Masculinity Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Spartan Christianity

Forge Your Own Path

For whatever you think, believe and do in life, you must forge your own path.

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”.
Philippians 2:12

So many men in the church have grown up their whole lives simply accepting whatever dogma was given to them by their parents. They never question a single drip of the doctrine that is passed down from generation to generation. Even if what they are being told is right, this mental laziness is wrong.

It is of extreme importance for every young man to forge his own path and uncover what it is he truly believes.

Every man has the responsibility of examining everything he knows and seeing if it is really true. As mentioned in an earlier section, one of the finest examples of the refusal to forge one’s own path is the Baptist mantra, “Born a Baptist, Live as a Baptist, Die as a baptist”. The emphasis here, therefore, is not on discovering what the truth is, but rather is focused on maintaining a personal label that one has invested in for years. That mentally shows that many men are not interested in having a logical “answer for the reason for the hope within them” (1 Peter 3:15), but instead are interested in living a life based on emotions. This mantra says, “Even if I am shown viewpoints that oppose my own and that may actually have merit, I will not give up my man-made, denominational name for the sake of truth”.

The masculine man is one who does not blindly accept what he has been told his entire life.

Instead he scrutinizes everything that he is told just like the Noble Bereans (Acts 17:11). He first examines the validity of the Creationist arguments and compares them to the evolutionist arguments. He then compares Bible-based Christianity to all other religions to see which is true based on fact. Finally, he compares what is taught in the Bible to what is taught in the various “flavors” of Christianity and chooses the one he can prove best fits what the Bible has to say. This is what it means to forge your own path. A man must have his own personal, intrinsic reasons for believing and behaving in specified ways.

The masculine man rejects the typical mental laziness of so many in the religious world and instead he “works out his own salvation”. You must ensure that you are that man and that you are never falling into the trap of mental complacency.

Mantra

I have a reason for everything I believe.

Application

It is of great importance that you deconstruct everything you believe, breaking it down to the most fundamental levels in order to determine why you believe it. You need to be able to explain your own position with good reasoning rather than with emotionalism or traditionalism. This starts by answering the most fundamental questions of reality:

Why do you believe in a God?Explain why do you believe in the God of the Bible?
Why are you a Christian instead of a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist etc.?
Why are you a specific “Type” of Christian (Church of Christ/Baptist/Methodist/Catholic etc.)? Can you defend your position as a Christian with logic?

Once you answer these big-picture questions, you can begin to answer all the smaller questions:

Why did God command this behavior?
For what cause did God instruct His people to take these specific military actions?
Why does God operate in the ways that He does throughout the Bible? (Etc.)

For every question you have in your own mind, you need a clear answer. If you don’t think you will know how to answer a question someone might ask you, then you need to do some deep thinking and find a good answer. It is not enough to simply do something because you have always been taught to do it. You need your own reasons.

A masculine man forges his own path, character and philosophies from the foundation of logical thinking.

He is able to answer questions rationally, not emotionally. The masculine man is stoic and is concerned with the answer to the question “What is truth?”. He is not concerned with the answer to the question “Who is right?”

You have a responsibility to be this rational, masculine man. It is imperative that you have your own reasons for everything you do and you must never take anything at face value. A man is never excused from the responsibility of using his own rational mind to discover what is truth and, more importantly, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling”.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Enemies

“Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me.”
Psalm 138:7

“For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They encircle me with words of hate, and attack me without cause. In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer. So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.”
Psalm 109:2-5

“When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
Proverbs 16:7

Not everyone is going to like you. This is an unavoidable fact of life. Some people will go so far as to hate you, and they are your enemies. They may not say outright that they are your enemies, most people never do. They allow their hate for you to lie dormant, waiting until they can spring up and destroy you in one maneuver. Or they think they can slowly destroy you over time, through minute attacks. These people must be avoided.

Many people outside the church will hate you because your righteousness is a spotlight on their immorality. Religion makes worldly people look bad and feel guilty or dirty about their own irreligious lifestyle. This causes them to badmouth you or attack your character. They will label your church as a cult and you as an extremist. This is to be expected. Also, do not make the mistake of thinking you are so great if worldly people hate and speak badly about you because our Christian forefathers had it much worse than we do.

Even worse than acquiring hatred from the outside world is the fact that many people in the church will hate us, even our own brethren.

We wear the name Christian, but that does not protect us from human nature. Not everyone is going to get along. People have egos. People have opinions and traditions that, if you speak against them, will cause that person to hate you. Human beings are still human beings even though they walk in a church building every Sunday in their best dress.

You must be an astute observer of human nature and the way in which humans behave. You must learn to read people and have an idea of what they may be thinking or planning. This requires vigilance. This requires awareness about the people around you. You must raise your resting level of consciousness and be aware of humans. There are multiple small wars going on at all times, many minuscule power struggles between people. These are the foundations of relationships and make up all of interpersonal communication. You must become proficient at communication and at reading these power struggles if you are to succeed in mitigating the amount of enemies you deal with.

Even if you can avoid human enemies, you will never be able to avoid spiritual enemies. Satan is the enemy. His angels are the enemy. Plan to crush them.

Mantra

Enemies are unavoidable, but loving action is a choice in my mind.

Application

We must love our enemies. Remember: Love has nothing to do with how you feel, and everything to do with how you act. You may dislike another person greatly, but you can still act lovingly towards that person. However, we must hate the devil and everything he stands for and tries to do. Satan worms his way into everything and he must be opposed at every front, he must be strategically defeated.

Be vigilant and aware of the human beings around you, be sensitive to their aura and the way they seem. As humans we have the ability to tell when other humans are “off”. Your instinct will be right more often than not. It is possible to tell most enemies simply from aura, other enemies who are skilled in acting and manipulation may be harder to detect. If you detect that someone may be vexed with you, you have a couple options.

1 – Approach the brother. Some personality types respond best to direct confrontation. You must go to them directly, clear the air and try to make it right. This must be done regardless of whether your own personality is comfortable with confrontation or not. Simply approach him and ask if you have offended them in any way. Press them until they tell you what is on their mind.

2 – Try to make it right through successive small actions. Other personality types are very uncomfortable with confrontation and will deny everything if you approach them about their feelings toward you.

(Remember: Others will operate on emotion, we ourselves must avoid this at all costs).

Take a few small, nice actions towards this person and see if this clears the air. If this fails, go to a close friend of your “enemy” and ask them if the individual has mentioned having problems with you. This person will know if their friend is truly your enemy, or if their displeasure is targeted at someone or something else. Non-confrontational individuals are very likely to confide in a close friend, but tell nothing to everyone else they know. You must be strategic in how you handle this individual.

3 – There are some enemies who are simply trying to damage the church. They sow division and engage in small interpersonal wars. To defeat these enemies, you need the masses on your side. You cannot defeat an enemy like this unless the church agrees that he is an enemy. You need evidence that he is sowing discord among the brethren or engaging in warfare. Take the evidence to the elders of the church. If the elders will not listen, slowly acquire support from the rest of the church until you can approach the elders again with the support of the people. A divisive enemy must be removed from the church or he will destroy it.

Enemies in the spiritual realm must be found and annihilated.

You cannot see these enemies, but you can feel their effects on your life (Ephesians 6:10-12). You must be aware of these effects if you are to detect the presence of evil. This philosophy borders on mysticism and speculates about the whereabouts and activities of the good and evil spiritual realms. If you believe in the presence of angels and demons, this is where they would be active. If not, then you almost certainly believe that the devil is responsible for all the evil in your life. You must be aware of him and keep him out of your home and mind. You are at war with the devil and his army, so gird your loins, fortify the fortress of your mind and be a man.

Eliminate every access point the devil has in your home. Barricade points where he can worm his way in. this means setting up filtering software on all computers, televisions and phones. Do not even allow the microscopic spores of evil to settle in your mind. By removing the enemy’s access points, you have taken the spiritual high ground and are well on your way to keeping the enemy at bay.

Even after fortifying your home, you must be “on patrol”, constantly monitoring the fort for other ways the devil is attacking you. Applied knowledge is power, so always have intelligence on everything that goes on in your home.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Courage

“Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
2 Timothy 1:7

Courage is deficient in the religious world today. Men are too scared to share the gospel, too scared to teach it to their kids and then they wonder why the church is shrinking in the United States. The church shrinks because no man possesses the testicles necessary to evangelize.

Courage comes from taking the actions most men are terrified of taking. Men do not have to stop being afraid, they just have to take action regardless of their fear. The problems arise when men use fear as an excuse to not do what they know they should.

You do not get a reward for being scared. No one pats the back of the fearful man, or looks at him with admiration and inspiration. No man is excused from acting righteously just because he is scared to do so. It is wrong to let fear keep men from being virtuous, but it is not wrong to be filled with fear. Fear is a tool.

All negative emotions should be transmuted into positive actions.

Men do not face many situations today that are as fear inspiring as what the Israelites encountered when they prepared to conquer Canaan. They were told to have no fear as they were heading to battle (Joshua 10:25). They had to fight hand-to-hand and eye-to-eye with their adversaries. Death by hand-held weapon would be most painful.

Men are commanded to stand face to face with what they fear, and attack it. They must charge at the source of their terror and cast it down at their feet, destroy it and replace it with strength and bravery. This is the goal. Even if the fear cannot be eliminated, men can become braver and stronger.

Courage is an action.

Men have no courage while they are sitting on the couch. Men have no bravery from thinking about what they should do. The courage only comes when you take action. Like anything else in your faith, you must take action for it to be effective. Faith is not possible without action, neither is salvation. If a man wants courage, he has to assault his fears and face them by his own free will. While courage is an action, fear is just an emotion.

Mantra

Courage is growing in my mind. Fear has no place here in my thoughts.

Application

Put yourself in the middle of what you fear. You must face your fear voluntarily, it cannot be forced upon you. You must choose of your own free will to have courage and experience what you fear, this is how courage is built. Do not expect overnight results in anything you try to do. Sure, some people can radically change themselves overnight whilst embodying pure motivation, but that is usually not the common man. Get to work today. Slowly build your courage over successive days of efficient action. This is the only way to build anything: one brick before the next until you have a house. Grow your courage. Expand your possibilities. Improve and sharpen your mind. Eviscerate your fear. Strengthen your will. Be a man.

“The way to make people resilient is by voluntarily exposing them to things they are afraid of and that make them uncomfortable”. ~ Jordan Peterson.

Identify Fear (Fear of talking to others)
Identify the smallest action you can take in facing that fear (Looking at pictures or reading actricles about talking to others.
Plan the action (Write down a few things to say to someone else)
Take Action (Talk to the other person. Go over your lines and work from there).

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

The Dichotomy of The Penis and the Rational Mind

Do you know someone who has made life altering decisions based on their sex drive? If you know a man who thinks with his penis rather than his rational mind, please leave a comment below and share this article with your friends.

“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Galatians 5:17

No Christian dares to speak about this matter, which is an expression of how afraid most Christians are when it comes to anything related to sex. No one wants to accept the facts of reality that are dark and nasty because they think that somehow it reflects poorly on our Creator when it does not. The greatest physical dichotomy that can be experienced by men is the one that exists between the penis and the rational mind.

The penis wants to have sex with every girl it sees, while the mind knows better.

The mind knows the consequences, the penis knows only pleasure and pleasure seeking behavior. While the penis wants sex every day, the rational mind cares about the needs of the wife. The penis is a primal force of nature, in contrast the brain uses the rational nature of thought. What do you think wins out most of the time? The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41).

The penis will throw away life, career and family for one sexual encounter. Why else would a man risk all his possessions by having sex with a woman who is not his wife? The decision is not rational, but driven by the biological needs of man. The lengths men will go to for sex are unlimited.

If women truly understood the depths of the darkness of the mind of men, they would never complain about sermons on modesty ever again.

Men, whether knowingly or not, base nearly all their choices and actions on the desire for sex. A great career and a nice house are things that come from hard work, and are marketing tools men use to attract the most sexually attractive female possible. The work of man is done for sex. Men get married for sex, and without sec there would be no marriage. How else would men be drawn into such a risky and unprofitable financial maneuver like marriage? There has to be something really nice in it for the men, otherwise marriage does not happen.

KEY: Without the urge to have sex, a man does not commit to a woman.

KEY: Do not let your penis make a decision that your rational mind regrets.

This happens all the time around us. A man makes a life altering decision based on his sex drive alone and years later ends up shaking his head to himself regretting ever having been born. Men do this with things they buy or the career moves they make. A man might choose a certain career just to attract a woman, not realizing he will spend the majority of his time at the job he hates.

Men think with their penises most often when it comes to marriage. If a woman has nice breasts that alone makes her desirable for marriage. If she looks good physically, that is all some men need in order to commit. Do you think men are committing to marriage out of rationality? They are not. They marry out of lust and the basic need for sex.

Just as the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, so the mind is rational but the penis seeks nothing but sex.

Cult prostitutes are the reason that Israel continued to leave God. The fact that any man could have sex as a part of a worship service is enough for any man to forget the miracles he saw in Egypt and turn into a heathen. If you do not think a man is capable of this, you are dead wrong.

Christian women in the church would be shocked and disgusted to see what a man can do when led by his penis alone. Ever heard of rape? Do you think that springs forth from a place of rational thinking? No. It does not, it comes from animal-like drives. Remember: Man is one part divine and one part flesh and animal. Man has the capacity not only to rape, but also to enjoy it. Such vile behavior is the result of the darkest, most evil thoughts in the soul of man. This is the dichotomy of the penis and the rational, moral being.

Mantra

Do not let your penis make a decision that your rational mind regrets.

Application

Again, do not let your penis make a decision that your rational mind regrets. The importance of this cannot possibly be overstated.

Do not marry out of lust.

Do not have sex out of lust.

Never marry a woman just because she has nice breasts, or a nice butt, or because you think she will be good in bed. These are things that your penis would do if it had full reign on your mind.

The key to making rational choices in life is to be aware of the irrationality of your biological drives.

If you know those drives are irrational, it makes it easier to resist their pull. Awareness of your sex drive is more than half the battle. Here are a few common situations where men begin to think with their penises instead of with their rational minds:

A man has been dating a girl for a few months and thinks she is “the one” (no such thing as ‘the one’). Based on the urge for sex he asks her to marry him, not realizing he had confused his sex drive for genuine love. They get married, and after a few years the newness of marriage wears off.
The dust settles and the man realizes he sprinted into marriage with a woman he did not truly love because he wanted to have sex with her.
A man has been dating a girl for years and really wants to get married. This man is skilled at hands-on jobs like electrical work or construction. But because he wants to please this woman and marry her as soon as possible, he chooses to go into business with his brother or find whatever job he can get the fastest. As soon as he has money, he marries the girl. A few years later he deeply regrets changing his career path based on his sex drive, because now he is completely unfulfilled by his work.
A man is being pressured by people in the church to get married soon (whether knowingly or not many church members exert massive pressure on young men and women when it comes to their marriage plans). He doesn’t really want to get married, but he does want to have sex. He also wants to get all these church members to leave him alone about marriage. So even though he doesn’t truly want to get married yet, he finds a woman, sees her for a period of time and then marries her.

The man soon discovers that sex is not everything it was made out to be, if he gets any of it, especially if he marries a woman who was damaged by purity culture. He sleepwalks through life, never living it to the fullest. His lifestyle is greatly reduced because he has to mentally, physically emotionally and financially accommodate a woman. He is a walking time bomb for a midlife crisis.

There are a few common examples that you have probably witnessed yourself while growing up in the church. There are many more examples; write down a few that you have seen.

You must discipline yourself and recognize that you are going to want many things in life, and the majority of those will be the secondary and tertiary results of your desire for sex. The only men who do not accept the reality of this principle have forgotten what it is like to have more than one nanoliter of testosterone in their bodies.

You must be constantly aware of your desires; the penis will try to shut off the rational part of your brain and force you to think with your sex drive alone. This is the opposite of wisdom. This is how men find themselves in unfulfilling marriages.

You must make all facets of your body subject to you.

You must make the body submit to your rational mind (1 Corinthians 9:27). Without this, you will mindlessly impregnate women and suffer the consequences of that behavior. Command over the sex drive is the defining characteristic of a great man.

Be aware of your drives, and force them into submission.

Behave with honor.

Keep your penis in your pants.

Redirect that sexual energy to your work. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Integrity

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.”
Proverbs 10:9

“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.”
Proverbs 28:6

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”
Proverbs 11:3

Character is the internal code of an individual. Integrity is sticking to that code of conduct regardless of who is watching. There could be no one watching, but you still practice everything you preach.

You pick up the straw wrapper you dropped.

You take the shopping cart back.

On all your jobs you use your best effort and complete tasks to the best of your ability, even the ones you impose on yourself.

Even the small tasks around your home.

Do you clean the whole kitchen, or just the visible parts of it?

Do you dust around the picture frame or do you pick it up and clean the entire dresser?

Are all of your jobs done right?

These are the basic questions that give you a direct view into who you are as an individual. Are you the kind of person who takes shortcuts to avoid doing that little bit of extra work? Are you the type of person to use the phrase “good enough”? If you are that weak man, then today is the day you begin to cast off that old man of sloth and sluggishness. The Church has enough weak men already, you do not need to add yourself to their numbers.

You are the kind of man who does everything to the best of your ability.

It doesn’t matter who is watching. It does not matter if you have an audience of 50,000 people or if you are completely isolated. Integrity ensures that you are the same man in both situations. Integrity guarantees that you have consistent character over time, that your word has value, that you always follow through and do what you say you will do.

These philosophies are embedded within you. Like anything else, once you begin to apply these actions and disciplines consistently over time, they eventually become habit, and require no more willpower.

You take back that shopping cart without even thinking about it, it’s programmed into your character. Once programmed into character, it is there forever. That is the beauty of discipline and habits. You work hard to build them over long periods of life, then they are fit to stand the test of time for years to come. Don’t be discouraged by how long it takes to build the habit, because eventually you will be profiting from the compound interest of life.

Character takes a shopping cart back to the store. Integrity takes the cart back at night when it’s dark, no one can see you, and you were the only shopper.

Character picks up the trash it drops. Integrity picks up the trash even when no one saw who dropped it in the first place.

Have Character. Get Integrity. Be a Man.

Mantra

Even if no one sees me, I do what is right.

Application

The application is simple. Keep to your character even if you are alone. This is the way of men. There are few principles more foundational for building yourself as a man than these of integrity and character.

Time may take your health, your mind, your sight, your hearing and your wealth, but your character will last forever. Your character will continue to impact other people long after you are dead if you build it correctly. Start building integrity today, reap the benefits tomorrow.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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