maintain their faith to the highest caliber.
Death is more real than anything we experience. Death is the only thing we cannot avoid. We can cancel meetings and appointments. We can delay, postpone and procrastinate about everything else in life, but we cannot delay death. It is coming for us all, and we must be ready mentally and spiritually for that day.
Mantra
Death comes to all men.
Application
Conquering the fear of death is a Long War. To begin with, you must think about death every day. Just bring it into your consciousness and accept the reality that this flesh is temporary. Eventually you will start to ask yourself questions about the nature of death and about what is beyond death, this is where you build your faith. You can either fear death and stop thinking about it, or you can use the reality of death as a way to motivate yourself into righteousness.
Accepting the reality that we do not have that much time left to live helps to keep us accountable to ourselves and to God.
When we get to this point in our thinking, death becomes a tool and is useful to us rather than something that promotes fear and dread. The only people who dread death are the people who do know what is coming after death, and that is all of us, regardless of what you hear in the religious world.
By meditating on your death, you bring yourself closer to the acceptance of it. We believe that death is not the end. Death should be the most perfect thing in the world to a Christian, because it means that man has put aside his flesh and has gone to a perfect world the likes of which could never be described through language. Paradise is on the horizon for the faithful follower of God.
After you come to grips with your own death, you must immediately turn your mind to the deaths of those you love, and conquer that fear.
For some people, the death of others is easy to accept while their own death is extremely difficult, and for others it is the reverse. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you must follow the same pattern you used when fighting to accept your own death. You must meditate on the death of your family, because at any time they could be taken from you. How are you going to react if that happens? Will you be a man or will you die?
These applications are not dark and depressing. For some Christians they are sorrowful, but meditating on death gives you the ability and perspective necessary to be extremely thankful for your family while you still have them. Thinking about death makes it less likely that you are going to waste a saturday watching football for ten hours and will instead spend at least a small amount of time with your family, because you are acutely aware of the fact that your time with them could be over at any second.
The stoics used the thoughts of death to keep them grounded in reality and to help them live a good life.
“Memento mori” – a reminder of death.
Death is a tool to help men live a good life, as long as we as men are thinking about it properly.
“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist.”
“And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already”
Most people picture the devil or a great demon when thinking of the antichrist, but this is not what it really is. The true antichrist is infinitely more subtle. He does not go about announcing who he is or what his mission is. All he does is avoid confessing Christ. Maybe he pollutes the Christian faith, flanking it with propaganda. He does not have to make a great spectacle of himself, he can remain below the surface and never stir anything up to a massive degree. The diseases that are best at killing people are the ones that go unnoticed until they bring on the final onslaught of death.
The Bible speaks of the antichrist as simply one who denies Christ (1 John 2:22), that seems simple.
The last passage says that the antichrist is in the world already. If John was talking about a great demon, these passages would be terrifying. But anyone can see by simply looking around that there are no great demons running around causing mayhem. Any demon would avoid drawing attention to himself. It seems that the antichrist is more of an attitude or set of actions that overtakes multiple individuals instead of one singular individual who brings great evil into the world.
The terrifying thing about the antichrist is that it could be you, or it could be me. It could be anyone. Anyone who denies Christ is the spirit of the antichrist. Anyone who opposes God in his lifestyle automatically opposes Christ and His sacrifice, and by virtue of this he embodies the spirit of the antichrist.
Or maybe the whole idea of the antichrist has been blown out of proportion. There are plenty of people who do not believe in Christ and who do not confess his name. Are all of them antichrists? If so, the idea of being an antichrist isn’t as much about being a nightmare figure than it is just living in open rebellion to God. There are plenty of Antichrists all over the world, and being an atheist (form of anti-christ) does not make anyone special or intelligent.
Mantra
Disbelief alone is antichrist.
Application
Simply think on these things with an abstract mind. Be open to new ideas, think about them and determine within yourself whether or not they are true. Examine your actions every day and ensure they are aligned with God rather than opposed to Him.
People in the church make the mistake of trying to do away with the fact that man is an animal. He is not a plant or a mineral which should be obvious. Man is flesh, bone and biology. Man is highly influenced by biochemicals: His hormones. Yet people in the church still want to try to argue that man is a spirit and by virtue of that he is automatically holy. This is not the case, holiness does not come naturally. We have a wicked fleshly body in addition to a soul, because most of the things we desire to do naturally are wrong. The fact that the words “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came from the mouth of God should be evidence enough of the fact that man is constantly battling his earthly body.
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” & “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
There are moments in the life of man where it seems as if he loses all mental control and becomes solely flesh.
He becomes purely an animal and his soul is sidelined. Fits of rage, crimes of passion, lust of the flesh are examples of this phenomenon.
We cannot sit in our comfortable pews and deny the fact that the body of man is still heavily influenced by his biology. While we can put forth our best effort to rule over our body with our mind and morality, this does not magically take away our inclination to do what appeals to the flesh.
Animals rip one another apart and have sex at will without thinking about it. They do what is most likely to perpetuate their survival. We as men cannot behave that way. We must control our biology. We must be completely unnatural in almost everything we do – God requires this of us.
Do not murder other men.
Avoid sex with women who are not your wife.
Reject gluttony.
Through these simple, difficult and anti-natural actions we sharpen our mind and harden our discipline.
We must convert our natural drives and biology into a constructive energy that allows us to build and improve our lives rather than destroy and break them down.
We must focus those fits of rage into focused exercise. We must turn that desire for sex into a desire to build our business, do better work and to be more successful, because these things are what bring more sex (at least for a worldly man, but we can still hijack the sex drive to do good work). Through focused effort, we can flip the switch and use the same emotions to take positive action rather than negative action.
Mantra
I am rejecting the animalistic inclinations of my flesh.
Application
There are generally consequences that follow them when men behave like animals. Men take horrific action motivated by chemical reactions in the brain and must then suffer the consequences. We must master our emotions and gain a greater control over our body.
This flesh wants to do everything that we should avoid as Christian men. We have to rule over the flesh with an iron fist. Beat the body into submission everyday. So many men make the mistake of letting the body rule over the mind, we must do the opposite. We must rule over the flesh. The flesh never makes a mistake until the mind is fatigued and allows the mistake to happen. Therefore, we must keep the mind fresh at all times.
We cannot rest the mind, for in that moment the flesh will take over us. We must always be vigilant and aware of what is going on in our bodies and see to it that our biology does not affect what is going on in our minds.
Tactic I – Mindfulness
Detach from yourself and view your biological drives and desires as if you were a scientist looking at a test subject. Examine your various oddities, habits and cravings and note them.
Trace your desires back to their very root. Ask yourself why you want to act on a particular craving. Once you have the answer to that question, you must ask yourself, “Why” again. Continue asking until you find the source of your desire?
Contemplate the various consequences if you act on any of your desires, and at the same time visualize where your life would be and how successful you could become if you would redirect those energies into productive pursuits.
Unleash pent up emotion and desire into productive outlets such as training, business, music or writing.
