The physical nature of man is pure evil. The Church doesn’t like to hear this. “Man is good”, they say – Wrong. “How can man be bad with a divine soul in his body?”, is the classic question they ask. The answer is because the moral soul is still bound up in the biological, physical body.
“…among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others”.
Ephesians 2:3
“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”.
Genesis 6:5
The physical nature of man is evil. The Church doesn’t like to hear this. “Man is good”, they say – Wrong.
“How can man be bad with a divine soul in his body?”, is the classic question they ask. The answer is because the moral soul is still bound up in the biological, physical body.
Man exists is in a constant state of conflict between the evil desire of his flesh and his moral soul. Polygamy is biologically natural to man, while monogamy is unnatural, and only accomplished with great effort. The physical nature of man is to do what is wrong, this is a fundamental axiom of the world, because our physical bodies crave many things that the Lord has placed restrictions on.
To reject the evil nature of man is to reject reality itself. To pretend that the thoughts of a man’s heart are not evil continually is to deny an observable scientific fact. To test this, simply think back on all the times you wanted to take a certain action simply because you were told not to. Rebellion is in our earthly nature and we have to wage war against it.
From an earthly perspective, man must do whatever he must to survive, this naturally pulls him towards evil. Why? Because it’s easier to steal your neighbors food than to find your own, therefore the Lord says “thou shalt not steal” (Ex. 20:15). It is simpler to envy your neighbors property, wife or career than it is to be content with your own, therefore the Lord commands “Thou shalt not covet”(Ex 20:17). The commands of the Lord oppose our earthly nature, and mentally we must oppose our fleshly nature as well.
We must resist, escape and redirect our tremendously evil nature in the pursuit of a greater good. Man loves progress and achievement, therefore the Lord has placed within us a very nature that itself must be conquered; and it’s conquering will serve as one of our greatest achievements, for it represents mastery over the Self.
Begin the demolition of your evil nature today.
Mantra
My evil must be contained. My evil must be controlled. My nature is controlled by the power of my thoughts. With my thoughts I shape the reality of who I am.
Application
Today, simply observe yourself. Observe your natural inclinations and see what it is that you wish to do. Take inventory of every desire you have for one day and then try to convince yourself that you aren’t pulled towards evil and that you are naturally good. How many women do you see each day that you want to have sex with? You don’t even know them. The nature of your genitalia and internal chemistry causes natural desire that is evil, especially if acted on.
How many times have you been tempted to murder someone in your life? Why would you desire to do such a thing unless your physical body pulls you towards evil?
Take inventory of yourself, come to grips with the reality of your evil nature, then get to work on fixing it.
You have to work every day. You must put effort into your craft. You must pound the stone every day. Visible progress towards a desirable end-state goal must be visible every single day, otherwise you have wasted the day.
“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”
2 Thessalonians 3:10
“Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me.” – 24 “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God”.
Ecclesiastes 2:18
Man must work. Any male who does not work is not a man. Also, do not deceive yourself, just because you clock in to a 9-5 every day does not mean you work. Just because you punch the clock and sit in a pew every Sunday (and even every Wednesday if you are “Super Righteous”) does not make you a Christian. You aren’t doing the work. You are merely radiating heat from your buttocks into the pew you inhabit, and heaven help the person who takes your assigned seat.
You have to work every day. You must put effort into your craft. You must pound the stone every day. Visible progress towards a desirable end-state goal must be visible every single day, otherwise you have wasted the day. To be a sloth is to disgrace your ancestors and to spit in the face of masculinity.
You don’t have to like what you do, you just have to do it. And if it is true that you hate your work, take a good look in the mirror at who is responsible for creating the life you are living. Who you are is the sum total of all the actions you have taken up until this moment. Your job is the result of your career preparation, if you do not like it then fix it.
Most men hate their job because they were lazy in preparing themselves for a good job.
If you don’t like your work, then DO something about it. The problem of hating your work can be overcome with additional work directed towards a new career. Hammer the nail. Do the work. Satisfy your soul.
Mantra
Hammer the Nail
Application
Make progress with at least one task of your day. If you are accustomed to being a sloth for the entire day, scrolling through social media when you should be working, then take a good look at your life, because the odds that it is improving are low. If this is you, stop complaining about how the “little guy can’t get ahead”. If the “little guy” would stop stealing from his employer by spending his hours playing on his phone then the little guy would get ahead. Make one task effective. Do one task better than you have ever done anything in your life and see how you feel. Develop marketable skills. Act in a way that allows you to add value to who you are, because at the end of the day all you have is your name. What is your name worth?
In times past, young boys spent a great deal of time around their fathers and other men. They learned skills and behaviors associated with the same traditional masculinity that built the world. Boys learned to riff and wrestle. They learned to work and play. They learned to strike their enemies with a mighty slaughter and protect their family with ferocity. This type of man is a far cry from what presently exists in the Church and world. What went wrong with society that it would produce the feeble, testicle-deficient males we have today?
It started with the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Prior to the advent of modern machinery that would eventually bring great ease to American life, boys spent their days working with their fathers on farms, hunting, fishing and doing masculine tasks. Most fathers worked from home (not in the pusillanimous ways that are done today by dad bod wielding men hunched over a keyboard for eight hours) and their sons worked with them. This hard labor would prepare the sons to take over the farm, or the smithy or whatever was the family business. Once machines began to expand in the marketplace, hundreds of jobs became available in the city.
Many fathers went to work in the factories and were out of the house for twelve or more hours a day. This meant that now the sons had to spend all their time around mommy.
Now there is nothing wrong with mommy, but children conform to whomever they spend the most time with.
If boys spend all their time around mom, they are going to be soft and effeminate like mom unless mom knows how to raise the son correctly by avoiding helicopter parenting and babying tactics.
Most moms don’t think to put their sons to work. They protect them from every conceivable harm, they prevent them from fighting and adventuring and block them from facing even the slightest level of adversity. Compound this helicopter parenting over 18 years and you have created a full-fledged pantywaist.
The boy had the perfect biological environment to grow up to be an absolute disgrace to masculinity.
These weak sons then grew up and gave birth to sons even weaker than themselves. Once married, these men removed their testicles and placed them in a box in the attic, never to be seen again. They let their wives wear the pants in the relationship and stopped them from enforcing any discipline on the new sons. No adversity was faced; therefore, no growth was experienced.
Boys continued to be weak boys for years, even generations.
It is almost a shame that the world is so safe that even the weakest men are able to pass on their genetics to another generation.
The weak, effeminate men who are fathers today are the same men who would have been eaten by lions thousands of years ago.
This cycle repeats itself today, which is why there are so many weak men in the world and especially in the Church. The Church is the breeding ground for weak men because women can try to override their natural tendency to seek out the most masculine genetics possible in favor of the best provider possible (and the best provider does not necessarily mean the most masculine provider).
Female spirituality and conviction can replace women’s natural desire to find the most “alpha” male and causes her to seek a good “spiritual leader”.
This is all fine and good, but good spiritual leaders are rarely masculine, primarily because men mistake their emotions for spirituality in the same ways that they mistake their lust for love.
How many masculine men do you have in your church? I find that about 5% of Church going men are masculine. It is our responsibility to undo this feminization of men.
The best thing we can do right now is to be more masculine in our own day to day lives.
We cannot pretend like this feminization of men has not affected us personally in some way. We are not as hardened as Spartans. We are not the men of the World Wars who withstood constant mortar fire for months. We have become soft and set in our ways, so we must move towards Masculinity. We have to train the body through exercise. We have to train the mind through learning and reason. We have to train the emotions through self control. We must take small steps towards becoming more masculine every day so that we can become more masculine in a society where the feminine man is the ideal man.
Conduct yourself like a Man.
~Excerpt from the book: Spartan Christianity (Coming soon)
The mind is the central command center for everything that will happen in your body.
The mind is the central command center for everything that will happen in your body.
“Let your eyes look directly ahead And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.”
Proverbs 4:25
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
1 Peter 1:13
The Spartan Christian believes that the mind is separate from the brain. The mind is the source of consciousness while the brain is a physical manifestation of what man thinks is the source of thoughts. While the brain will be left on earth after death the mind and consciousness endure. The mind is not affected by the various chemicals that are released and absorbed by the brain. Unlike the brain, the mind is not a physical entity.
All emotions can be simplified to various brain chemicals.
Science believes it can link every emotion with a certain chemical or a combination of chemicals. These compounds influence or are controlled by the brain, the physical structure. The mind is above these chemicals and compounds, it can even control them through the application of thought, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect.
The mind has the power to change the very chemistry of the brain and the body simply by altering the thoughts.
Simple but not easy.
The mind is the root of many problems, the majority of which are fabricated and are never realized. We allow ourselves to worry and be overcome by anxiety. We allow the body to be negatively affected by the mind. We entertain thoughts that drain our strength rather than thoughts that give us the mental edge. We have the ability to correct this, we simply have to overcome the initial friction.
The mind creates stress, anxiety, fear, anger, hatred, love, joy, gratitude and peace. Series of thoughts are linked together until they create these emotions and mindsets. In order to create good mental states and avoid negative ones, the correct thought sequences must be created while simultaneously destroying the negative sequences. If you can remove one step from the sequence of negative thoughts, you may be able to stop the entire emotion. If you can then interject a new thought you can translate the momentum from the negative mindset into the positive one. On these two foundational abilities rests the complete control of the mind.
Control the mind, or the mind will control you.
Application
The reason so many people have problems with their mental state is because they are unaware of it. The mind does not gravitate towards higher, nobler places of its own accord. The mind must be pushed to positive states by creating the correct thought environment. If you can master your mind, mastery of the body becomes easier.
By this point you should be an expert in the field of awareness. So as you know, the key to mental mastery always begins with awareness. How will you translate your thinking if you are not aware of the thoughts in your mind? You will not be able to.
Primary Objective I: Derail Negative Thinking.
If we can involuntarily “lose our train of thought”, then we absolutely can voluntarily derail our thinking if we apply effort. Human beings always want change to be painless and effortless. We must purge this thinking from our mind.
If you attempt to derail a train of thought but fail because it requires effort, do not give up. Shifting thought patterns will take focused effort, it will not come naturally because you have not practiced doing so for your entire life. The “Get in shape fast and easy” marketing strategy does not apply in real life, so why would it apply to our mental strength?
The train is derailed by first recognizing the thoughts and taking an objective, detached view of where those thoughts are taking you.
If your thinking is taking you directly to fear and anxiety, it must be averted. Become aware of the thought sequence that is in your mind and accept that it is irrational. Your thinking has no logic and no grounds and will likely never become realized in matters of fear and anxiety. Your fears almost never come true.
Upon this recognition, many individuals will find that they already derailed their train. For many people awareness alone is enough to correct the weak patterns of thought. This is why awareness is vitally important to any type of change.
The thoughts can also be derailed by switching the mind off completely. Note: this prevents you from creating positive mental states. But having no mental state is much better than having a weak, negative one.
If you are a man, you likely know how to switch your mind off unless you have some sort of disorder.
If you have a disorder, you should be a subject matter expert in it.
If you have a fear or anxiety disorder, you should be researching everything you possibly can about your enemy. You cannot defeat it without intelligence.
Lastly, get moving. You can flood your brain with chemical reinforcements if you will get up and train your body. Overcoming adversity and making progress are possible in the physical simulation that is exercise.
While training we are simulating adversity, simulating problems and challenges, and overcoming them in a controlled environment. The experience gained in simulation then transfers to life. The strong mental state you created in physical training then becomes a strong mental state in the real world.
You are already “in the zone” after training, so now it is that much easier to be in the zone in your regular life. There is no excuse to avoid training the body. The fact that training the body also trains the mind is an added bonus.
Primary Objective II: Generate Positive Thinking. Once you are aware of the thought, you can derail it by instantly replacing it with a different thought. This can be done simply by analyzing your situation and distilling the pros from it. This is the “Good” method promoted by Retired Navy Seal Jocko Willink in his text, “Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual”. Something terrible happens? Good. Your character improves. Stressed because you might not get the new job? Good. You have time to make a better resume and strengthen your weak faith.
The mind can also be shifted to something different by forcing a new train of thought onto the same rails as the negative train. Convert your mind to a subject that you are excited about, one that will benefit you later on down the road and your mindset will change.
You can focus on what inspires growth or on what promotes fear. Fear can inspire growth, but wallowing in fear never led to any type of progress.
Focus on your career goals, family goals and personal goals. Start adding to those goals and make them difficult for you to achieve. You will never be more proud of yourself than when you accomplish something extremely difficult. By focusing on goals instead of fear, you create a productive train of thought. Control your mind. Generate wisdom. Win your mental wars.
This seems a little extreme if we were to take it literally.
It would be painful to cut off our hand, and inconvenient to cut out our eye just because it is causing us to stumble here and there. What does Jesus mean? Surely He does not mean that we are literally supposed to cut off pieces of ourselves. That would be damaging the body He designed and the body that is supposed to be the temple of the Spirit.
Christ is using hyperbole to illustrate how we must lay our ax to the root of sin and cut it off at its most basic source.
You look at pornography and lust after the images, does that mean you should cut out your eyes? No. Does that mean you should get rid of your computer and replace your smart phone with a flip phone? Yes. This is extreme, but it is necessary for you, since you are a “hopeless” addict. Lax your ax to the root of the problem.
Anxiety is causing you to sin, what do you do? Find the root. Are you watching the news, becoming entangled with world politics that mean nothing on the eternal scale? If this is the source of your anxiety, cut it off.
Cut cable TV.
Block news sites on your computer. News sites are almost as toxic as porn sites. Cut the unnecessary events that are causing you anxiety. Lay your ax to the root.
Do you impose jealousy and envy on yourself? Cut your social media.
Not only is media a waste of time that does not improve you one bit, but it is the source of the majority of envy we see today.
Same with People Magazine or any other moronic media outlet. Cut these off, your envy will subside. Lay your ax to the root.
All of our evil must be attacked at the core, at the very root. If we do not cut off our behavior at the very root, it will spring back up given enough time. Many trees can regrow after being cut down to a stump. New branches and leaves grow out of the stump and the tree starts over because the root system is still intact. However, No tree can survive being cut off from its source of nourishment. For this reason we lay an ax to the root of our evil.
Fully remove evil from yourself. Remove every possible entrance of sin. This is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Better to enter into heaven having lived your whole life without social media or television than to enter into hell because your worldly interests and negative habits eventually led you away form the faith.
We must kill sin at the root everywhere we can.
It may be hard to throw a computer out a window because we “need” it for work. So we must Install software that isolates the function of your computer to a few select applications. This guarantees that you use your computer for work only.
Set up programs that do not allow News media, social media and porn. This is a simple equation, but few have the guts to make it happen. We are too attached to our comforts. Men must learn how to exist outside the comfort zone. We must cut every unnecessary outlet from our lives. You must be productive and focused. You do not want to look back on your life and realize you spent all of it on social media, politics and lust of the flesh. We have to focus on our true work, living a meaningful life of righteousness.
