Spartan Christianity

What Causes Depression in Christians?

It surprises many people to hear that depression is common among Christian populations. This may lead them to ask questions like, “Well what is the point of faith if you are still going to be depressed? What causes depression in Christians?” Good question.

Religion is not an anti-depressant. While it does give meaning to suffering and provides the standards of behavior that lead to peace, it cannot magically cure depression. Religion is not a magic pill that makes everyone’s problems go away. While it is common for religion to be depicted that way, there is still work that must be done on an individual basis. And this is what most people do not want to hear. They want religion to be the one-size-fits-all cure for every negative emotion and malady known to man. While that is a noble desire, they want this for the wrong reasons. They want religion to remove their need to work on themselves and remove the burden they have to work through their own problems. They approach religion with a socialist mindset, expecting to receive without first having to give.

Still, even with all the benefits of Christianity, you may be wondering why Christians can be depressed.

What causes depression in Christians? How can people with the hope of salvation be tormented in mind? This is no exhaustive list but let us look at a few common reasons.

I – Chemical Depression.

I think these are generally the minority of depression cases, but many people have chemical imbalances that require medicine to be treated. While I always admire people, who at first try to manage their depression through non-medical means, for a small percentage of the population this simply will not work. Unless they are willing to take the time to identify each hormone and neurotransmitter that may be responsible for their depression and then find out how to increase them naturally and repeat that for a period of months, they likely will remain the same and their depression will be unchanged. It is hard to tease out which hormones can be responsible for depression.

One of the big ones is serotonin. Almost every hormone has multiple jobs and one of the jobs of serotonin is mood regulation. Many of the common anti-depressants you may have heard of impact serotonin in some way. Selective-Serotonin reuptake Inhibitors, known as SSRIs, stop the body from reabsorbing serotonin before it has had its full chemical effect on the mood. Another class of drug is the Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors, or SNRIs, which act in a similar way but also impact the uptake rate of norepinephrine, which is a chemical cousin to adrenaline.

The point of that was not to drown in details of drugs but rather to identify one of the big hormones/neurotransmitters responsible for depression.

Given that we know serotonin can play a role in depression, perhaps we can find a way to increase serotonin without the use of these drugs, which are overprescribed and often have annoying side effects.

The Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience in an article entitled “How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs” identified four possibilities: Meditation, bright light exposure, exercise, and a diet with increased tryptophan content. You can glance through the paper yourself for more details. But if you think you are low in serotonin, try these interventions first before moving on to more powerful alternatives.

Jordan Peterson also notes in his first rule for life that standing up straight with your shoulders back naturally produces serotonin.

Serotonin is not the only hormone involved in chemical depression, but it certainly is an important one.

II – Expectations

The world expects Christians to be happy, floaty, perfect human beings. The second Christians do not match the world’s idea of them, they are ridiculed. “I thought you guys were supposed to feel, act and think in X, Y, Z ways. Wow, you guys sure are a bunch of fakes”. There is no tolerance in this world for Christian people even from those who demand tolerance for themselves. Especially not when it comes to mental health.

If word gets out that a significant percentage of your local church is taking some sort of mind-altering drug to manage depression, the secular culture will have a field day with it.

Even in the church, there is no safety (as we will mention more in the next section). Christians expect their fellow Christians to be strong and powerful. Men expect other men to be masculine and never struggle with mental challenges. While it is noble to aspire to that level of extreme mental control and to hold high expectations, this comes at a cost. Now if a man does not stack up to the expectations of others, he is isolated and thinks he cannot even seek help from other men. Men should be inspiring one another to get there instead of expecting perfection from the womb.

Men must be forged from fire and steel over a period of many years.

We should not expect them to be perfected the moment they begin to take their first steps on the earth.

With heavy expectation comes two possible responses: the first is that a person lives up to the standard and succeeds. The second is that a person completely rejects the standard and everyone who imposed expectation on him. This may not happen instantly; it could happen over a period of years. Many Christians hold a shaky faith for years only to be crushed by some outside event later in life. This causes them to reject the faith and to do so with indignation.

High standards are good, high expectations are less good. A standard shows us what we should stive for while expectations tell us to get there or suffer the consequences. What cause depression in Christians? Unrealistic expectations.

III – Isolationism

Many Christians feel the need to hide this struggle. Depression is right up there with pornography in regards to the size of the stigma associated with it. Men feel that they cannot talk to other men about depression. Jim Kwik has noted this stigma as well and stated the following about mental health, this is my paraphrasing of his words: “It is okay to say that your knee or arm is hurt. But there is much less social support and acceptance if you say that your soul or mind is hurt”. He is absolutely right. There is very little support for “fake diseases” like depression and anxiety. So, men resort to suffering alone.

There is an even greater stigma when it comes to men being depressed. Again, men are expected to be impervious to all outside forces and have unbreakable wills. I would love if that were true for every man, but it is not. It is part of the reason Spartan Christianity exists, to provide tools and resources for men whose religious upbringing failed to make them the men they need to be in today’s world. Men should aim to have iron minds and be immune to depression and every struggle, but it will not happen instantly, and it will not be a fun process.

What causes depression in Christians? Isolation. Feeling like they are the only ones with their struggle.

IV – Helplessness

The majority of religion provides no tools for men to create themselves beyond “just have faith and pray”. Another chip off the religious socialism block.

Religion expects men to have iron wills but does not give them the tools with which to create those wills. You cannot treat every single mental, physical, or spiritual impairment with faith. There is still work that must be done on the part of the individual to create his own strength through the power of his thoughts. His church rarely gives him direction in that work, so he floats aimlessly on the waves of life and fails to improve himself. He is the same helpless, depressed man year after year. What causes depression in Christians? Helplessness. An attitude that is wrongfully encouraged by modern religion.

2nd and 3rd Order Consequences

A mark of a man is the ability to think beyond the present moment and consider the 2^nd and 3^rd order consequences of an action. While most people make all their decisions while stuck in the present moment with no thought for the future, a man looks ahead to see how his present action may affect future outcomes.

2^nd and 3^rd order consequences are the results that come after the main action (with its 1^st order consequence) is taken. And it usually happens that actions that are enjoyable at the moment have painful long-term results and vice versa.

Food that is bad for you tastes delicious (1^st order) but the result is that it makes you fat and lethargic (2^nd order). It just so happens that food that does not taste the best is typically good for you, especially in the long run.

The ability to look past the present moment and whether it is enjoyable or painful is how a man thinks.

You too must develop this ability. When you are going through your life and trying to make decisions, always look past the here and now. Look forward to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4^th order consequences. You need to be in the habit of thinking about how your decisions impact you long-term.

If you look around you at your peers, you will often find them doing the opposite. In college you will find them studying some simple subject matter, staying up late playing games, and hanging out with friends. They have the time of their life for a few years but later realize that they have no marketable skill. They have nothing to offer the marketplace so they end up with a low income. Then they sit around complaining about the “greedy rich”, how they are righteous for being poor and how college days were the “good ole days”.

But you have the chance to take a different route.

It is not that you never have any fun or relax, but you are focused on your time. Instead of studying an easy subject, you decide to learn a difficult STEM field or a trade. For a few years, you focus, gaining skills that the marketplace actually values and making yourself more and more of a man. A few years later and you can already see how much farther ahead you are than your peers.

They took the easy path and it led them to mediocrity. You took the difficult path, and it is leading you to wealth. All of this is because you were able to look beyond the immediate gratification of the moment and concentrate on the future. This single skill will make you more successful than 80% of your peers.

So, what are some tips to help you along this path of thinking long-term and delaying gratification?

I – Start Working on Your Vision for Yourself

You have probably heard this tip thousands of times in the self-help community, but it is no less true. In fact, you probably already have a vision for yourself. To even possess the ability to delay gratification, you must have the ability to visualize in your mind a 2^nd and 3^rd order result that is more desirable than the 1^st order pleasures. That alone is a great secret to success, but also is the reason many people fail in various pursuits.

The lack of a compelling future vision can spell the difference between giving in to immediate gratification or pressing on with discipline. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the practice of sexual discipline until marriage. Among many reasons men do not wait for marriage is the fact that no one in religion paints a desirable picture of marriage. No one can describe marriage in a way that appeals to men.

You can blame society for perverting marriage into a high-risk/low reward deal for men. You can blame 2^nd and 3^rd wave feminism or the government. Or you can blame the feminized men running your local church for portraying marriage in a way that placing women as the objects of worship.

Either way, the disastrous result is that men do not have a compelling vision of marriage. And as a result, they have no reason to commit to it.

They hear marriage praised in vague, non-specific terms from the pulpit, but degraded in crystal clear terms from other men. Everything they hear from other men is negative, and everything they observe through their behavior is negative as well.

This clarity of speech about the negative aspects of marriage paints a crystal-clear image in the minds of young men. And that image is one of pain and suffering in marriage. But every time some man wants to say something good about marriage, it is shrouded in vaguery. Marriage is described as “Fulfilling”, “holy”, “The best thing I ever did”, “wonderful” but are never provided with any specific evidence to support those claims. Not only is marriage described in words that are so poorly defined that they would cause even a seasoned religious man to be confused, but they are never supported with any real-life evidence.

The result of this is that the negatives of marriage are easily and clearly portrayed while the positives are vague and lofty.

When the vision is not clear, the actions do not follow the vision. Actions follow the clearest vision and avoiding marriage seems to be the best decision because the negatives are extremely clear.

This is just an example of the effect of the vision, which underscores why it is so incredibly important for you to create a compelling vision in your own mind of a future you want to live. The clearer you are about your vision, the more meaning you will ascribe to the seemingly insignificant actions it takes to get there.

Get as clear as you can about your goal. Write down everything you want to achieve. Just start with your work so you do not get overwhelmed. Write down what you want to do. How do you want to spend your days? What do you want to experience mentally while you work? How do you want to feel when you come home? How much money do you want to make? What will you wear on the job?

Write down everything you can. The more you write the clearer your vision becomes. When your vision becomes clearer, your actions become easier.

Spend some time visualizing yourself doing exactly what you want to do. See yourself in your mind’s eye working, being excellent at your craft, and earning fantastic money as a result. Train your mind to see yourself as a success before you even become one. Get your mind accustomed to self-confidence and esteem. Clear visions produce clear results.

II – See the Consequences of 1^st order pleasures

You likely do not need help with this tip because if there is anything religious people are good at; it is about threatening you with consequences. While they tend to get carried away and focus exclusively on the negative, what they are saying is important.

It is necessary to understand the price we pay for actions we take, whether good or bad. Write down all the consequences of not taking action or of taking the wrong action. You can probably look around you at your peers to collect evidence for this. How often have they taken the easy road and had it come back to bite them? Likely often enough for you to notice.

They waste several years studying liberal arts and earn the same $10 per hour 5 years after graduating. They laughed and giggled their way through college and then walk around wondering why they are not successful, blaming everyone but themselves for their situation.

Add their experiences to your pile of evidence. The more evidence you gather, the more you will be compelled to avoid those same behaviors.

Christians Prefer Weakness over Strength

Something that turns off a lot of young men from Christianity is the fact that most Christians prefer weakness to strength. It is as if for some reason they actually prefer being weak. Whenever there is a choice between weakness and strength, they will choose weakness. Not only will they choose weakness, but they will think they are being righteous for being weak!

Just like many Christians have equated virtue with poverty and wealth with materialism, so also many Christians have equated weakness with righteousness. For some reason, it is righteous to suspend punishment, worship softness, and be emotional. Men default to weakness by choosing to wallow in emotionalism and vulnerability and call it “spirituality”. It is difficult to say where we have gone wrong, but it is easy to see we have a lot of work to do on this front.

Occasionally I mention what I call a “Viking Faith”. Vikings had gods and religious practices as most humans have had for thousands of years. They made sacrifices, had worship, and prayed to the gods. Yet for some reason, Vikings were able to be highly religious and still be considered masculine warriors and men to be held in high esteem. Yet Christians are often considered to be weak, soft, and powerless. What is the difference? I think there are many differences between the Viking faith and the Christian faith, of course, and that is a topic for another article. Some of them are requirements of scripture but other differences have come because men have chosen to be weak. Not only to be weak but to boast about weakness and glorify effeminacy.

Besides worshipping weakness, many Christians also prefer defensive versus offensive positions of war. They gravitate towards commands and scripture that tell us to give a defense or resist some power. Weak Christian men are always playing defense, never going on the offensive. It is a shame that so many men simply default to weakness and yet think they are doing something great.

When faced with a dichotomy both of spirituality, scripture, or masculinity, men will default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness. This must be corrected.

Here are a few of the instances in which men will choose what appears to be weaker.

I – Give Defense Vs. Cast Down Arguments
II – Lamb of God Vs. Lion of the Tribe of Judah
III – God of Love Vs. Man of War
IV – Forgiveness vs. Judgement
V – Mercy Vs. Punishment
VI – OT vs. NT

Let’s go through these one at a time.

Have your own ideas? Leave a comment below!

I – Giving a Defense Vs. Casing Down Arguments

Men in religion love to quote 1 Peter 3:15.

“But in your hearts revere Christ as LORD. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

It is a great passage, and I am not at all trying to pit Bible verses against each other in this article. However, when do you hear a verse explaining the other side of the story? One of my personal favorites is 2 Corinthians 10:5-6.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.”

What is the difference between these two verses?

The first one puts Christians in a defensive position and the second puts them in an offensive position. I have mentioned before that it is extremely important for us to go on the offensive instead of constantly playing defense. When all we do is answer questions and defend ourselves, we make little progress in evangelism and we build little respect for our names. However, when we go on the offensive and attack another’s ideas, we put them on the defensive. The only way to cast down arguments is to attack. This is not a defensive maneuver it is an attacking maneuver. Though the best strategists can seamlessly blend offense and defense, we as Christian men need to work on being offensive.

I believe that men default to the 1 Peter passage because they twist it to give themselves license to be weak. I will remind you of our core statement of this section. When faced with a dichotomy of action, Christian men will almost always default to weakness. Christians prefer weakness.

Neither passage is weak nor is about weakness, but weak men have twisted 1 Peter to justify their cowardly behavior.

They are too scared to go on the attack, so they live their entire lives just defending themselves.

Correct this by forcing others to defend themselves. To crush an idea, you need to demonstrate that it is faulty. This cannot be done from a defensive position unless that defense has been carefully crafted to lead a voracious opponent into a trap. Tactfully use defense to lure out your enemy them ambush their philosophy from all sides. Make their defeat so devastating that they never challenge you again. If possible, you must crush them in front of as many witnesses as possible. Put them to shame.

1 Peter 3:16 ~ “Keeping a clear conscience, so that those who slander you may be put to shame by your good behavior in Christ.”

II – Lamb of God Vs. Lion of The Tribe of Judah

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 1:29

“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Revelation 5:5

How many times have you heard the phrase “The Lamb of God”? Likely you have heard this quite often. Sure, it is important to hear this because it symbolizes the fact that Christ traded his life for our sin.

But how many times have you heard about “The Lion of The Tribe of Judah”.

I would venture to say that you hear about this far less than you hear about the lamb. Why? Because Christian men love when their Savior is soft and loving. If he is a lion, the deadly warrior animal, it does not give us the same “warm and fuzzies” that we got with the lamb analogy.

Weak men do not want our savior to be a lion, they would rather Him be a lamb. This is another instance where men default to weakness. And this does us no favors with the secular world. Can you imagine trying to share the gospel with someone and talking about the Lamb of God? It does not make our God sound very powerful.

I understand that the gospel is going to be “foolishness to the world” (1 Corinthians 1:18), but that does not mean we have to contribute to that perception by our actions. Christianity is a hard sell as it is, let us not make it harder for ourselves.

The perception of the lamb of God also makes us a laughingstock among masculine men.

I have seen a Viking-type shirt that says, “I would rather be a wolf of Odin than a Lamb of God”. If men were not busy floundering in their emotions and vulnerability, they would have presented the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. But because they prefer weakness, because they worship the feminine and praise it above all else, because any time they are faced with a dichotomy they default to weakness we now have negative PR from shirt companies.

https://myfrogtee.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/wolf-odin-v-neck-t-shirt.jpg

You can correct this by choosing to focus on the Lion that is God. For a period of time, remove from your mind the analogy of Christ as a lamb. Remember that is only meant to symbolize the sacrificial nature of His life. It is not meant to reflect who He is personally. This is the key point of these passages.

When John the Baptizer called Christ the Lamb of God it was because everyone knew what that meant. People were constantly sacrificing animals to cover their sins. It was the perfect analogy. There would not be one single soul confused and thinking, “Oh it is because he is weak or has the personality of a lamb”. Absolutely not! That type of modern thinking is disgraceful. While most Christian men prefer weakness, you must prefer strength.

Remember that you worship the Lion.

III – God of Love vs. Man of War

One of my favorite descriptors of God comes from the Old Testament. Right after the Red Sea collapses on the Egyptian army Moses and the people sing a song. In that song comes one of my favorite verses in all of scripture.

“The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name”.
Exodus 15:3

When was the last time you heard that one quoted from the pulpit? You may not have even known about the existence of that verse. Because it is a bit too aggressive for the hordes of feminized men that pack out the mega-churches week after week. It is a little bit on the aggressive side. You might expect to hear something like this in the lyrics of a heavy metal song, which as every good mother explains to her son, is “devil music”.

(Here is a good example of why that is bogus.)

However, you hear the contrasting statement nearly every time you talk to other Christians or attend church. “My God is a God of love”.

“And the God of love and peace will be with you.”
1 Corinthians 13:11

Again, this is completely true, God is a God of love. But we focus so intently on His love without first understanding what love truly is and also without understanding the necessity of His discipline.

If you had a decent father growing up, one of his tasks would have been to administer discipline to you. This was usually in the form of corporal punishment and was authorized by scripture.

“Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell.”
Proverbs 23:13-14

The fewer beatings you earned, the more feminized you likely became. And if you did not receive much discipline then you probably also do not view God as handing out much discipline. This is because our view of God is shaped by our view of our earthly father. If your father was a disciplinarian, this is how you view God. If your father was lax and let you get away with everything, this is how you view God.

What we can clearly see today is the result of the majority of fathers refusing to discipline their children.

Now, most Christian men do not see God in light of his requirement to discipline us. It is bound within His very nature to correct us and keep us focused. The Bible teaches that if we are not disciplined by God then we are illegitimate, bastards.

“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”
Hebrews 12:8

We have a generation of young men who view God as their buddy. They have no respect for Him just like they have no respect for their own father. This is what a lack of discipline leads to. Discipline leads to self-discipline which leads to success, both spiritually and physically.

Correct this weakness by viewing God as a man of war. Perhaps it is just my personality, but I would much rather follow a man of war into the battles of life than follow the false image of what Christians have made God into. He is not soft or weak, but many religious people have made Him that way to suit their personal tastes and needs.

Call out any who would reduce God and equate Him to the weak, pathetic men of today. This is another example where Christians prefer weakness over strength.

IV – Forgiveness Vs. Judgement

Another example of a modern weakness is displayed when we talk about forgiveness and punishment. Somewhat a continuation of the last point, Christians want to focus so much on forgiveness to the extent that they neglect God’s Judgement and Discipline.

They do this because they know they are making no attempt to truly live correctly. They need God to be a God of forgiveness so that they do not have to take His commands too seriously. I mean it is only our eternal destiny at stake, why take it too seriously anyway?

The forgiveness-focused attitude is a favorite among Catholics, who have no affiliation with the church of the Bible. If you have the resources, you can even pay for your sins with money. Or you can buy someone else out of purgatory – imagine that!

If God is nothing but forgiveness, then I have no need to put effort towards being disciplined. Because at the end of the day all my sins will be forgiven anyway. If this is true, why even try? Why work so hard to stay sexually disciplined or to avoid drugs if I can erase my criminal record through the forgiveness of God?

Again, I need to make the point that I am not minimizing the importance of forgiveness or trying to pit passages of Scripture against each other.

The purpose of this piece is to show how our standards have decayed because Christians prefer weakness. When Christians prefer weakness over strength, they fail. They contract the disease of socialism of the mind. By convincing themselves that they have to do no work but can still have a piece of the collective “salvation pie”, they become soft and entitled.

Correct this by embracing the judgmental side of God. This is not meant to be negative, but to be a reminder to hold yourself to a very high standard and actually work to do what is right. Do not have a lackadaisical attitude when it comes to your faith. There is no place for weakness in any part of your life. You must prefer strength and have that firmly in your mind. Attack any philosophy that promotes weakness over strength.

And you may say “But forgiveness is the true strength”. Very modern and progressive of you. But something can be “True strength” and feminine or weak at the same time. It depends on how you are contorting the scripture to suit your needs. Do not use forgiveness to cover up the weakness.

V – Mercy Vs. Punishment

Another permutation of the previous point but important enough to state. In the church, we have concentrated so much on the forgiveness and mercy of God that we have forgotten all the instances in which He punishes those who disobey Him. You need to never forget this. While modern religion paints God as 100% merciful, you know the truth. Hold yourself to a high standard. Limit your need for mercy. Of course, we all will still need mercy, but we should not use it as a credit card for sin.

VI – Old Testament vs. New Testament

When was the last time you heard a lesson from the Old Testament not rooted in the Psalms or some positive prophetic verse taken completely out of context? I would venture to say almost never. Christians prefer the New Testament because it seems “more reasonable” than the OT. The OT has an “angry God” but the NT has Jesus who people love to latch on to. Not because they love all His words, but because they love the ones they choose to love and forget everything else.

In the OT there was a lot of war, conquering, violence, death, and punishment. We do not need to forget this. All of that was important. It laid the groundwork for the Christianity we have today and also gives us a portrait of God. Goes does not change, He is still that man of war that we read about in the OT. We do not need to forget this.

But because the NT has a lot more to say about love and other emotions, people prefer it over the OT. We, humans, love having warm and fuzzy feelings stirred up within us. But we do so at the expense of maintaining any semblance of strength and personal power. We have done the same in our preference of the NT over the OT though both are important.

Correct this by increasing your study and discussion of the OT. Do not let people marinate in the NT at the expense of gaining a complete view of the portrait of God.

Conclusion

All these points are meant to illustrate how we as Christians prefer weakness over strength. Perhaps not all of us, but many in the modern churches today. People want to make their church a social club and hang around doing nothing all day, learning nothing but still feeling good about themselves. No one wants to do work anymore.

You can be the first of a new generation if you want. You can strengthen your own mind, gain power, and become masculine. Even though most Christians prefer weakness, you must learn to prefer strength over weakness and you will be head and shoulders above everyone around you.

Make Marriage Safer

Marriage is dangerous for many Christian men for the reasons where will discuss here. By “dangerous” I mean that they risk losing half their net worth for life in the family meat grinder known as “divorce court“. After that, we will introduce a few ways that you can make marriage safer for yourself.

Have some ideas of why marriage is dangerous or what you can do to protect yourself? Leave them in the comments below.

I – They Think Being “Good Men” is Enough.

It is not enough to simply be a good man. For decades religion has trained men to believe if they are good providers, emotionally attentive, and supportive that they will inevitably attract women. We all know that is untrue.

Remember, while women might find that behavior attractive for a long-term mate, that behavior is not arousing in the short-term. Women are constantly looking for the optimal man. This man needs to have good genetics combined with good provider potential. The problem is that those two traits seldom exist in the same man. A further problem is that the church raises men to be good providers, but not good arousers.

If being a good man is not enough, what can you do to be more arousing? The second section will have more to say about this. For now, understand that there are plenty of “good men” out there. If you are trying to attract a mate by being a good man, you are in a super-saturated marketplace. You are opening a burger shop next to McDonald’s. There are more than enough “good men” to go around. And women do not even want these men, despite what they might say. However, if you work to become an arousing man, you will stand head and shoulders above the majority of men.

II – They are not physically fit.

Most men get physically soft. It does not matter if you are religious or secular, in the modern world there is a 70% chance that you are overweight, statistically speaking. If you are not overweight, good for you, you automatically put yourself in the top 30% of men just by being “average“. If you are overweight, do not beat yourself up or get emotional about it. There is an easy fix: nutrition and training.

Because religion places such great emphasis on being “good men”, most men never learn that they need to actually take care of their bodies to be sexually arousing. Some women will try to deny that a fit guy is more attractive, but you need to ignore their words. Never listen to the words of people, only watch their behavior. If women say your “dad bod” is cute but she fawns over the squared-off pecs of Brad Pitt, then you should get the message. Look at the actions, never at the words.

One problem I have encountered in the church is that leaders actually downplay the importance of physical training. Somehow, they manage to contort their religion or the scripture in a way that makes it selfish to train! Imagine that! According to these men, working out is selfish because it takes time away from more important tasks you could be doing.

“No point working out, you should be reading the Bible during that time! You should be out knocking on doors and having Bible studies instead of being selfish and taking care of your body”.
Fat Religious Person

These are the same teachers and leaders who have seen every episode of their favorite TV show and somehow manage to watch all the reruns when they come on. Ignore the words of these men, they have no true scriptural basis for telling you to neglect your body. They are simply trying to make themselves feel better for being fat and unattractive to their wives.

III – They do nothing masculine.

One of the modern pieces of garbage men have been sold is that women will find them more sexually attractive if they do chores around the house. “Chore-play”, they call it.

While your wife might appreciate it if you help out around the house, she will not be sexually aroused by that. It is nice of you to help out especially if she is overloaded with tasks, but you should never expect anything in return. “Nice” is not arousing. You cannot earn passionate sex by doing chores; you can only earn obligatory sex which is infinitely less passionate and only leads to resentment. So, set out with the intention of maintaining your own house or helping offload some of your wife’s tasks. You are not trying to earn anything from this, you are just doing some basic home maintenance.

Instead, what women find truly attractive is when men do the household tasks that are actually masculine. Chopping wood, mowing the lawn, fixing things, etc. Traditionally masculine tasks are the ones that your wife is going to find attractive. Ignore all modern relationship and marriage advice, especially the advice from women. You always have to watch their actions, never their words. By their actions, they show that they are attracted to masculine men, not nice little helpers.

“Then surely by their fruits you will recognize them”.
Matthew 7:20

IV – They Worship Their Wives.

We have covered this before, but many men worship their wives. We are raised from a young age to “check all the boxes” of life so we can eventually find a good girl and get married. It is as if everything men are required to do is just a preparation for marriage. This is not how God intended for it to be.

Remember, God first made man and gave him a purpose before anything else. Once that work was established, God gave the man a helper. The word “helper” implies that there is a task that a man is already doing with which he needs help!

The woman’s purpose is to help the man with his purpose. This is when women are most satisfied and fulfilled with their lives. They do not want to be the sole focus of a man’s life. If you make your wife your total focus, you will notice strange behaviors in her. She will start to nag or complain. She will appear restless and rebellious, and she does not know why she does this, especially when you give her so much. It is because you are not living your mission. Women do not nag the man who is constantly working to achieve his highest potential.

V – They Listen to Everything in Christian Marriage Books.

I say all this as a guy with a stack of over two dozen marriage books on my shelves. I have read about the love languages, the “needs” of women, and every other bit of marital minutia in the Christian world. So, allow me to tell you that these books are not designed for developing a safe, passionate marriage.

Do you want to know who those books are great for? For highly masculine men who are already having extremely passionate sex but simply do not know how the other, non-sexual parts of marriage work. Do you know how many Christian men that apply to? About 5% at the maximum and that is being generous.

Most Christian men have been educated from a very young age about the importance of taking care of the wife’s emotional needs, being a good provider or a good supporter. All the long-term beta characteristics that women want. And by “Beta” I mean non-sexually arousing, good provider-type men.

Modern feminized religion is a beta-male farm. The majority of men need what is in these marriage books far less than they need to know how to arouse their wives. Because the problem with these men is not that they have bad marriages or need to know how to communicate better, but that they need to know what really gets women’s engines going. Perhaps only 5% of men know what that is.

While it is important to read books on marriage, gain perspective and even (dare I say) take care of the emotions of your wife, it is far more important for you to focus on your work, be a man worthy of admiration, be desired by other women and engage in masculine hobbies, work or tasks.

Make Marriage Safer for yourself with the following tactics.

I – Focus on Yourself and your Mission.

You have to focus on yourself first before you can adequately take care of anyone else. This is not a selfish philosophy; it is the way God designed it thousands of years ago. Men are designed to work, and women are designed to help. Then at the end of the day men and women complement each other.

Start working on finding your life purpose or continue to work on it. Women are genuinely aroused when men are hard at work on their mission and being admired for it by other men. So, if you want your wife to genuinely want you, she needs to see that you are ascending the ladder of success, gaining the respect of men, and being wanted by other women. This will make marriage safer because it demonstrates you are a man of high value. Because not only do other men admire you, but other women want you. Those two are an irresistible combination for women.

You need to be so ambitious and financially successful that it would be stupid for any woman to leave you.

II – Train Your Physical body.

If you do not train your body, you will be fat and easy to control. Your wife knows she can control you because she knows you have no sexual options. So, what if she withholds sex for 3 weeks? It is not like you are going to be able to get it elsewhere, at least not while you are looking like that.

If it sounds superficial it is because it is. We are fleshly, temporal beings bound to this earth. We are going to act based on material possessions and pleasures. Let us not forget that we all approached our wives in the first place because they were sexually attractive.

If you read any marriage books you will inevitably run into the statement, “Women are not visual creatures”. I am not convinced that is true. Could it be women are “not visual” because the majority of men are simply unattractive? Not only unattractive, which is something they can only control to a certain extent, but also overweight! Weight and fitness are something that 99% of us have 100% control over. We can control every variable, every workout, every morsel of food that we eat. We are like scientists and the body is our lab where nothing is outside our power to control. Yet the majority of us still elect to do nothing, be overweight and still assert that women are not visual creatures. Maybe it would make a difference if we trained our bodies to provide something worth being visual for.

So, I will ask you again, is it that women are not visual creatures or is it possible that 70% of men being overweight has something to do with it?

Combat this by training your body. Make marriage safer for yourself by being in great shape. When you are physically fit, not only will your wife be attracted simply because fitness is attractive, but she will also be attracted because she knows you have options. Other women would want to be with you because you are fit and climbing the ladder to success. That fact is another log on the fire of her desire.

Are you noticing that the key to arousing genuine desire in women is actually by focusing on yourself? I know the “selflessness” crusaders of Christianity will be at my door with pitchforks for this, but it needs to be said.

III – Chop Wood, Build and Repair

Women are attracted to men who do masculine things. Helping around the house might earn you some appreciation, but at what cost? Do you want to be known as the good little teddy bear who mops the floors? No, you do not.

Every task you do around the house should be masculine, as much as you can control. Sure, sometimes life will be hectic, and you will need to wash some dishes or do the laundry, just do not expect anything in return for that. The sex you get for doing the laundry is nothing like the sex you get for pursuing excellence or chopping wood without a shirt on, flashing your glorious physique.

Limit yourself to repairing the house, tending to the yard, chopping wood, and building. These tasks might actually arouse your wife, believe it or not.

IV – Serve Yourself First

You must serve yourself before you serve anyone else. Take care of your own body, mind and pursue your own goals before you help anyone else. This puts you in a position of strength. And help can only be given from a position of strength. Without focusing on yourself, you will have no power, no ability. You must invest time in yourself, your body, your work, and your hobbies. By doing this you are actually better able to take care of your family.

V – Do Not be a Teddy Bear – Be Powerful.

Women are not interested in soft men. Be a man with power. Physical, mental, and emotional power. You need to demonstrate that you have personal strength and cannot be moved by other men or by life events.

Women claim they want vulnerability in a man, but what they really want is a rock. For your own sake, you must be a fortress of mental and emotional control. Nothing can be allowed to shake you. Women want to see if they can get you to let your guard down but never do this. Maintain your strength and personal power at all times. You cannot make marriage safer for yourself by being a teddy bear. A grizzly bear, on the other hand, is a different story.

VI – Get a Prenuptial Agreement

Protect your assets. The state has incentivized divorce for women. It rewards them for leaving their husbands, even more so if they have some children to take with them. Many men’s rights groups would suggest that you should avoid any contract in which one party is rewarded for breaking it. There is no arguing with that logic. Get a prenuptial agreement and remove any incentive she might have for divorce down the road. While she may be all smiles and laughs now, you do not know what will happen when the hormones wear off. Protect yourself.

VII – Keep secrets

No good marriage is complete without secrets. Not major ones perse, but small ones. The darkness of your mind should almost always be concealed. She does not need to know what kind of dark man you are. The shadow portion of your personality that gives you power is a gift from God and should be kept between you and God. Make marriage safer by not giving her any reason to “cash in” on the cash cow of divorce.

VIII – Keep a Catastrophe Fund

You need funds that no one knows about but yourself. This idea is originated from Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment. He is a business owner who was able to keep his business afloat during a crisis because he had stashed money for the business without letting anyone know. If everyone knows everything you have finically, personally, or otherwise, they will get too comfortable. Allow them to think the level of pressure is higher and they will perform better.

IX – Avoid Marriage until you have Vetted a woman for a long period of time.

Crack open any pathology textbook and you will find that the only way to really avoid HIV is through abstinence. The same goes for a marriage. The only way to truly guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will not be crushed by the damages of the divorce court is to avoid marriage.

If you are planning to marry one day, you need to have a plan to vet a woman like a professional. You are interviewing her for the lifelong position of being your helper. Therefore, you need to take this extremely seriously. You need to constantly vet her and observe her actions and behavior. Determine if you really want marriage or if you simply have a strong sexual urge. You would be surprised to hear how many men get married just to have a sexual outlet. That is not a good reason to bring a woman so close into her life that she can destroy your finances permanently if it suits her whim. You need to vet your women so you can avoid marrying one who would act that way.

These are a handful of ways to make marriage safer.

Have any of your own ideas? Leave a comment below?

Evaluate Yourself to Improve

One of the mistakes that we all make yet is easily correctable is that we never evaluate ourselves. We never analyze our performance, behavior, or thoughts and look at what we are doing well and what we need to improve. This is partly because it is painful to take a nice, long look at our flaws. No one wants to dissect all the ways they come up short. But this analysis can massively improve your rate of growth. Both of your character and of your mentality.

In the military, every individual is evaluated based on their performance. They go into the office of a ranking official to hear how they are performing. There are even written feedback forms where they can see exactly where their weak points are. They go over what they are doing well on and what they need to improve. These men then implement the notes from the officer and strengthen their weak points and double down on their strong points. If evaluations are good enough for the military, they are good enough for us.

Tracking and analyzing behavior is the only surefire way to know what you are currently doing and if it is working or not.

If you never track your workouts, how can you know if you are improving your strength or endurance? You may say “Well I know I can do 35 pushups now, and last week I could only do 30. So, I do know that I am improving”. Well, then you are tracking your ability in your mind. Less effective, but you are still tracking and analyzing your performance. You are evaluating your progress and continuing to work.

I suggest to you that every single behavior and habit should be evaluated on a semi-regular basis. This allows you to see your personal trajectory over time. You do not have to start analyzing every single step you take. You are not doing an internal review on yourself. All you are doing is observing and analyzing behavior. I would suggest starting with just one trait that you currently have or that you want to develop. What are your current habits? What are some behaviors that you like or dislike? Pick any one of those and commit to evaluating them on various occasions.

Take gratitude for example. Say that you have analyzed your behavior and determined that you spend too much time complaining. Or perhaps you just want to improve your current level of gratitude.

For most people, that is where they would stop. They would just say to themselves, “I want to develop more gratitude in my life” and then do nothing about it. It essentially becomes like a New Year’s resolution that is never completed. This happens because there is no accountability, no written commitment to the behavior, and no evaluation of performance.

Start with deciding what you want to improve, for us, it is gratitude.

I know that gratitude can sometimes come off as one of those “soft” Christian principles. But remember that gratitude is the cure for the negative behavior of complaining. Also, remember that God hates complaining so much that He has killed people for it (Numbers 11).

After you have decided what to work on, you need to hold yourself accountable for that behavior.

I do not believe that external accountability is a useful long-term solution. In fact, accountability does not work. It creates weak men who sit in a circle of chairs crying about their problems. They have no strength because they have no need to develop any. What need is there to develop strength when you can lean on all of your friends as a crutch? Crutches are useful for a few days or weeks after an injury or surgery. Use them too long, and your body will adapt to them and never improve its own strength. So as far as accountability goes, you must be accountable only to yourself.

Third, make a written commitment.

You can do this in the same place where you will perform your evaluations. Get a notebook that you will use for your self-evaluations. At the top of the page put the trait you are working on. Then on the first line put the written commitment to develop it and give it a deadline.

“By August 25^th, 2021, I will have reduced my habit of complaining to no more than four times per week maximum and I will express gratitude for my possessions at least twice per day”.

With that line completed, you have done more than the majority of average people do in their lives. Perhaps only 10% of the world has written goals with deadlines to complete them. When you make this statement, you put yourself in that top 10%.

Now that you have your self-accountability, your goal, and your written commitment, now you can get ready to evaluate yourself.

You need to determine what behaviors will be acceptable and unacceptable. Then you need to assign values to various levels of performance. By that, I mean that just as you get certain grades in school based on how well you do, you must also give yourself a “grade” based on how well you perform your new behavior. You can give yourself letter grades (A, B, C, D, F), Number grades (0-5, 0-10, etc.), or come up with your own system. The point is that you have clear delimitation between grades so you can give yourself feedback on your performance.

Decide what each grade means:

A – Perfect performance. Zero complaints and three separate expression of gratitude.

B – Expressed gratitude once.

C – Did not express gratitude.

D – Did not express gratitude; complained once.

F – Complained all day.

Your list does not have to look anything like this. This is just to give you an idea. You can change the expectations and standards however you wish and grade yourself accordingly. The important part is that you are grading yourself and working to make improvements.

I would also suggest that you carry a small notebook with you, preferably one that can fit in your pocket. In this book, you can make notes about your performance throughout the day. It does not have to be drawn out; it could be simple bullet points. The point here is that you do not want to trust your memory when it comes to your performance.

Unless you are carrying around your evaluation notebook everywhere you go, you will need a book for field notes.

Then once you get home for the day, you can look at your performance, and jot more notes in the main notebook. You can look at what you did well and what you did poorly. When you perform poorly, try to determine what leads to that. Did you start complaining because you were hanging around negative people? Did you encounter stress in the day and that caused you to let down your guard? Try to determine what was the cause of the unsatisfactory performance.

Then do the same with your good days. On those days when you perform extremely well, look for the roots of success. Discover what thought patterns, behaviors lead to gratitude. What people were you around and what thoughts did you have that caused you to be thankful?

The point of looking at what influenced your behavior is so you can either modify or maintain those circumstances. If your environment influenced you negatively, you need to modify it. If you were inspired to be more positive by your surroundings, then try to replicate those situations again.

Then determine how often you are going to do your main evaluation.

This is where you sit down and go over in detail your performance over a period of time. Here you are really getting to the bottom of your behavior and looking at everything you are currently doing and how you can improve.

Repeat this evaluation process over the weeks and you have no choice but to see improvements. Most people refuse to evaluate their performance, so they stay in the same place you years. You can skyrocket past them with this simple exercise.

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