Practicum Archives - Page 4 of 9 - Spartan Christianity

Execution of Sin – Death Sentence

Most men never execute their own sin because it lives beneath their mind in the unconscious. Their sin is so ingrained in their lifestyle that it is committed passively. This should not be a shock as it is more natural to sin than to be righteous. Almost all sins are simply perversions of natural drives. Pornography is a perversion of the natural sex drive of man and promiscuity is founded on man’s biological need to reproduce with as many women as possible. Lying is a way to avoid pain, a manipulation of the most basic survival instinct of man. Stealing is a form of fear of poverty, greed, or insecurity. Gossip comes primarily from insecurity, which is why it is mainly considered a “women’s sin”. Greed is an exaggeration of the desire to be safe and secure monetarily.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”
Matthew 5:29, 30

All these sins lie in the unconscious part of man’s mind. They are automated because they are so deeply rooted in the natural aspects of man. This is how habits function. Negative habits are detrimental because they are actions that either do not benefit us or harm us and they are performed automatically. The automated form of sin is the most insidious, because it can eat us alive without us even knowing it is there.

The only way to begin to bring our sin to the surface and finally execute it is to follow the sin to its root cause.

We must learn our own selves and psychology if we are to see why we behave and commit the sins we do. Sin is almost certainly related to your personality and weaknesses. Trace your sin to the core. Your sin is a reflection of who you are, what you fear and what you desire. If you are going to execute your sin, you must first know yourself.

Mantra

Kill the source of sin, then kill the sin.

Application

Outline your personal weaknesses. What do you fear? What do you desire?And what are the small and seemingly insignificant desires and fears that live within you? What problems does your personality type encounter regularly? Answer these questions and you will begin understanding your sin. The enemy knows how to manipulate your needs and convert them into evil. Recognize and short circuit this process and you can win the war against the self. Your sin is dead if you are willing to lay the ax to the root of its tree.

Even better would be to correct the weaknesses of your personality so that they are no longer a target for attack. You cannot be tempted by greed if you are no longer insecure about poverty. The sexually satisfied husband or man who knows how to transmute the sexual energy has no need to seek an outlet through other women. You have the opportunity to win, and eliminate one sin at a time forever.

Also be aware that if you eliminate a sin, but forget to put a sentry on guard against the return of that sin, it will inevitably come back.

Remember the story in scripture of the demons who were cast out of a person but eventually got back in? They got back in because the person had not worked on themselves and invested in their own spirituality (Matthew 12:43-45). The sin will attempt to return because of your personality and particular weaknesses, but you must stay in command of your mind and do not let the evil near it. Never give evil a chance to take root in your mind again.

You have the weapon of vigilance on your side.

Always be aware of the evil, and do not let it near you.

Fight to the end.

Correct your flaws.

Strengthen your vigilance and resolve.

Begin the Execution of Sin.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Prime The Machine – Morning Hours

Prime the machine in the morning hours so that your entire day is a win. Victory begin in the morning.

“but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
Psalm 1:2

“Above all, be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe all the law My servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in all you do.”
Joshua 1:7-8

The morning is the most important time of the day. In the morning you set the tone for how the rest of the day will go. You can either waste your morning or you can use it to get the edge. You can hit the snooze button ten times or you can get up and get after the day. When you wake up you can make your bed right away, or you can leave the sheets in a pile until you stagger home that night. You can eat donuts for breakfast or you can cook some eggs. You can read books, train and work on your disciplines in the morning, or you can mindlessly watch television as your ability to think for yourself slowly fades into oblivion.

Most people take the easier path every morning.

They want to eat whatever food is tastiest and do whatever is most convenient and requires the least amount of work. People want the path of pleasure, but that path never rewards you. The path of pleasure never builds your character or discipline. The path of enjoyment does not make you more successful or put more money in your pocket. However, the path of discomfort and pain is the only one that produces the growth of character you want.

Every day you look in the mirror and you are not where you want to be in your life. You do not have the money, character or discipline you want. Worse than that, you are not even progressing towards those goals. You wake up every day, look at yourself and realize that you have made no progress towards those desired end state goals since you started them. You never prime the machine. You have never gotten the edge first thing in the morning and you waste every morning with activities that bring you no profit, neither monetarily nor in character. Today is the day that ends.

This is the day that you stop wasting your time every morning and start investing in your future.

Start writing your book in the morning hours before anyone is awake. Start training the body in the morning. Start eating better, if only for breakfast. Over time your morning victories will compound and spread to midday and then to the afternoon. Discipline produces more discipline. Effective mornings produce effective afternoons. Do not waste your morning hours. Prime the machine for a day of victory and growth.

Mantra

Crush the morning, crush the day. Prime the Machine.

Application

You must stop wasting yours mornings.They may be the only blocks of time you have in your day to truly make progress on yourself and your goals. If you can have a productive morning, you can have a productive day. Even if you do not have a productive day, you still have the satisfaction that results from having a productive morning.

Take all the disciplines you want to start and compress them into the morning.

Do not put them off until the afternoon or you will talk yourself out of being disciplined. Put your reading, writing and thinking work at the beginning of the day and do it instantly upon waking. Do this consistently for several days and you will establish it as a habit. Once it is a habit, you gain momentum and maintaining the discipline becomes easier. The only time you will have to make massive effort is on the days you do not feel like priming the machine and doing your work. On these days you must work even harder. You must obliterate your disciplines and teach your mind that you do not stop working for anything. Teach the mind that it has no say over whether or not you will be disciplined.

If you can be disciplined on the days that you do not feel like being disciplined, then you will make true progress on your character.

We only improve when we do what is right when it is uncomfortable and inconvenient to do so. Stop wasting your mornings and start making them the most productive time of your day.

Arm your mind with strength.

Bring your thoughts into submission to you.

Gather all strength to your mind.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Chemical Aid – Drugs

What is your opinion on using chemical aid? Are drugs tools or problems or both? Leave your comment at the bottom.

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8

I can almost guarantee you are consuming some type of psychoactive substance. The extent to which the element is psychoactive is the only thing that varies and is the only way Christians justify its consumption. The most basic debate is caffeine versus amphetamines. “Caffeine is completely fine for the Christian to consume”, so they say, even though it is a chemical brother to amphetamines that include meth.

Because caffeine has arguably milder psychological effects, Christians can justify consuming it. I enjoy caffeine as much as the next guy, but I am not going to pretend that caffeine is as different from amphetamines as many people would like to suggest. Amphetamines just have a lower overdose point. Every substance has its own lethal overdose point. For caffeine the overdose point is around 10 grams, as far as we know. Everything is a poison, it is only a question of dosage.

Caffeine’s chemical effect still stimulates the body like a mild form of meth, just to a lesser degree and with less damaging side effects as far as is currently known.

Obviously smoking or snorting something made with battery acid is going to be more damaging than a well-researched substance like caffeine.

What exactly do you think your doctor is giving you when he prescribes Adderall or Ritalin? “Amphetamines are bad, unless my doctor gives them to my under-disciplined ADHD child. At that point it is totally okay”.

And before everyone jumps to the, “But Coffee is natural” argument, let me remind you that Hemlock poison, Lily of the Valley Berries, several various mushrooms and cyanide producing sudangrass or sorghum are all natural plants that produce lethal poisons. Natural does not automatically equal safe.

Chemicals are on the earth to be used to our advantage.

Most Christians just have to run a cost-benefit analysis to determine if a certain drug is okay for them to take. As long as the drug does not damage the body too much, and does not alter the state of the mind to an excessive degree, it is okay for most people to consume.

I think this philosophy is cowardly and ridiculous. These same Christian who would be angry at people who “try to find where the line of God’s commands is” so they can get as close to the line as possible without going over it are making the same arguments when it comes to what they put in their bodies. Weak-minded Christian people simply want to see how much they can experience of a drug without sinning. Just like weak-minded Christians want to see how much they can do sexually without actually having penis-in-vagina intercourse. It is the same delusional justification scheme.

Caffeine is approved by Christians because it does not damage the body in small doses, and only alters the mind slightly, giving it more energy but also a sense of great anxiety and impending doom. Caffeine is an anxiogenic compound, meaning is causes anxiety.

But wait: if a substance induces anxiety, something the Bible tells us explicitly to avoid (Matt 6:25-34; Philippians 4:6), how can it be right to consume it?

No one can answer this without excessively justifying their own behavior. Furthermore, most Christians discussing the effects of various drugs have no scientific knowledge whatsoever and no ability to think rationally or scientifically. The lack of scientific thinkers in the religious world is a plague that has contributed to the growth of radical liberalism and buttressed the emotionalistic propaganda of weak thinking beta-males. Note: There are many more religious scientists than there are religious scientific thinkers – there is a difference between the two.

The absence of scientific thought in the religious world regarding drugs is clearest when you observe someone accepting or refusing to consume something based on whether or not there are any “chemicals” in it. People are never more stupid than when they accept this blind-faith line of thinking, because they are conceding to their own ignorance. They refuse to consume something because they are ignorant of it. Furthermore, everything you see is a chemical! Everything you lay eyes on is composed of chemicals in various arrangements and structures. So to say that you do not consume chemicals means that you do not consume anything, neither can you even breathe the air, because you would be taking in various chemicals into your lungs.

What most people mean is that they do not want to consume any artificial, man-made chemicals.

This is also insipid because it assumes that what chemicals occur naturally are better for you than what is created by man. This mode of reasoning is faulty at the core. See the previous paragraph where a few natural but lethal plants are discussed. Antibiotics are synthetic, man-made, artificial compounds and can save your life if you need them. That is just one example that shows that what is natural is not necessarily “healthier” than what is unnatural. There is a difference in feeling healthy and actually being healthy.

What about other chemicals that aid in the war against anxiety and depression?

These are tremendous inventions, but they also can promote lethargy in people who take them. Taking antidepressants can cause weight gain and avoidance of exercise, but they also prevent us from having our faith damaged while it is brought under siege by our emotions and depression. Anti-anxiety medications can bring peace of mind to those who never experience it, yet they can encourage gluttony. There may be no clear cut answer to the questions about many different drugs, and there are very few circumstances in Christianity that have any gray area.

All this to say that we are not attacking the use of caffeine, what we are attacking is a behavior and a pattern of thought manifested by many religious people. The same religious people who condemn drugs use drugs.

Mantra

Think rationally about faith at all times.

Application

You have to decide for yourself what you think about chemical aid. This section is not meant to condemn certain drugs or encourage others. The sole purpose of this section is to get you to think critically about why some drugs/chemicals are fine to consume while others are not. You must get in the habit of thinking critically and must also avoid mindlessly swallowing the traditions and doctrines of men. You must understand all sides of a debate if you truly want to find out the truth of a matter, and this applies to drugs also.

There will always be debate in the church about what drugs you can and cannot take.

You have to use your own mind and think logically about what everyone in the church is saying about drugs. Ask yourself: “Are they speaking based on the Bible or based on their emotions? Is what they are saying simply the passing down the traditional thought they have heard all their lives? Are my teachers thinking critically, or do they want to avoid critical thinking in favor of more passive forms of thought like tradition and blind acceptance?”

Once you ask yourself these questions, begin to reject philosophies of people who speak from emotions rather than logic. Emotions have no place in the discussion of religion, faith and drugs. You will inevitably encounter someone who has lost a family member to an illegal drug overdose and therefore rejects every single form of mind altering chemical. The loss of a family member is tragic, but it does not confer expertise in any area related to the death of that family member. Meaning if you lose a family member to drugs, it does not immediately make you an expert on drugs, nor does it give you the right to promote your agenda regarding drugs. You must exclusively use logic in every aspect of your faith.

Additionally, all chemical drugs have a spectrum of use: some men use them moderately, others abuse them by chronically taking high doses.

It tends to follow that any drug that is abused will have negative effects on the body. Too much caffeine can start to wear out hormone producing glands or wear out the circulatory pathways of the body. Too much alcohol kills you instantly, yet we constantly use various microdoses of alcohol as medicines. Interesting to note, too much water can kill you as well

Any chemical compound whose name ends in “-ol” is an alcohol compound. It will not make you drunk, and it helps other compounds dissolve and absorb in the body. This is the difference between use and abuse: abuse pushes so far past ‘use’ that excessive negative effects ensue. Even the threshold of abuse will vary from person to person. So many variables make the spiritual question of chemicals and drugs difficult, and are the reason why so many Christians want to avoid the question all together, because asking the questions would require them to think long and hard about what they believe, and no one wants to do that.

There are also two primary logical fallacies you will want to avoid when thinking about drugs:

Fallacy 1 – Avoid using 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 as a trump card that alleviates you of the responsibility of thinking.

When most Christians cannot make a rational argument against a drug or compound or even a behavior, they result in using God as a tool for their own agenda. They claim that because the body is a temple of God, we should not be putting these chemicals into our body.

“Because the body is the Temple of God, you should be a vegan”-
Person taking Scripture out of context.

This argument is irreverent because this passage is taken out of context. In 1 Corinthians 6 the apostle Paul is talking about sexual integrity, which means you cannot take that passage and make it apply to every single question of the physical body. The Christian who uses this argument is not rational enough to think through his faith logically, so he resorts to using scripture quoted out of context to justify his generic, commonplace and ignorant thinking about an issue.

If you are going to make a case against a chemical of some kind, you need to do more than twist the Scripture to suit your own narrative – this isn’t mainstream politics.

Fallacy 2 – You must ask the question, “Does this compound affect my sobriety?”

The only rational, scripture based argument against various chemical compounds is the fact that some of them reduce sobriety and lead us to other sins.

If we are drunk, we are not watching for temptation and we are exponentially more likely to do something stupid. If the compound I want to take reduces my ability to conduct myself like a man, I should avoid it. However, if the compound increases my sobriety, who could argue against it?

These are dangerous waters of thought for the rational Christian, as other weak Christians may call it ‘heresy’. You may want to argue for DMT or other psychedelics because they supposedly increase sobriety and allegedly put you in contact with God directly. No one knows what really happens with these compounds, and no Christians speak about them openly which is why there will be eternal debate about it. Again, this paragraph is not encouraging or arguing for the use of any of these drugs, it is only encouraging you to apply rational thought to every one of your philosophies instead of simply swallowing what your parents day.

You will have to decide for yourself what you think of drugs.

Think through your faith.

Use your mind.

Fortify your belief.

Use every available weapon against the adversary.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Sources
1. Association of the anxiogenic and alerting effects of caffeine with ADORA2A and ADORA1 polymorphisms and habitual level of caffeine consumption

2. How can someone die from drinking too much water?

3. Understanding the Dangers of Alcohol Overdose

4. Antidepressants and weight gain: What causes it?

5. When Your Antidepressant Makes You Tired

6. Caffeine Toxicity

7. Anxiety

8. Crush Anxiety

9. Secular Reasons To Avoid Drunkenness

Discretion – Social Wisdom

“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.”
Proverbs 11:22

“My son, do not lose sight of these— keep sound wisdom and discretion,”
Proverbs 3:21

“Discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you.”
Proverbs 2:11

Before we begin, let’s define terms. Discretion is the “quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.” Another definition of discretion is “the freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation.” Based on these definitions, it is easy to see why discretion is a valuable character trait of an individual.

A man who avoids unnecessary conflict is wise and strategic.

This is not to say that we should avoid all conflict or shy away from telling truths that will cause offense, but we should be wise about how and when we present those truths. Truths should not be sugar coated, but they also should not be forced down the throat of people, even if they desperately need to hear them. You must slowly work on the minds of others instead of ramming your philosophies into their head with warlike attacks. To behave with discretion is to be diplomatic and wise. While there is certainly a time for attrition warfare, maneuver warfare is typically preferred when strategizing and engaging in small-scale social wars.

Discretion used righteously is one of the many fruits of wisdom.

Unrighteous discretion is a tremendous evil, and it operates under the illusion that no one will find out about the sin. Prostitutes offer “discrete services”, yet you still have a certain probability of getting caught by the police and being a sex offender for the rest of your life. Evil is never fully discrete, there is always the possibility that your evil will find you out. This indiscretion would then cause a massive stir in your church and in your community, causing offense and eliminating all semblance of past discretion. This small possibility should not be merely a source of fear, but it should be an additional motivator for righteousness.

Mantra

Be conscious of every action taken.

Application

It is hard to be discreet while running on mental autopilot. We must be cognizant of the way we act and of the situations around us if we are to behave with wisdom and discretion. The discrete man does not gossip and spread rumors, for he knows those rumors could circle back to him and bring him shame.

The discrete man does not reveal secrets and spread the sins of others. He does not deceive others, because he knows that he himself can be deceived by others as well. The discrete man is quiet, he does not actively seek out occasion to open his mouth, for he understands that the more words he speaks, the greater the chance that he will say something wrong.

The discrete man is conscious of his reputation at all times, taking into account how his deeds will alter the way others think of him because he knows that reputation is everything.

This man prepares his responses to all queries in advance, so that he reduces the chance of being caught off guard. The discrete man conducts himself with the utmost of masculinity at all times. Men must use discretion as a tool, as an instrument of wisdom.

Be aware of your actions.

Be mindful in all your interactions with other people.

View yourself as a man.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Gossip – Verbalized Insecurity

Gossip is not just a problem for women. Gossiping is a problem for beta men in the same way that many women struggle with lust, their desire just comes from a different source.

“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

“A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.”
Proverbs 16:28

“Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas.”
Charles Stewart, Biographer.

Nonetheless, we will still gossip, because gossip is easy. James tells us that no man can tame the tongue because it is an unruly evil filled with deadly poison (3:8). He also tells us that the man who does stumble in word is perfect and able to control his whole body, (3:2) which suggests that sin of the mouth is the most difficult to control. This is true because it is possible to speak without thinking, as most people are very skilled at doing. The mouth gets ahead of us. We make statements before our mind has time to register what we just said, and before we have time to think about how our words sound from the perspective of others. This is why our mouth is the source of so much evil, emotional pain and psychological suffering.

But what makes us gossip?

Ego, and here is why. When was the last time you spoke well of someone you were gossiping about? Most likely the answer is never. Our ego only wants to talk about others when we have something negative to say about them. That way our ego is elevated and we are made to feel better because we can push ourselves up on the rubble of another individual’s damaged reputation. We can compare ourselves to other men and have the classic thought of, “Wow, I’m not as bad as that guy” as if that justifies our patheticism and mediocre lives. We are plagued with evil, yet all we have to do is think, “Well, at least I’m not Hitler” and our lives are validated and our “small sins” are justified.

Ego is the source of all evil. Ego is the “bad pride” that is focused solely on self and pleasure, and gossiping brings small, subtle pleasures to the ego. It doesn’t feel amazing to gossip, it feels just good enough that we keep doing it over and over. Gossip is nothing more than verbalized weakness and insecurity; we must terminate this habit of gossip as soon as possible.

Mantra

I am controlling my tongue, it does not move without my consent.

Application

The problem of gossip is rooted is a lack of control over our tongue. The absence of verbal discipline is the foundational problem from which gossip creeps out and damages our own reputation; because beginning at the time when we first gossip, we are forever known as a gossiper, even if only among other gossipers. And who is to say that those gossipers will not turn around and speak about you behind your back?

Gossipers eat their own.

We must enter into every civil dialogue with a high level of consciousness. This is the point where our meditation practice starts to pay us some dividends, as we can become more self-aware and realize the distasteful ways we conduct ourselves in public.

Observe yourself and the way you speak to and about other people.

Examine yourself in a detached way and evaluate your character as a bystander to your own life. When you are conversing with people, imagine yourself having an out of body experience and watching yourself talk.

How are you coming across to others around you?

In what ways are the men you speak to interpreting what you are saying?

How will their personality and personal experience color the way they perceive what you are saying?

By asking these questions we can immediately turn ourselves off to the habit of gossip, because it looks so abysmal, so distasteful and corrupt when we examine it from the outside that we no longer want anything to do with something that would mar our character so greatly. So become aware of your dialogue and examine it critically.

Upon achieving constant awareness of ourselves, we still must strive to control our tongues because our pleasure-loving ego is still going to urge us to gossip about other men in a small scale struggle for power. In this rare case, awareness alone is likely not enough to purge the problem. In this case we must literally bite our tongues.

We must physically condition ourselves to associate gossip with punishment. This seems somewhat barbaric to weak men, but it would be better to endure some physical pain now than to endure the spiritual pain that would be the result of a lifetime of this evil. Jesus taught to eliminate evil at the source even if it is painful because it is better to enter heaven maimed than to have a perfect body and be cast into hell (Mark 9:45).

Prime your mind and become self-aware before you enter a conversation or better yet, before you walk out the door to participate in a public function (Church/Work etc.).
Detach from and observe yourself as if you are floating above your own body.
Physically Bite tongue when necessary.
Gain power over time by employing restraint early.

We must get a grip on this sin of the tongue.

Gossip is a foundational evil that must be extracted and burned. Teaching ourselves that gossip is painful is a simple and effective way to make this happen. So bite your tongue. Discipline your mouth. Control your mind. Do not speak about people negatively behind their backs. Conduct yourself with honor. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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