How To Develop A Masculine Spiritual Program

When you think about self-improvement, you probably immediately think of improving your body—resolving to go to the gym three times per week or to eat a paleo diet. But while your physical body is always the best place to start, you will be incomplete unless you do something more. You can end up being physically fit but spiritually and emotionally stunted.

No matter what spiritual teaching you happen to embrace, whether that is Christianity, Stoicism, or Taoism, a rigorous spiritual program that you practice daily is necessary to truly live your spirituality. If your spirituality is something that you only do once per week, don’t kid yourself—you are not spiritual, you are just LARPing.

Benefits of working on your spirituality

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I started working on a serious spiritual program about three years ago and I’ve noticed many benefits. The first is that I am much less disturbed by adversity. No matter how difficult things get I have the drive to push through. If I suffer a setback, I am more likely to take it in stride.

Sticking to a spiritual program has made me more organized. Fitting a serious spiritual program on top of an already busy schedule forces you to be disciplined. This discipline naturally flows to other areas of my life. And there is always a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.

The third benefit is an increase in self-confidence. There is something about knowing that you are a son of God that puts all of your other relationships into perspective. I now care less about what other people think and this frees me to do things I would have otherwise avoided.

However, the biggest benefit is union with God. You can be a believer but until you become a man of prayer it will never have a real effect on your life. Only prayer activates the Christian life.

Why Opus Dei spirituality?

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Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei

The spiritual program I am going to share derives from Opus Dei, a Catholic religious order (technically, it is a “personal prelature”) that aims to help ordinary men and women who live in the world develop deep spirituality. Opus Dei spirituality is particularly applicable to ROK readers because it has a very masculine bent. Opus Dei is one of the few institutions left that understands that men have a need to be masculine and that women need to be feminine.

When you hear about Opus Dei, the first thing that may jump to your mind is Silas, the murderous albino monk from the Da Vinci Code. The reality is a bit more down to earth. The founder of Opus Dei, a Spanish priest named Josemaría Escrivá, felt called by God to create a movement that would help ordinary men and women sanctify themselves through their daily work. In other words, Opus Dei spirituality is meant to be practical. The Catholic Church put its stamp of approval upon Opus Dei and its spirituality by making Escrivá a saint in 2002.

General principles

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St. Josemaria summarized his spiritual principles in three books of short aphorisms. The following all come from The Way.

Don’t be soft on yourself. “Don’t say: ‘That’s the way I’m made… it’s my character’. It’s your lack of character: Esto vir! Be a man.”

“Where there is no mortification there is no virtue.” (179)

But don’t be hard on others. “Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others.” (180)

Start your day with a victory from the first moment. “The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and… up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body.” (206)

Examine your performance daily. “Examination of conscience: a daily task. Book-keeping is never neglected by anyone in business. And is there any business worth more than the business of eternal life?” (235)

Never surrender in the face of adversity. “What does it matter if you have the whole world against you, with all its power? You… keep going!

Repeat the words of the psalm: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom need I fear? Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum. — Though an army pitched camp against me, my heart shall not be afraid’.” (482)

Remember your divine sonship. “‘Father’, said that big fellow, a good student at the university (I wonder what has become of him), ‘I was thinking of what you told me — that I’m a son of God! — and I found myself walking along the street, head up, chin out, and a proud feeling inside… a son of God!’

With sure conscience I advised him to encourage that ‘pride.’” (274)

Spiritual direction. Opus Dei strongly encourages you find someone with greater wisdom to hold you accountable and guide your spiritual life. My spiritual director is an ancient priest. He does a great job of gently encouraging me to reach a higher level. He’s gradually helping me eliminate all softness from my life. I trust him because I see that he applies his own advice to himself—there is no hint of softness in his character.

When searching for a spiritual director, look for a man who is older than you and has been on the path longer than you. He should demonstrate the efficacy of his teaching in his own life. If someone is a slob, overweight, or otherwise lacks self-control, steer clear of him.

Have a plan of life. “Without a plan of life you will never have order.” (76)  The concept of a plan of life is one of the most important concepts of Opus Dei. You must have a consistent bedtime and wake time. You must be punctual in getting to work, going to appointments, and leaving work. And you must focus on whatever you are doing. When you are working, don’t check social media or think about your personal life. On the flipside, don’t let work intrude on your life at home. Live in the moment.

In addition to leading an ordered work and home life, Opus Dei encourages men to have a set number spiritually-related tasks that they accomplish every day. The following program is nondenominational program a based on a program recommended by Opus Dei priest Fr. McCloskey. Use it to serve as a model for your own plan of life.

A sample spiritual program

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Make the morning offering upon rising. This is simply raising your mind to God and dedicating the day ahead to him.

Spend 15 minutes in mental prayer in the morning. When you first start out you may find that just sitting quietly for 15 minutes may be a challenge. If you’ve never done mental prayer before, Time for God by Jacques Philippe is an excellent introduction.

Spending fifteen minutes doing spiritual reading. This could be from the Bible or some other suitable spiritual book.

Lift your mind to God in the middle of the day. Catholics do this by praying the Angelus at noon, but your prayer of choice will suffice.

Making a brief examination of conscience at night prior to going to bed.

Conclusion

The key to success with a spiritual program is to be realistic. Unless you are monk, you are not going to be successful using a monk’s spiritual program. Instead, select a set number of tasks that you can achieve every day and be consistent. I’m convinced that if you take the challenge of working on your spiritual life for at least six months, you’ll never go back.

Read More: How To Prepare For Your First Formal Prayer

223 thoughts on “How To Develop A Masculine Spiritual Program”

  1. Really like the approach.
    Spirituality can definitely strengthen a man.
    My main complaint about modern Christian approach is that it is too feminine, too much focused on feelings and forgiveness. Good for women, not men.
    My test for wether a religion is masculine or not is wether it allows you to kill enemies and have sex with whores from time to time(within limits and obviously not with respectful women or other men’s women).
    Modern Christianity makes men feel guilty of their sexuality and make them weak by not allowing violent revenge against Jihadis for example.
    No wonder we are losing to Muslims who allow rape and murder. Right now Islam is alpha and Christianity is beta. And alpha always wins.
    Back in the Middle Ages Europeans were Christians, but they fought in crusades and did not feel guilty of having a penis.
    We need to bring that back or our people and Christianity will perish.
    If Christianity can’t fit the bill it risks to lose it to some other religion, like the Cult of Kek.
    However this post inspired me. I will follow this advice, I definitely could use some spiritual strength in my life right now.
    I definitely was more powerful when I was closer to God. Prayer gives resolution and strength.
    Deus Vult brothers!

    1. Most of Christianity has been cuckolded by feminism or some other derivative of liberalism. Many protestant churches have preachers that subconsciously swallowed the mangina approach of “don’t want to offend anyone” crap. Like a beta loses the respect of their wife, the beta preacher loses the respect of the congregation. If all you do at church is go there to sing songs and hear sermons to make you feel good about yourself, why bother?

      1. I spent a midnight mass listening to a vicar whinge about how politically tumultuous 2016 had been and woe is the world with Brexit and Trump. I’d been sounding out the church for a month as outwardly it looked traditional. I’m not going back there. Weak church leader and congregation full of women, with zero men’s groups/teaching.

        1. A common observation and, unfortunately, all too accurate. It’s a big problem… Western Christianity has become feminized. It needn’t be (and wasn’t up until the middle of the last century). It better man-up soon or it’s doomed.

        2. I’m not Catholic, I’m C of E. I considered RC, but it’s not for me; at least in this stage of my life.

        3. And you sir, are playing right into the hands of the enemy. The divisiveness among Christians really pisses me off… Go read some C.S. Lewis and then engage in grown up debate.

        4. Rejecting a cucked church that has embraced sodomy and the ordination of women is playing into the hands of the enemy?

        5. Stop bickering in the ranks. There is an enemy that needs facing down, it has reached our shores in the name of radical Islam. Theological points can be dealt with once the victory has been won. This infighting among brothers will doom us. You’ll find many Anglicans would welcome close ties with Rome.

    2. Medieval Christianity was a religion of peasants. It encouraged slaves to accept their shitty fate by promising them hope of getting a better life next time.

        1. If you only knew my educational background, you would be backpedaling so damn fast right now…

        2. It doesn’t show. Your statement shows your understanding of the circumstances of the time is not even superficial.

        3. Unless your educational expertise is in the field of theology and history, or more specifically: the history of medieval christianty, then I do not think real back-pedalling is called for.
          And I have to admit, the original comment indeed seemed pretty much ignorant, irrespecive of being written by the CEO of a company or by the office cleaning staff…

        4. Part of my educational expertise is in fact in the field of medieval Christianity. The statement stands.

        5. Is Marxist revisionism another part of your expertise? That’s basically the tenor of your critique, and any hack can echo Marx.

        6. Picture or it did not happen.
          On the other hand, I lived during medieval times, and it was nothing like you implied.

      1. If by that you mean that medieval Christianity did not promote a Marxist class consciousness, but emphasized spiritual growth, then you are correct. Jesus did say that we should lay up for our selves treasure in heaven; where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

      2. You obviously know nothing of the medieval era. It was an era of tremendous expansion of knowledge, technology, faith and warfare. Read Rodney Stark’s books and get out of your own dark age

    3. In hoc signo vinces. Delving deep into studying the Bible, Church history and the guidance of a previous vicar, who is an ex military officer, I have rediscovered the masculinity inherent within Christianity. The beauty is, as can be seen on social media that there are grass root movements among Christian men, who are ignoring the feminised teaching in the pulpits, leaving those churches in droves, finding conservative churches with traditional values and speaking out and for masculine Christianity. Brexit and Trump’s victory are, I believe, willed by God.

      1. Those masculine churches you speak of are going to be where the feminine women flock to. Let the feminists and cucks remain.

      2. Also check out Pilgrims Progress, the English classic of spirituality. Reading it as an adult Christian, you will find extraordinary depth there.

        1. Excellent, I mean this in all seriousness, it is quite possibly the greatest devotional book ever written in English.

      1. Hey Moonman, are you okaykaykay?
        It’s really a shame what happened to christianity.
        I visited two services in the last two years – the one was baptist, the other one adventist and both were cucked af with a woman preaching in the baptist church and a black refugee preaching in the adventist church.
        I think we germans have to go back to our pagan ways.

    4. Oh so very yes.
      And the good thing is, I already detect the beginning of a Christian renaissance, with young white Europeans feeling the pressure of Islamic migration, and a resurgence of white European identity in the face of the Cultural Marxist onslaught.
      All we wanted to do was getting laid or have a hot girlfriend, and here we are, taking up the burden of the Cross, and putting back the Lord to the place where He should have been all along, above us all! Indeed God works in mysterious ways…

      1. This stuff didn’t last as long as it did for no reason. Augustine was as hedonistic as they come and it brought him nothing.
        Pilgrims Progress can’t be recommended enough either for the Christian (it was once second only to the King James Bible in copies published).

    5. I’m the same. I used to be full on atheist but in the past few years, I’ve felt the need to get into Christianity. The problem is the way it’s delivered seems so beta and pussified.

        1. Under Joseph Smith and Brigham Young? Agreed.
          Now? Cucks in the modern church. At least, that’s my take. It’s partly why I am inactive now. :-/ Just my 2 cents.

        2. Agreed, Jim. In the context of our discussion, the church takes in weak, beta, liberal sissies along with the traditional, strong, alpha types, because it’s goal is to make bad men good and good men better. I doesn’t turn anyone away who can meet simple thresholds of dedication to self betterment, and that have faith that God will help them achieve it. This is the true, real, liberal (read noble) goal of spirituality, and since we are all walking the path of personal spiritual improvement, there we have real “equality” before God and among each other. None of this forced “equality of outcomes” garbage.
          Each person is in a different place spiritually/emotionally/mentally, and thus we see a huge divide in terms of ideologies within the church. I suppose most churches are the same way. But, at it’s core, the church is working to make men and women more “red-pilled” as it were, by acknowledging reality and teaching them to change/improve one’s self accordingly.
          And yes, there are cucks in the modern church, but I learned a long time ago that the personal foibles of some of it’s members does not mean the church has gone bad. Quite the opposite: I think that those who recognize their own deficiency at some level are the ones drawn to the church.
          For the record, I knew the Manosphere was right on the money the moment I read my first RoK article, because of the many red-pilled elements of my LDS/Mormon faith.
          Again, my apologies for posting a book.

        1. They cucked out 1500 years ago. Look up the meaning of the word byzantine when applied to life and things.

      1. Read Edwards, Spurgeon, Gill, Calvin et al and tell me they’re beta and pussified.

        1. I’ve read all of them, and they pretty much are; particularly Spurgeon, who was steeped in pussified Victorianism. Sorry man.

  2. Excellent article. Self improvement is at the heart of spiritualism.
    Physical excellence is one part of the package. You get up, do your routine, and see if you improve next time you go on a major hike or look at yourself in the mirror. Self control is another part, you read self help books, go to church and try to learn. You put it into practice when you are out on the road and someone cuts you off, do you control yourself, or do you throw yourself into a rage? You are quitting smoking, do you have the self control? There is charity, do you actively go out to help people ?……blah blah blah
    For all of this, we have an ideal to strive for, but we fall short. The whiney liberal says we are hypocritical when we fall short of the ideal. To hell with that, you are making the effort. Hypocrites are those who make no effort, yet hold others to the ideal. In the end, we will fall short, that is just part of living in a fallen world. That is where Christ comes in. Not to save the hypocrite that makes no effort, but to save those who strive and fall short.

    1. All excellent points.
      There is a prevalent thought that there is no such thing as an ideal. Of course, in this world nothing is ideal, but philosophers as far back as Plato have argued for some realm where the ideal is reality, some perfection that can be known but never achieved.
      It is the struggle of man, especially the religious man, to seek the ideal (which the Christian finds in the triune God). It is an unobtainable goal along an indefinitely long path, but every day brings us either closer or further depending on the focus.
      Christ makes it possible for man, who could never achieve the goal, to have the remainder credited to his account on the day of reckoning. This is our eternal joy, but we still have the quest before us in this world.
      This separates the hypocrite from the noble man. A hypocrite says, “Your imperfection is your doom, but mine is of no consequence.” The noble man says, “All imperfection is doom, but the struggle for perfection is a noble aim.”

      1. John Lennon’s imagine = straight out of Satan’s playbook. If there was no heaven, hell, good or bad, then why are we here? Shirley, this can’t be some random accident, order doesn’t just appear out of disorder. So if God exists and is powerful enough to create the universe, why are we allowed to life in a fallen world? The answer is: so we can learn to distinguish the bad from the good ourselves and choose the good. That is something that would be impossible to do in a hunky-dory garden of Eden. God allowed us to fall so we could learn to come back.

        1. fuk him – the “perfect world” in that song is one devoid of everything except Self and State. Basically hell.
          “God allowed us to fall so we could learn to come back.”
          That is Good Stuff. You definitely get it.

        2. Reminds me of a weird thought I once had.
          The Bible says that sin is passed down from the father. So it was Adam, not Eve, who originated sin in us.
          Original sin, then, was letting Eve decide what they’d have for dinner!

        3. You are more correct than you realize.
          Genesis 3:17 starts with the words: “Because you have listened to (the voice of) your wife”.
          Whenever I hear women complain “He won’t listen to me” I have to fight the urge to point out that 1) That was the first sin, and 2) “Listen” is chickspeak for “Obey”, and you ain’t his boss.

      2. To be more clear, in a theological sense, Christ’s death is sufficient for salvation. This is what we call “justification” – though we are always short of salvation on our own, and thus righteously condemned by the law, by grace we are treated as though just and in no fear of condemnation.
        In this, the analogy of the judge and the young man comes into play. A young man ran a red light and was told to appear in court. The judge read the law and observed the evidence and sentenced the young man to pay his fine (which he was unable to pay). The judge then walked over to the bailiff, pulled out his wallet, and paid his son’s fines.
        This is sufficient for justice, but there is another idea we call “sanctification” – making holy. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in men while we yet live, and it is the pursuit of the ideal.
        Even so, though as a Christian I do believe the Holy Spirit is necessary for sanctification, the pursuit of the ideal by the unsaved is still preferable to living in foolishness. As Socrates and Pascal both noted, it’s a better life even if not necessarily as materially rewarding.

        1. One of the best arguments for secular morality I ever heard was from Nathaniel Branden. He said that every choice to betray your character for material gain puts mileage in YOU. He had clients who thought of themselves as “superior men” who were “unchained” by bourgeois morality but it always ate them up inside.

  3. Oscar Wilde said that all men need either art or religion. It doesn’t matter which you choose. Both make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

    1. Weren’t his last words “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do!” (seriously, I think that those were his last words)?
      Funny guy, very creative to a point, but not somebody I’d be wont to take too much advice from regarding matters of faith. He simply had no point of reference, being basically a gay bon-vivant flamboyant type.
      I’ve stared at some pretty profound art and contemplated it, and it’s time period, the meaning withing context and out of the context of its creation, the deeper themes and memes that the artist might have meant to convey, or conveyed through ignorance nonetheless. Came away with some really good insights. But nothing, to me, beats the profound sense of oneness with God that I get when riding through the Rockies, or seeing the Jungfrau off in the distance.

      1. Das tausendschöne Jungfräulein,
        Das tausendschöne Herzelein,
        Wollte Gott, wollte Gott, ich wär’ heute bei ihr!
        – Johann Brahms, Sonntag

      2. Wilde struggled with Catholicism for his entire life. Look into it. He was definitely conflicted. That part of his biography gets forgotten.

  4. I have a copy of the 1599 Geneva Bible, and in it are prayers for certain times of day and certain actions (eating meals, preparing for church, etc.) What strikes me about these prayers are the life they present – each prayer is about 90% meditation on God’s goodness and how we should seek to emulate Him.
    A day steeped in such prayers, most of which are a page or two long and take long minutes to read aloud, naturally orients your mind.

    1. 5:30 am every day, I drag the wife and kids out of bed so we can read a chapter or two out of the Bible as a family before I head to work. Daily reading is crucial to maintaining an orderly mind and family.

        1. Funny, I would have figured you’d be more of the Flying Spaghetti Monster type.
          😉

        2. The C is hard, and the “th” is more of a “t-h” than a “th” sound (kuh-t-hulu). Say it with as deep and resonant a voice as you can, and no one cares whether it’s technically “right”.
          The fun one is “fhtagn” (as in, “Cthulu fhtagn”).

        3. This is neither the time nor place for me to explain why I believe that your question, although good, is invalid. I only mean to point out that not all spirituality is predicated upon a man in the clouds or something. And even when it is, if it leads people to do more good than ill, that’s a positive thing.

    1. Yeah, you’re so edgy and trendy and intellectual. I’ll bet you can prove it to me by throwing out a bunch of videos by Dawkins or using reasoning already invented centuries earlier.

  5. Pagans gonna pagan. Enough with the Papists and their cults.
    Steps to masculine Christianity:
    1) Read the Bible. Start at John, then Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, Daniel, Isaiah.
    2) Head to a Reformed church. Male pastor, Calvinist preaching and teaching. Get involved.
    3) Get on your knees and beg for God’s shepherding and guidance of your life.
    4) Stop sleeping around. As D.A. Carson has said on multiple trips to campuses: you can’t come to Christ because you’re too busy sleeping with your girlfriends.
    5) Repeat Step 3 as often as you can.
    That’s all that’s required.

    1. No problem if that is your path, but my ancestors were Catholic, so what can I do if I want to follow in their footsteps and reclaim their identity? I can only find it with the Catholic church.
      Be that as it may, literally the last thing Western civilization needs is enmity between the different interpretations of Christianity. We do not have to unite, but acceptance and respect towards each other is a must.
      Besides, the Crusaders were pretty badass, masculine Christian role models.

      1. The real presence in the Eucharist and reconciliation. An actual authority of a Church instituted by Christ as an assurance that the Bible is actually scripture.
        However, I agree with most of Five Points post. Read the Bible, all of it. Seek and work on a relationship with God in all three persons of the Trinity. Obey God’s commandments, especially the greatest commandment- love God with all your heart and your soul. Since He said that if we love Him we will love others and the things we are doing for others we are doing for Him, don’t just talk your faith, live your faith.

        1. There is no such thing as a real presence. There is no Scriptural basis for it. Communion is a symbol.

        2. Might want to go easy on John 6 quotes for a church that doesn’t believe in election.
          Calvin said all I need to about communion in the Institutes.

        3. I’m Catholic because having read the writings of the early Christians (even prior to the declaration of the canon of scripture), they believed in the Real Presence. That is what the apostles taught them and they taught others, Paul warned about partaking without recognizing the Lord’s presence. A symbolic meal does not bring condemnation on you.
          The Catholic Church’s practices and doctrines most closely follow the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians.
          Regardless- we are all brothers in Christ and united, as Paul said, in one body. Without Christ’s sacrifice/gift of death and resurrection we would all be lost.

      2. I would disregard his on the grounds that his petty revolt lead to the current state of affairs. Moreover in order to be protestant your first requirement is to be braindead when it comes to Christianity’s history.

        1. I do believe that if your ancestors were Protestant, then their path will be the closest to you. Besides, old Martin Luther (the white one) was pretty much more badass regarding the JQ than the present Pope for example…

        2. Luther got a few things right but if the tree is to be judged by its fruits…well Protestantism has been a blight on the West. Moreover I subscribe to the opinion that there is currently no Pope, based on the very Catholic doctrine
          that says no heretic can be pope, even if validly elected. Hence I don’t care one bit for whatever Marxist clown Bergoglio has to say since he’s proven beyond doubt that he is a heretic and so have the rest of the “popes” since Vatican II (1958).
          Logic indicates you are either catholic/orthodox or quit Christianity altogether if you are to follow Christian spirituality. It’s not only a question of what your forefathers believed, that’s my opinion.

        3. I have a very strong aversion towards the present Popes, them claiming it was not the Jews who killed Christ, that Jews can reach God on their own without Christ, or the new one saying we should welcome and help the Islamist invaders. When he washed the feet of Muslim prisoners live on TV I felt so much ashamed that he represents the Boss on this planet. But the Pope is just one contemporary man, and the Church was built on solid rock. Whatever, I am not holding my breath for the Pope to start a new Crusade to reclaim the Holy Land anytime soon.

        4. Yah, that foot washing thing was something. What do you think the Islamists of the Levant thought of it? Did it win any converts? I get that everything about Christ was paradoxical from birth to death but I don’t understand what the point of the pope’s display was. Christ washed the feet of his disciples to demonstrate humility yes but also to show that to lead you must serve. However, those disciples believed in him and were prepared to die for him.
          Washing (and kissing!) the feet of Muslim young offenders while the TV cameras are filming demonstrates what? It’s incongruous with the original event. I suppose you could rationalize it and say it was a radical act of humility and love of neighbour. To me it was unseemly and, dare I say, a vain display of virtue signaling.

        5. Those ISIS guys were probably laughing their dicks off, muttering “Cucks!” under their breath.
          As for winning converts, this very act held ME back from converting to Christianity for a year at least.

        6. You’re funny. Only papists think history is favorable to them. So much delusion….

        7. So, there’s no Pope? So much for that 2000 years thing. Popes also can’t be heretics since they’re infallible or is this just another instance of “we say who’s infallible not you?” Typical Papists: your house of cards always crumbles.

        8. You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t know about. There have been periods in history in which there have been no validly elected pope but the Church survived. You would know that…if you knew what you are talking about.

        9. As someone who came to a cross roads in my faith, wondering if I was only Catholic by accident of birth and studied Church History, I disagree. It was studying Church history that made me a committed Catholic.
          Without the authority of the Church commissioned by Christ, there is no reason for me to accept the Bible as scriptural. If I take Martin Luthers path– I can discard or add whatever I believe the Holy Spirit is guiding me to do.

        10. And such a blight. The modern missional movement, freedom of religion versus pederasty and the Inquisition. Yeah, Protestants are such blight.

        11. There’s no such thing as a pope to start with. If you knew church history, you would see that but typical papist…

        12. Thanks for showing your lack of Arguments. Protestantism’s greatest legacy was the destruction of Christendom. The modern missional movement is the conversion of idiots to a dumbed down version of Christianity. Luther himself would have burned at the stake the likes of you, so far from Christianity you are….

        13. Dumbed down version, huh? Interesting… but Papist dogma requires nothing but unintelligent suspension of one’s mind. Protestantism, the Bible-believing, conscience-convicted kind, not only encourages the investigation of God and His Word and Work but commands it. Furthermore, it demands the sanctification of its followers and not the “Well, it’s Christmas, better get to confession”, “the Argentinian peasant says so”, statue-kissing idolatry and blasphemy of the Romanists.
          Thanks, but I’ll pass…. like millions upon millions of others that love God.

      3. “”My ancestors were Catholic”. Irrelevant. Theology matters and the Papists have no Christ. Read Romans, Galatians, Calvin’s Institutes.
        “The last thing Western….” Sorry, but there is nothing in common between the Roman “church” and believing, convicted Christianity. The Gospel is the thing and we won’t be partnering in some watered down, unbiblical, sola ekklesia apostate church.
        “Besides, the Crusaders were pretty badass, masculine Christian role models”. Indeed, if you enjoy the sins of raping, pillaging, mass murder and enslavement. There’s Islam for that. Try men like Owen, Gill, Edwards, Spurgeon, et al if you want actual badass Christian role models.

        1. These are just details, about which I do not care.
          As far as faith is concerned, I believe in God, and I believe in the teachings of Jesus. That makes me a Christian.
          The rest is about identity for me, not about theology.

        2. No, believing in Christ makes you a Christian, not belief in God. The Muslims and Jews believe in (a) God, too. John 14:6 “I am the Way, Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Papist church does not have justification by faith alone but by works.
          “The rest is about identity”. Really? How often do you even read the Bible? I’m guessing rarely: most Papists don’t even own one. How often are you in prayer and not to some idolatrous “Mary”? How often are you in church sitting under quality preaching and worship?

        3. That is good because, as I said, I believe in Christ. That makes me a Christian, then.
          If the Papist church, as you say, have no justification by faith alone but by works, then the same must be true about the Protestant church(es).
          As for the rest, I am not even baptized. I realized the importance of our Christian roots quite recently, as a reaction to the Islamic migrant pressure on our southern borders, and also to the terrorist attacks in which we are slaughtered as “Christians” while in fact I bet my life most victims were atheist westerners. Parallelly I became aware of the Cultural Marxist onslaught against white, Christian Europe. I realised that half of our identity (our religion) was taken away from us during the last 50 years or so (especially in my ex-Communist country), so I set out on the path of reclaiming that identity. As an adult man, I went to church for the first time something like last week or so.

        4. Yes, if you believe in Christ as Lord (Romans 10:9) and confess Him, you are. Praise God!
          “If the Papist church, as you say, have no justification by faith alone
          but by works, then the same must be true about the Protestant
          church(es).” No, vastly different. The 5 Solas of the Reformation are Sola Christos, Fide, Scriptura, Deo Gloria and Gratia (Christ alone, Faith alone, Scripture alone, Glory of God alone, Grace alone). Protestants believe in Justification by Faith alone and Grace alone (Romans 8) and not by works.
          Get baptized and soon. It’s the outward profession of Faith that, contra Popeishness, does not wash away sins but shows you as a member of His Church, the Bride of Christ.
          Read often and read well. Read the Bible as often as you can.

        5. I will do.
          And I enjoyed our discussion, it was good to see that in this day and age, there are men who are knowledgable about theological things, and you clearly knew what you were talking about.
          Knowledge about Christianity is one of the things I am seeking nowdays.

        6. Jesus IS God.
          You air quote Mary as if she didn’t exist. Catholics don’t worship Mary. We honour her. She is, after all, God’s mother. Stands to reason if you follow the 4th commandment and you claim to be a child of God.

        7. According to the Jewish Talmud Mary was a whore and Jesus an unskilled peasant who now resides in hell boiling in excrement.
          It also speaks of the importance to the Jew of the Roman church failing.
          Any positive mention of the crusades will most certainly trigger most Jews. The sacking of the temple elicits a sense of rage and vengeance to them.

        8. Almost every Protestant (or should i say former-Protestant) country today is in crisis. Protestants are incapable of defending their faith, whereas Catholics, with their philosophical tradition, are able to prevent their own from embracing godless nihilism.
          None of the people you mentioned were philosophers, only preachers, so what does a preacher say to a young man questioning his belief? He says “God dun it” or “you got to believe because, well because”, because you shun any secondary authority, unlike the Catholic church who have the likes of Thomas Aquinas to defeat their beliefs with sound arguments. Now there’s a ‘badass Christian role model’.

        9. Oh, no, Mary existed but your “honoring” is flat out paganism and idolatry. Praying to a dead woman, kissing her statue, and asking for her intercession (which not only can a dead woman not do but turns Christ into an equal) isn’t Christian, Biblical, or anything other than paganism.
          4th Commandment is the Sabbath day. It’s for God not Mary.

        10. Such low hanging fruit.
          The Bible came from the early church. You’re probably next going to ask who wrote it, right? Why are the papacy and Roman primacy not mentioned?
          Jesus built His church on the confession of Peter not Peter himself. Christ is speaking to all of the 12 in Matthew 16. Peter is just the one who answers for the group. Basic hermeneutics.

        11. Well, no. As a protestant you believe Luther was correct in removing the deuterocanonical (what you would call apocryphal) books from the Bible. As well as adding the word ‘alone’ to what had always been translated as ‘saved by faith’.
          So, you’ve deviated along with Luther from the Bible/canon of scripture referred to by the early church. Trusting in Luther’s authority, and reasoning in his translation that he got it correct.

        12. Have you ever read “Faith of the Early Fathers” edited and translated by Jurgens? It’s a three volume set, but the first volume is translations of the earliest Christian writings. Well worth a study if you haven’t read it.

        13. “The Papist church does not have justification by faith alone but by works.”
          No, that is not what the Catholic Church teaches.
          If you’re interested in the actual teachings of the Church, here’s a link to a searchable version of the catechism
          http://ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/index.html
          I also recommend you read Christ’s account of the judgment in Matthew and ponder sins of omission. What it really means to accept Christ as Our Savior, to have Faith and to love Him with all our heart and all our soul. If we truly have Faith in Him and love Him, we will do things for others, we will produce good fruit, good works. If not, than He states we are the goats…
          we don’t truly have Faith.

        14. Christ specifically states Peter by name individually and addresses him individually. Peter being the word for rock (and the original Aramaic He was speaking did not have the petros/petras gender pebble/rock issue it did when translated to Greek), and that on this rock He will build his church. Not these rocks. (I’ve often contemplated in this passage that it is Peter alone being open to being guided by God to his realization of Christ’s divinity that is critical). Christ, continuing to address Peter bestows upon him the keys to the kingdom and the power to bind and loose. Note, Christ does bestow the power to forgive sins and bind and loose to the 12 separately in a different passage.
          If He’d already done that, did He need to do it again to have it take effect?

        15. Need to be a philosopher? What nonsense. God’s Word is more than sufficient to tjose questioning belief. Your reply is just nonsensical.

        16. Category error. Christians always pray for one another. Mary is a dead sinful woman like every other. The whole Immaculate Conception nonsense is created from whole pagan cloth.

        17. Peter is the one who speaks up from the 12, he is not being addressed individually. The confession is the rock.

        18. He is the God of the living not the dead. We are all alive in Christ, as Paul taught we are all of one body and that doesn’t end just because we die.
          We can still pray for one another and still ask others to pray for us.

        19. Christ is speaking directly to Peter. I can not read this any other way. Peter is notable in being the only one to speak up, Christ’s blessing is directed specifically to him, and cites the Father’s guidance/revelation to Peter individually.
          “Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”

        20. I’m assuming that you’re aware that the Catholic and Protestant Bibles are different? The seven books Luther rejected as scripture?
          That one of Martin Luther’s most controversial actions was his translation adding ‘alone’ to ‘saved by Faith’?
          You may agree with his reasoning and that he was correct that it better captured the sense of the passage. But it was a departure from what had been accepted as the scripture as handed down from the Early Christian church. Perhaps he was correct in that they’d been in error for centuries.

        21. She’s actually very much alive. Kissing statues is optional but reverencing sacramentals is a good thing to do. You say it yourself: intercession. To Christ through Mary, or any of his friends in heaven who can plead more insistently than any of us can.
          Regardless of what you say, the question must be asked: on what authority do you say these things?

        22. Pagan. Repent for the Kingdom of God is nigh.
          If there are intercessors that aren’t Christ, you blaspheme the death and resurrection. His act is enough to save all those who are elect.
          Repent and ask Him for forgiveness of your pagan idolatry.

        23. By your logic then, I can only pray to Jesus. I can not ask or request anyone to pray for me, nor pray for others. I can not act as an intercessor.

        24. They’re only different in two ways: the apocrypha (added later than the original 66), and the source material (ESV/NASB use the original Greek not the TR or Latin Vulgate).

        25. Well, we agree on the basics with FivePoint. We are all brothers in Christ, our only hope for justification is through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Our hope is in Him.

        26. Living people, yes. Mary and the “saints” of the apostate church are dead.

        27. And yet, the earliest Christians prayed to as well as for the martyrs. Interesting that Elijah and Moses appeared with Christ in the transfiguration.
          Again, as Christ said- He is the God of the living, not the dead. And as Paul taught, we are all one body as intricately linked to each other as the parts of the body are linked to each other.

        28. It need not be either/or. These intercessors are IN UNION with Christ as they form part his body. The glorified body in heaven no less!

        29. And you can’t reach it. I ask you again, on what authority do you speak? I speak not of my own, but on that which is founded on the apostles, with Peter as its head and guided by the Holy Spirit. You speak of the early church as if you are part of it. They had a word for people that weren’t part of the ONE, holy, Catholic and apostolic church – heretics.

        30. Your attitude perfectly reveals why most atheists act the way they do, and why almost all protestant countries today are now godless. Most atheists are former protestants, but still keep the values and attitude, so atheists shun philosophy just as much as protestants do, they view Christianity as an irrational and illogical worldview because the only arguments they have ever heard are “god dun it” or “you must believe, because, well just because”, this is NOT sufficient for those questioning their belief, as evidenced by the fact that England now has over 30million non-believers in a country of 70million people, and at the next census (based upon current trends), they will (for the first time in England’s history) become a majority. And it’s important to note that the Catholic numbers in England haven’t decreased in 30years. So this rapid apostasy is not happening in Catholicism, only protestantism.
          Protestants can no longer deny the situation they’re in; you can no longer refuse to accept that disbelief is rapidly increasing. You have to adopt a secondary authority alongside Scripture, or continue watching your numbers decrease year by year, or you could just stop playing games and return to the Catholic church, who are capable of offering young minds a sufficient explanation for why we believe what we believe.

        31. They weren’t badass, and they weren’t warriors. They were just preachers bible thumping. Lets get real here.

        32. So I see you aren’t Christian as you reject sacred Scripture.
          Mary is right in there. Do you bless her, no. Yet it says in Luke 1:46-55 that her name will always be blessed – The Blessed Virgin Mary. Shame on you

        33. The 5 Solas are jewish derived to break the Church. And your cucked ancestors fell for it.
          Read Rabbi Louis Newman’s “Jewish Influence In Christian Reform Movements” and you’ll see where your teachings come from.

        34. That’s a laugh. He said he would build his Church upon Peter – in Aramaic “You are Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my Church…” You do recognize the name Cephas, don’t you?
          Even most Protestant scholars today state your argument is specious and polemic, and that Christ was speaking of Peter, not his “confession”.

        35. “Most Protestant Scholars”. Oh? Like whom?
          See, you base the entire argument on one verse taken out of context. I’ll take the entirety of the NT. Show me exactly where the primacy of Rome or the outright headship of Peter of the church is shown. Paul wrote an entire part of Romans to show submission to headship and includes Peter…. zero times. Peter wrote two epistles and establishes his own headship… zero times. In fact, Peter tells the congregations to submit to their elders ( I Peter 5) and leaves himself out. James and John say “we build this on Peter”…. zero times. Paul wrote epistles to Colossae, Philippi, Ephesus, Thessalonika, etc. plus three specific pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus. While doing so, mentions Peter…. zero times. In his letter to the Ephesians, he warns them of the coming wolves, to Corinth judgment and massive problems with pagan behaviour. Why not, at any point, mention that Peter is the one to whom they should be speaking? “Listen, here’s my opinion but, since Peter is the one whom the church is built upon, just ask him at Antioch Rome and he’ll send whatever he can to help you”?
          Should you ever read church history, you’d find that the primacy of Rome isn’t established until Leo. Furthermore, former bishops of Rome like Gregory speak outright against it.
          Keep trying.

        36. And yet, there you are, submitting to the headship of an Argentine communist who listened to Jewish leftism. Specious.

        37. I bless her as a Christian predecessor like millions upon millions before her. She’s no different than any of them. I don’t see any statues to Leroy, the Jersey longshoreman, being kissed, beads handled whilst praying to him… do you? No, didn’t think so.
          Tell me, if she’s sinless (and has to be to be an alleged co-redemptor), why does she offer a sin offering in Luke 2? You papists give us Christians a bad name.

        38. Faith is a gift from God. It’s not my fault you argue with Him. Christians will look to His Word for guidance and not some worldly “philosopher”. Worldly philosophy has very little to do with Christ and His Church. I don’t really care what your opinion is on Godly direction or advice coming from the Christian body. Nor do many of us. Your worldly worldview is of your father, the Prince of this world…. and we have nothing to do with this. Thanks, though.
          I also do not believe in atheism. It’s the outright act of undermining and trying to hide oneself from God as He has written His Law on their hearts.

        39. Catholic wasn’t capitalized. On what authority? The fact that your Mary worship violates at least three commandments (1,2,4).
          Burn, apostate. Christ sees your “church’s” fruit and tells your tree to die.

        40. Um, no. There are only two biblical intercessors in the NT: Jesus and the Spirit (Rom 8). In addition, including other humans into intercession makes Christ an ineffective Saviour. Only the sinless can interact with God: those who have the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and the Trinity.

        41. Yes and no. You cannot intercede, this is true, since you have no power to stop God from conducting His wrath on sinners. You can ask God, through the Power of Christ, to grant faith to sinners, for blessings, for things (you think) you need, for guidance, etc. However, you cannot intercede for others as Jesus does through the imputation of His Righteousness. That’s why He’s sitting at God’s right hand: to come between God’s wrath for those who believe in Christ.
          Praying to a dead, sinful woman like Mary not only is paganism (elder worship, dead people… ), is against three commandments (No God but Him, no worship of others (especially graven images like statues), and unholying His day when done on Sundays), but does not help. Mary is not an intercessor nor a co-redemptrix.

        42. They are not ‘worldly philosophers’, they are monastic philosophers fully dedicated to God, big difference. And this is the problem, you designate philosophy to the realm of ‘the world’, instead of adopting it to your advantage. Solomon was a Philosopher, ecclesiastes is a philosophical book. Even Jesus used sound arguments to defend himself against the Pharisee.
          The numbers speak: Christianity in Scandinavian countries drops a percentage point each year, and has been doing so since the 1970’s. So what are going to do about it? It’s no longer viable to just say “you must believe”, you have to offer an explaination, God wants us to use our minds. Read Thomas Aquinas.

        43. Thanks, pass on Aquinas.
          “Christianity in Scandinavian countries drops a percentage point each year”. It’s God’s church. He does what He wants to with it. The fact that many leave the church is a biblical concept. “They left us because they were not of us.”
          Adjusting the church to fit with some sort of worldly idea on what and who God is leaves you with the mess called modern Protestantism. That’s how you arrive with the United Church of Canada, PCUSA, etc.: female impastors, openly homosexual church leaders, etc. Just let the Bible speak for itself as the timeless, inerrant, sufficient Word of God.
          As far as philosophy goes, Solomon directly disobeyed God’s commands with his 700 wives, 300 concubines, horses from Egypt and the like. Jesus’ arguments to defeat the Pharisees come from the Tanakh. His replies almost always start with “It is written” or “Have you not read.” Solomon believed in God but didn’t obey Him. Your better choice for philosophy would have been Proverbs.

        44. “The fact that many leave the church is a biblical concept.” So you wish to remain a devout ‘elect’ few, while the world burns around you? How many souls will be damned because of your inaction?
          “Just let the Bible speak for itself” Exactly, anyone can interpret it the way they want, and make it say whatever they want, hence the huge number of denominations within Protestantism. The Catholic church has unity. It’s interpreted not by lay people, but by the theologians, philosophers, and mystics, in the long tradition of the church. And if you let the Bible merely speak for itself, some people begin thinking the world is six thousand years old and that snakes can talk, which is then easily rejected by young rational minds.
          If we shouldn’t listen to Solomon because he sinned, then i guess we should remove his works from the Bible? And perhaps we should remove all the other words written by sinful men, that would leave only the words of Christ left!

        45. I think I’m seeing what the disconnect is between us. You seem to think that the church is a man-made organization subject to the whims and desires of man. That perhaps if only we changed the music or let women have authority or be more welcoming of unrepentant homosexuals, everything would just be magnificent regarding the church. People would flock in by the thousands… no? I believe the church is the body and bride of Christ, subject to His desire for sanctification, holiness and the conformity to His image for the Elect because, you guessed it, Election is a biblical concept. Read Ephesians 1, Romans 8 & 9, John 17, Genesis 25 and 48. Only the Elect are saved and that’s by Grace through no works of their own.
          Is interpretation really the hill you wish to die on? Each parish has its own priest and they can’t get together on who gets their marriage annulled or any other mess. Different interpretations and false teachers are also, yup, biblical ideas (2 Pet 2, Matt 7 & 26). The Reformed especially believe in letting Scripture interpret Scripture and that’s why we’re especially harsh on papists who take words out of context and cannot use Scripture to interpret Scripture. They believe in “sola ekklesia”: what we say goes and, should there be a difference between us and the Bible, we reign supreme so shut up, peasant.
          What furthers my thoughts that you’re of a very different paradigm regarding the concept, construction and continued existence of the church is that you’re valuing “philosophers and mystics” as the judges of God’s Word. How about you just read it prayerfully and let it interpret itself? See my argument on why Peter is not the head of the church: such an argument exists nowhere else outside of Matthew 16. Peter doesn’t say anything about it in his epistles, neither does Paul, neither do James or John. They all refer to the elders appointed in each city; exactly what do you think the epistles to Timothy and Titus are?
          I’m not saying don’t listen to Solomon: the proverbs he wrote are worth heeding, sure, but let’s use a little discernment regarding his conduct. He was under the Judgment of God for his conduct and his direct disobedience. Furthermore, there’s still some discussion as to who wrote Ecclesiastes: even papists can’t agree on a name. The rabbinic tradition is Solomon, sure, but the view since 1750 or so is up in the air.

        46. Well then, you don’t understand scripture. For ex: The queen of Israel was not the King’s wife, it was his mother. Thus, Mary is rightly called the Queen of heaven and earth, as she sits at his side as Queen.
          Study scripture more without your preconceived bias and you will realize the rightness of Catholic doctrine – I did.

        47. And Americans submitted to Obama for 8 years. That argument doesn’t fly.
          The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, and he may be good or bad, as he is simply a man. Many Popes are in hell. Catholics know this. The higher the position, the greater the responsibility.
          But the Church is a divine institution with Christ at her head, and so can never fail or depart from proper doctrine (though people like Francis can try for a time).

        48. Why would you expect Peter to “establish his own headship”? Christ established it. ‘Nuff said.
          The Church has always recognized that Peter is the head of Christ’s Church (Christ’s vicar) from the earliest times. So your arguments are specious and against the historical record.
          As for Leo, etc., you are pointing to instances where the Successor of Peter put his foot down and demanded submission, which was given. Read Vladimir Soloviev’s Russia and the Universal Church for an understanding. http://www.lulu.com/shop/william-von-peters-and-vladimir-soloviev/russia-and-the-universal-church/paperback/product-21377856.html

        49. “Nuff said”? Really? Here’s a thought exercise. God the Father in Genesis 3 tells Eve that her husband rules over her and, subsequently, all husbands rule over their wives. Yet Ephesians 5 is needed, I Tim 2 is needed and the directives for Elders in Corinthians, Ephesians, and Timothy are needed. If God told everybody in the very beginning of time that women were to be led by their men, why the confusion?
          You’re still missing the point on Peter. If he’s the be all and end all of the church, why all the doctrinal epistles and nobody says “Just ask Peter. He *is* the head of the church, you know.”? Indeed, both Peter and Paul call for submission to local elders and never to Peter. Never once do either call for their submission as local elders to any other authority. If Private Santiago was to be leaving Guantanamo the next day, never to return, how come he hadn’t packed?
          Leo: why then during all the councils prior to Leo was the bishop of Rome never given top billing? Gregory himself spoke against Roman primacy.

        50. No, he’s not simply a man, he’s the infallible personage of Christ on Earth. Remember, he’s infallible according to y’all when speaking on faith and mirals (proven false for John 12, John 22, and Gregory…7, I believe). How can the Vicar of Christ, your term, infallible on faith and morals end up in hell?

        51. You are misstating again. You really need to drop the bias and actually read some documents.

        52. In fact, he was given “top billing”. Read Vladimir Soloviev’s Russia and the Universal Church. He goes into this very topic of how the Orthodox did recognize the Pope as head of the Church until they got power hungry.

      4. It’s something I’ve meditated on quite a bit since rereading the work of Paul. I was taken aback by how often he talks about Christianity as a brotherhood, how there is no church of Paul or church of Apollo but one Church of Christ.
        To be Christian is, first and foremost, to know that Jesus is Lord, the only begotten son of God the Father, the only name under heaven given unto men by which we must be saved. And the Holy Spirit which he has given us is not the Holy Spirit of Luther or of the Bishop of Rome or of Joel Osteen (*spits*) but the Holy Ghost, very God of very God.
        We share in one Spirit. We profess one Christ. Even Luther, for all his faults (and he was first to admit they were many), did not profess a different God than that of the Catholic Church or the Orthodoxies.
        Even though we disagree on one thing or another, so long as we adhere to the Scriptures, profess one Christ, and partake in one Holy Spirit, we are brothers indeed. For this reason I am no longer a Lutheran, or a Presbyterian, or any other denomination that I have professed.
        I am a Christian.

      5. His ancestors were Catholic also before they cucked and went heretic. The best for all is to go into the Catholic Faith, even if not currently Catholic, and develop a real spiritual life.
        Using the Opes Dei exercises will certainly help; and as you want to continue to grow you will find the vastness and richness of the Christian life in the Catholic Faith (original ChristianityTM)

    2. That’s all that’s required if you genuinely believe in god. Doing those things won’t help you if you don’t

    3. it seems many of this site’s members recommend Eastern Orthodoxy. Curious what led you to Reformed Calvinism?

      1. The Bible did, listening to preachers like Piper, MacArthur, Baucham and studying God’s Word.

        1. I’ll give them a listen- just to be clear, John Piper, John F. MacArthur, and Voddie Baucham?
          Have you heard Robert Barron? I ask because one of his talks helped with my understanding of the faith (previously agnostic)- anyway, he says “the Bible is the word of God… in the word of man.” What are your thoughts on that, and does it change how you read/interpret Scripture?

        2. Yes, them. Piper’s a bit soft when it comes to female pedestalization but the man can exegete.
          Listen/watch Voddie on “Why I Believe the Bible” on YT. MacArthur’s site is gty.org (Grace To You). He is in the midst of a 5 year or so exposition of the Gospel of John.

  6. Things that I organized in 2016 so that I can start 2017 as a new being:
    – I made a 40 pages pdf file out of my favourite quotes from the stoic philosophers (Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca), I have a shortcut on the homescreen of my Galaxy S7 so I can read these quotes anywhere.
    – I made a lifting plan and now I trained three times this week for the first time in my life (I am 23 and started weightlifting with 16 years of age but I never did it regularly – just once a month which of course is completely useless).
    – I made a nutrition plan so I don’t need to count the calories with apps every single time. I just have three daily eating plans that I can cycle through. The plans contain eggs, milk, cheese, rice, bananas, tomatoes, garlic, onions, fennel, almond, walnuts, skyr, cashews, herring, oat meal and a bit of dark chocolate as a reward. That’s it. Keeping it simple helps.
    On top of that I stopped fapping. Not because I think fapping is wrong but because I think porn is wrong and I want to work on my self-control. I also canceled my Amazon prime/student account so that I don’t purchase shit I don’t need from a guy who owns the Washington Post.
    It really is obvious to me now that you need to have some spiritual guidance like stoicism especially when you face adversity like I do now with my fucked up vision and that there is no way around eating clean and lifting weights if you want to be anything but a beta fag.

    1. “Not because I think fapping is wrong”…..”my fuked up vision”
      Turns out, mom was right……
      Sorry, I know you’re not supposed to make fun of someones misfortune, but that was a home run waiting to happen.

      1. “Turns out, mom was right”? ………wait, it will really fall off? Or make me go blind?…..uh-oh

        1. I always wondered what caused that….those British scientists must have done a lot of chicken choking for that research.

        2. Only now, at the end… do you understand.
          The Emperor is right on so many things… 😀

        3. It was a pun. In the newspapers, every time some BS scientific finding is written about, or some basic, self-evident “scientific discovery” is written about, the article always starts with the words: “British scientists confirmed that…”. Well, at least in the newspapers in my country that is the case.

        4. I knew it was a pun lol I was playing along.
          They do they same thing here, it’s always scientists from some obscure place though.

  7. The western man needs to study Stoicism. Its something all men, be they Christian, pagan or atheist can apply to their lives. Hedonism and frivolity are for women and children. Self control, self reflection and dedication to principles are masculine things.

    1. Stoicism is a dead end. Look at the Catholic monastic orders, particularly those of the Dominicans and Benedictines and you will see stoicism sanctified.

  8. The problem with religion is you might be religious but the world isn’t. There are people that would have you lose your life over a bowl of soup. Turning that cheek is likely to get you seconds.

    1. “Turn the other cheek and I’ll break your fucking chin,”
      ~RZA (Wu Tang Clan, Protect Ya Neck)

  9. Just remember, spirituality doesn’t always have to be metaphysical, or feminine. It just needs to inspire you to want to better yourself; helping you to instill a sense of discipline, and the need to grow and progress. A book I find to be a great source of wisdom, meaning, and power is The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism, imo, is a philosophy by men, for men.
    Also, don’t be afraid to forgoe purity for practicality. A religous life is only beneficial if it understands how reality is, and admonishes accordingly. And if that means taking a little from one spiritual path here, and some there from another, that’s ok. I prefer my mix of pagan leanings, stoicism, buddhism, and the tao. But for red pill men especially, the tao te ching and the meditations are going to be essential.

      1. If that works for you, by all means. Don’t force it on me, please. And besides, what is your proof of that claim? It’s a great thought, and while I admire the history and culture of Christianity, the 3 major monotheistic religions just don’t it for me, intellectually. Too many claims, too much hypocritical subservience, too much control…nope. I respect it. I enjoy reading about it. I take the good from it. But that is it.

  10. Catholics get the balance just right. It teaches that your initial problems are inward, and that only after mastering yourself can you battle the forces of evil. Unlike other denominations, this doesn’t turn you into a beta-faggot, instead it turns you into a masculine but virtuous knight.

    1. Actually, it turns its own priests into beta faggot child molesters. Christianity denies true male sexuality and thus creates every manner of neurosis and abomination.

      1. The idea that abstinence causes sexual degeneracy is bullshit. If it were true, then we would expect to find ALL priests, nuns, and monks of every religion becoming sexually degenerate, and all of secular society, that embraces sexuality, to be healthy and free of sexual degeneracy, but the opposite is true. We find large scale degeneracy in secular society, and only a fragment of degeneracy amoungst hypocritical clergy.
        The homosexual-peadophiles in the Catholic church were a very tiny minority compared to other organisations, such as schools, boy scouts, etc…. but were given a much larger media coverage. Why do you still send your children to school when it has a record of child-abuse, especially by women?
        So all you’re doing here is regurgitating Liberal media lies against the church that produces true masculine and virtuous men.

        1. Some percentage of priests will obviously have a low sex drive, or no sex drive at all and thus avoid problems. Additionally, the Church has been exposed as having worked very hard to cover up these cases of child buggery, so there is most certainly a much larger percentage of them than we have been made aware (especially since the public interest only really cares about relatively recent instances of this crime). And that is not the only issue.
          Christianity does not provide single men with any legitimate sexual outlet. This is a cruel control mechanism that is Blue Pill to the core and is used to create always thirsty beta men who will be desperate to marry the Church’s vast supply of post-wall cock carousel riders and single mothers.
          The founders of the religion were sexless eunuchs who forbade men to even so much as look at a woman lustfully or think about fucking a woman. If a man cannot find a wife, he’s even forbidden release through masturbation, which has been medically proven to reduce the chances of prostate cancer in such men.
          For these reasons and many more, Christianity and its hatred of male sexuality has nothing to offer Red Pill single men.

        2. “the Church has been exposed as having worked very hard to cover up these cases” You speak as if the entirety of the church knew and that everyone keep silent, this isn’t the case. Some local priests and bishops may have covered it up for the sake of reputation, but in many instances it was other Catholics who blew the whistle.
          I’m a single Catholic man, i have absolutely no desire to marry a ‘post-wall cock carousel rider’ or even a decent traditional woman, it’s not an obligation, but most Catholic men have good discernment when it comes to the quality of women.
          The Apostle Paul says that men should marry if they cannot go it alone, and there’s absolutely no mention of masterbation in the Bible. When Jesus said to not even look at a woman with lust, he meant not looking at a married woman with lust, so that it can never become a possibility, because thought precedes action.

        3. You don’t appear to be familiar with Church teachings on these topics. Catholicism doesn’t allow single men who are unable to marry sexual release through masturbation or by any other means. You personally may have little to no sex drive, but that in no way negates the Blue Pill devastation that Christianity wreaks upon the majority of single men.
          And you will have to show me where Matthew 5:27-28 is taught to apply only to married women.

        4. I’d say it’s more of an avoided topic than strictly forbidden, and more against the watching of pornography than masterbation itself. I’ve yet to read anything specifically dealing with the issue.
          I have a fairly good sex-drive, but it’s kept under control through ascetic practise. And the church hasn’t done anything to turn me blue-pill in this regard, it’s teaches that i should either marry or abstain, and my abstinence has actually freed my from being a slave to an irrational desire, i’m now free to concentrate on more important things.
          Jesus is speaking about thoughts preceding actions. By allowing the immaterial thought, you have made it possible for it to manifest itself in the material. If you do not even think it, then it can never manifest. This is ascetic practise for those who take the spiritual life seriously.

    2. Look at the history of Spain, majestic. Unfortunately, they became corrupt by easy riches and failed to innovate. Reconquista and Discovery!

  11. Or simply be masculine as a man or burn in hell where such twisted nature belongs.
    “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor men who have sexual relations with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers, will inherit the Kingdom of God.”
    Corinthians 6:9

  12. I would have to go with stoicism as I do not think it references the “prime mover” or “creator” (although it’s been some time since I’ve read “The Meditations”). I’ll never understand the belief in the god of Christianity.
    Especially incongruous for me is the belief that things go well, “glory to the highest, hallelujah” (sp.?), but when things go wrong, it’s man’s fault, no blame to god (except maybe one of his unknowable and mysterious “plans”. Just don’t get it.

    1. That seems to be a modern Protestant thing. As I recall from reading old “books” (things where you could read printed word without electricity, from the way back times), people used to lament about why God was punishing them when bad things happened.

      1. Tell me more about these “books”. 🙂
        You are a believer right? Is it okay to ever be angry with god? Or is he beyond reproach?

        1. If a man is being punished by God, then why turn the anger outward, when instead you should look inside yourself for the ways that you displeased God, I believe the line of thinking goes.
          All the angst and anger and moderny stuff really doesn’t fit with traditional Christian religion, which is why it’s used as a bludgeon against it. “Well, why can’t I just go and question God?!? Who says I cant?!?” and all that rot. Totally modernist.
          I think that you can still find books made from paper, that do not need batteries, at a place called a “Library”. Give it a shot. heh

  13. Great article, Great Job spreading the Faith.
    Having frequent Confession and Spiritual Direction with the same Opus Dei priest, helped me overcome Porn addiction, and other bad vices.
    These are real great tips!

  14. “No matter what spiritual teaching you happen to embrace, whether that is Christianity, Stoicism, or Taoism, a rigorous spiritual program that you practice daily is necessary to truly live your spirituality.”
    Having a rigorous spiritual program that you practice daily is actually the antithesis of philosophical Taoism
    The concept of wu wei literally means “non doing”, and involves living without struggle or effort. That is Taoism. Articles like this are covert attempts at Christian evangelism.

    1. I actually studied Taoism for a while. There are definitely things that need to be done daily: chanting, meditating, mind-body exercise (daoyin). It is more than just a mental attitude.

      1. That’s folk Taoism. None of those things are required in the Tao Te Ching. Wu Wei, the uncarved block and formlessness are the tenets of philosophical Taoism

  15. I highly recommend the writings of Meister Eckhart, a medieval german theologian. He is a great mystic, and can offer some really interesting perspectives on Christianity and spiritual psychology.

  16. The RC and Orthodox churches are medieval, which is why they value hierarchy, verticality, transcendence, rigor and spiritual heroism. Protestantism is marked by lack of rationality and an excess of sentimentality.

  17. Make the morning offering upon rising.
    The morning offering is this:
    O my Lord Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you all my prayers, works, joys, sufferings of this day, in union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. In reparation for all my sins, for the intentions of my friends, relatives, and associates, and most particularly for the intentions of the Holy Father for this month. Amen.
    I also like this prayer at the end of the day:
    Eternal Father, I offer you the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with all its love, all its sufferings, and all its merits:
    First, to expiate all my sins of this day and all the days of my life.
    + Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
    Second, to purify the good I have done badly this day and all the days of my life.
    + Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
    Third, to supply for the good I ought to have done and have neglected this day and all the days of my life.
    + Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.

  18. Great article, very thought provoking, so much so its the first time ive been inspired to post a comment online
    I totally agree with the idea of a spiritual program for developing yourself as a more rounded and better man and would like to do something similar but my beliefs run more to the stoic side and frankly i am agnostic if anything. .I dont know if there is or isnt a god or gods out there it just doesnt concern me in the slightest personally
    So what advice can you give to someone looking to implement a program to improve focus and discipline without relying of prayers to something or someone other than myself?
    And before the converting inevitably begins please respect my right to choose what i believe in just as i respect yours and save it for someone looking for salvation
    If this offends anyone, then your really on the wrong forum for such thin skin

  19. From the late Cardinal Mercier:
    I am going to reveal to you the secret of sanctity and happiness. Every day for five minutes control your imagination and close your eyes to all the noises of the world in order to enter into yourself. Then, in the sanctuary of your baptized soul (which is the temple of the Holy Spirit) speak to that Divine Spirit, saying to Him:
    O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore You. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me. Tell me what I should do; give me Your orders. I promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me and to accept all that You permit to happen to me. Let me only know Your Will.
    http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=1404

  20. Opus Dei (literally translated means God’s Work), while outwardly Christian, is a front for a secretive Masonic lodge within the Vatican called P2. The rank and file members do not know of this group and the hidden agenda they push, but the upper echelons members…
    Stay away from Opus Dei, the Jesuits and any other cult-like group. Problem is, Freemasons have infiltrated most congregations; there are literally Satan worshippers in the churches, and you can see televangelists like T.D. Jakes and Pat Robertson making Masonic handsigns. A lot of Protestant churches, as well as groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons have had child sexual abuse scandals, not just the Roman Catholic Church.
    Do your homework and beware, be aware. Sites like these can help, too:
    https://mindcontrolblackassassins.com/
    https://mindcontrolblackassassins.com/

  21. You should study Judaism. Anyone and everyone should. It is the root of Christianity, the base of the pyramid – so to speak…of all major religions. It is the richest, knowledgeable source with deep wisdom. It also understands gender very, very well. You can believe anything you want, but Judaism has so much to offer – it’s not even funny, it’s not realized. I don’t care if you think they’re ruling the world (…and they are)- even more reason to study them.
    Christianity came out from Judaism. Judaism is practical to a core. You will never find something nailing the truth, practical wisdom and logic, and these are all masculine traits – like Judaism. I find it draws me the most, more than Christianity did. I would never turn elsewhere, because nothing even comes close.

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