Spartan Christianity

Responsibility – Take Ownership of Everything in Your Life

It is not natural to take responsibility for our actions. Look at the first man and the first woman who ever existed in the world. When they inevitably failed and were not obedient to the rules that God had set, what did they do? They shifted blame away from themselves (Genesis 3).

What this means is that is natural to shift blame to someone else and it is unnatural to take responsibility for our actions. But as we so often note, the right thing is seldom the natural thing. Christianity itself involves many unnatural behaviors. From avoiding pre-marital/extra-marital sex to loving our enemies, many of the commands of God require us to put aside our humanity for the betterment of humankind. Literally, we reject our physical nature and transcend to the divine by behaving unnaturally – or perhaps it would be better said that we act supernaturally. Not ghostly, but literally “above nature”, and the word itself is defined.

That said, taking responsibility for our actions is not natural.

It is easy to understand this because it is painful to take responsibility. And the greatest motivation for all human beings is the dualistic power of the pain and pleasure principles. We are constantly looking to either gain pleasure or avoid pain. And I argue that the urge to avoid pain is much greater than the desire to gain pleasure. Mediocrity is pleasant enough, why should I work to gain something better? But if the pain will reach me if I do not act and the only way to avoid that pain is to act, then somehow I can find the energy and motivation to take action.

Therefore, the push to avoid responsibility might be so strong because responsibility can be painful. It would be much easier to shift that pain onto someone else and have them take it for us. But this is not the masculine way to behave.

Being a man involves taking responsibility especially during the moments when it is neither fun nor enjoyable to do so.

That is one of the critical pieces of manhood – you take on the pain of life for the betterment of others. Usually, this is for the benefit of your immediate family. But you also think about how each act of taking responsibility will better your own life.

The next time you find yourself wanting to shift blame or make an error someone else’s fault, take a look at yourself. Examine your own contribution to the situation and think about what you could have done differently. Or think about what you still have the power to affect. It is a bad habit to constantly be looking at others and blaming them. It robs us of the power to direct our own lives because we suggest that “If this guy had just done XYZ then this wouldn’t have happened!”. That is not masculine. By definition, if we blame or shift responsibility we are behaving in effeminate ways.

A simple way to be more masculine is to take personal responsibility for everything in this life. If you are not happy with something in your life, take a look in the mirror at the creator of that situation. Become aware of your habit of pointing fingers at others. It is not their responsibility why your life turned out the way it has.

Stop blaming everyone. No longer can you blame:

Your parents
The economy
Your environment
Your friends
Your lack of resources (money/time/connections/skill)

If it is in your life or a part of who you are, it is your responsibility. You have to take charge of your life if you ever want to be free. No longer are you content to sit around pointing fingers at everyone else. The moment you begin to take responsibility, you begin to be free. And you find satisfaction with your life, no matter what state it is in. Because even if it is the worst life ever created, it’s still yours, you made it, your name is attached to it, and that has to mean something to you. So take responsibility and find the freedom and masculinity therein.

God is Glorified by YOUR Success

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:15-16

Ask any father when it is that they are proud of their children. No doubt they will tell you that they are proud of their kids when they do well at something. It does not really matter what that something is. They could be doing well in school, sports, or displaying good character. Whatever it is, the father is proud when his kids do well.

Does it then make sense that God the father would be proud of His children when they do well? God is glorified when you do well in life.

When you succeed, the glory goes back to He who made you.

Some people have made it virtuous to aim low in life. This is especially true of modern Christians. These are the people we have talked about before who think success is evil. They also think that poverty is a virtue.

I do not see anything noble associated with aiming low and achieving few successes in life. It does not matter what those successes are. Whatever you can define as success, somewhere you can find a Christian who thinks it is good if you do not reach that successful image.

Instead of aiming high, giving credit to God along the way, they aim low. They think that the less they achieve, the nobler they are. Or that the less money they make, the more spiritual they are. Wealth and spirituality are not inversely correlated.

If you work as hard as you can, you glorify God. This is a biblical principle.

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for^[a] you serve the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3:23-24

Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men,knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.
Ephesians 6:5-8

God is glorified by your success.

it does not bring glory to God if you aim low in life and achieve very little. Others will look at you and mock you. Every man, religious or secular, has the responsibility to achieve. This is an integral part of man’s nature. It was built into him from the beginning of time. God created you to not just work mindlessly at a 9-5, but to improve and achieve both personally and professionally.

It is not masculine to wallow in failure and lack of success. It is not noble to try to lead others down the same path you are on.

This is one of the many reasons you must be careful about who you allow being your friends. You have to control your circle of influence very carefully. Treat it like your immune system and always be on the lookout for someone who is a parasite.

Parasites are thousands of times smaller than their human hosts, but cause massive problems to the human machine. Negative influences around you are the same way. They must be rigorously controlled, monitored, and modulated.

Do not associate with anyone who promotes the idea that your lack of success is okay. You are not okay just the way you are. That has never been true and it never be will be true. You must at all times be working to cast off your current self and be more.

to put off your former way of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be renewed in the spirit of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:22-24

Nobility exists in facing our personal insufficiencies and working to correct them. Never content with staying in the same place, we always look for ways to improve our weaknesses. Even if we can only make small progress, that is infinitely more profitable and masculine than making no progress.

Do not let limiting beliefs hold you back from being successful. If some Christian is trying to get you to limit your personal or professional success on the grounds that it is spiritual, get away from them. They have no biblical backing for their belief. They are propagating false doctrine. Only listen to men you admire and want to emulate. And then only listen to those who can back up what they believe with scripture. And not only with scripture, but with rational thinking as well.

It is one thing to quote a verse. It is another thing to be able to quote and think about the bible with a rational mind. Use your own mind to decide what you believe. Never take someone’s word for anything. Make sure everything passes the test of logic so you can be a man. And never limit your success. It is not spiritual, it is fatal.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true
Acts 17:11

Intrinsic Motivation – Lasting Drive

You can be a good Christian by simply obeying commandments. But you can be an excellent Christian if you develop personal, intrinsic reasons for obeying the commands. This is called “Intrinsic motivation“.

To develop intrinsic motivation, you must have your own drive generated from within.

You cannot have it forced upon you from an outside source – which is called “extrinsic motivation“.

We all start out by being intrinsically motivated. When we were kids, we had the authority of our parents over us. And if we wanted to stay in their good graces and avoid punishment, we would do what they say. Hopefully, as we got older, we began to see some of the truth and logic in what they were telling us. Not that everything they did had good reason, but much of their guidance was rational and intelligent.

As we start to make sense of the reasons why we were told to do certain things, we can begin to be intrinsically motivated by them. We started to see the value in the action itself, rather than just a tool for avoiding pain.

This transformation sometimes takes years and is certainly not completed all at once. But if we are wise, we begin to look for the internal reasons why we should act a specific way.

The best motivation you will ever have is the motivation that comes from within.

Now I cannot dismiss the intense motivation you feel after listening to a motivational speech or watching motivational videos. But that motivation often does not last long enough to make a huge difference in our lives. Perhaps it will keep us motivated for one workout, but where do we go for motivation once the workout is over?

As powerful as every mentor is, you have to develop your own source of internal motivation that you can tap into at any time. This comes from internalizing those motivational speeches and images until they are a part of your thinking.

The most powerful motivation for work, life, or Christianity is that motivation that comes from within.

Just like you begin to see the wisdom of your parents only after several years, you also begin to see the wisdom of the Bible only after years of study. You begin to see the truths in the Bible and understand how they can benefit you in a very practical way. There is nothing fluffy or mystical about the commandments, they are all designed to protect us and to better our lives.

Every time you observe people in the world violating the commands of God, you inevitably see the consequences of those actions shortly after. Many times the commands act as a guardrail, keeping people away from the brutal, negative consequences of their own actions.

Recognizing this allows you to be more likely to keep the commandments. We see the built-in benefits and wisdom, so we stay on the path of discipline. This understanding of the benefits also leads to intrinsic motivation.

This type of motivation will be very unlikely to run out as often as extrinsic motivation. While you will certainly have days where your focus and energy wavers, if you have the motivation that is developed internally, you will have more lasting reservoirs of power, concentration, and discipline.

To build intrinsic motivation, look at and study the benefits of the commandments. Try to understand their practicality. Remember back to all the times in your life where you avoided consequences because of good decision-making. Think of all the times you made your life better by behaving properly.

By thinking this way, you begin to build evidence in your mind for the Christian lifestyle. The way you live begins to make more sense. You understand the roots of your own actions. This understanding allows you to put some positive behaviors on autopilot. This automation of good behavior is the holy grail. If you can behave properly without even thinking about it, you can win. That is what intrinsic motivation and the development of good habits can do for you.

Outlast The Enemy – Colossians 1:11

“Being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfully“

What we learn here is that strength, in this sense, is the combination of patience and longsuffering. The ability to outlast the enemy.

These two traits combined give us endurance. That is our ability to continue to press forward despite discomfort. That is one of the traits we must develop as men if we are going to survive this world.

But even more important is the last word of this verse – joyfully. Some versions say “with joy”. Patience and longsuffering joyfully is our ability to not only bear the difficulty of life but to do so with a smile.

We all admire those men who can smile and laugh through the darkest of hours. Through the horrors of combat or the normal difficulty of life, they somehow find humor. They somehow find a way to smile through it all.

We can develop that ability to laugh through the pain if we remember the goal we have. That is the goal of eternal life. We can develop patience if we also submerge ourselves into the present moment. Pain only becomes unbearable when we start wishing it would end or wondering how much longer it is going to last. Then we start to scramble and look for relief and it only makes it worse. But if we can train our minds to sit calmly, even joyfully, in that discomfort, we will have massive power.

Pain is reduced when you just allow yourself to feel the pain in the present moment. You can even test this in the gym when you are doing a painful exercise. When you start to think about how many reps you have left or wonder if you should just drop the weight, the exercise becomes much more difficult and painful. But if you just submerge yourself in the pain and allow yourself to feel it, the power of it is lessened. you begin to be able to manage it and even work through it. Learning how to do that provides you with great power.

Once you learn this in the gmy, you can transfer it to life. Then you can outlast the enemy.

That is all you have to do, just last longer than they do in order to win.

This life is an extreme experiment in endurance. You can either learn to manage the difficulty or get crushed by it.

How to have a Strong faith when times are good.

It’s natural to move closer to God when times are bad. Every crisis pushes us back towards religion. What do you do when everything is going your way and you feel the urge to forget the God of the Earth? How do you keep your faith when times are good?

When times are good, we forget God.

“So it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He ^[a]swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, ¹¹houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and are full— ¹²then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. ¹³You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name. ¹⁴You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you ¹⁵(for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth.
Deuteronomy 6:10-15

God warned the children of Israel and told them that they would forget Him one day. It is natural for us to do this as humans. When times are good, we think we have everything under control. It is only once a crisis strikes that we remember how helpless we are to many of the circumstances of life.

As much as I advocate taking control of your situation and being in charge, there is still uncertainty in this world. We do not know how the world will be when we wake up tomorrow. And it is in the moments when the world acts contrary to how we think that we remember God.

So how do you have faith when times are good?

I – Get in the habit of remembering God every day.

Start your day by remembering who gave you all the advantages you have.

¹⁶Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. ¹⁷Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
James 1:16-17

If you have something good in this life, it came from God. You need to remember that you do not have any of your possessions or advantages solely because of your own merit. Now it is certainly true that we have to work for and earn things in this life. There is definitely a certain amount of responsibility that falls on us as men to get out in the world and pursue success. We need to work hard and focus on our goals. But all the while we must remember that God has the final say in this world. We can do nothing apart from Him.

It is our responsibility to work as hard as we can, but to also not forget that it is God who has allowed us to build an extreme work ethic.

II – Remember that at any moment, your fortune could turn against you.

There is nothing certain in this entire world. Do not put any trust in human beings or anything comprised of atoms.

Never become overly attached to any of the things that are in this world. Do not attach yourself to any of the material things you have.

There is a story of a man who had an immensely valuable teacup. However, as an exercise in stoicism, he behaved as if the teacup were already broken. Every day as he used it, he thought of it as already broken and destroyed. Then one day when it finally did break, he said “Ah, as it always was“. It was not a shock to him because he practiced detachment.

We must be the same way with our own material things. I remember when I purchased my first new vehicle. I engaged in this exercise so I would not become attached to it. Then, one week later when my wife was driving the car and someone ran into the rear bumper, I was not bothered at all. Because since the day I owned it I viewed it as totaled. So it was much easier to tolerate a small fender-bender since I did not overly value the vehicle.

You must get in the habit of viewing everything you have as already lost.

Act as if all your materials have been taken from you. Who are you without them? Only your character remains. And it is from that character that you can rebuild any of the wealth you have currently amassed.

III – Remember God early in your life, before you become successful.

⁶Remember your Creator before the silver cord is ^[a]loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well.
⁷Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:6-8

It is much easier to remember God during your success and when times are good if you are already in the habit of remembering Him. The earlier you can start this the better. Although it is never too late to start this habit, it will pay better dividends if you can install it earlier.

It is simpler to live a life centered around God as you build success than it is to become successful and then try to build God into your life. You will have better luck by placing God as the priority first than you would in trying to make Him a priority later on.

The priority principle applies to many things in your life. That which is the priority will get the most results. This applies in the simple laboratory of the gym. The muscles you train at the beginning of the workout and at the beginning of the week will get the best focus. You will be fresh and energized, ready to train them. Those muscles placed at the end of the workout and the end of the week will not be the priority. While they still are addressed slightly, they do not get the same benefits that the prioritized muscles get.

Your life is the same way. What gets your best energies and your best focus will be the parts of your life that improve the most.

Do not focus on things that are irrelevant. You must be in the habit of teasing out the most important aspects of life and focusing on them.

Follow those three principles to remember God when times are good. It is easy to rely on God when the world is crashing around us. This is why every terrorist attack in the United States causes the people to band together and remember God. Even the most secular, worldly people in the world will call on the name of God when the situation is dire. We cannot be those people. We have to remember God and focus on Him now while times are good. Do not wait for a crisis to have the proper focus in life.

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