Selected Sunday Scriptures- #140

I was reading Cane Caldo’s most recent post this week, and I immediately thought of this passage from First Timothy:

⁸ Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. ⁹ This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, ¹⁰ fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching ¹¹ that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

(1 Timothy 1:8-11)

The unfortunate truth is that society needs both criminal laws, as well as social sanction, to keep people in line. Those who are rebellious will not be motivated by virtue, therefore to restrain them you must appeal to their self-interest. That means using the laws of society to keep them in place.

As much as we would rather not have laws in place, or social sanctions, or whatever the particular instrument in question is, they are absolutely necessary. We are witnessing now the price that is paid when society gives those things up.

Also, I think I have found a corollary, of sorts, to the old engineer adage:

Cheap. Fast. Good…. pick two.

I suppose one could call it a social engineer’s adage:

Virtue. Freedom. Wealth/Comfort… pick two.

The obvious scripture passage to back this up involves a certain gate:

¹⁶ Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” ¹⁷ And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” ¹⁸ He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; ¹⁹ Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁰ The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” ²¹ Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” ²² When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

²³ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” ²⁵ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” ²⁶ But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19:16-26)

The more wealth there is, the more care needs to be taken to limit freedom (if only in a self-imposed way). Otherwise virtue will be pushed to the back-burner.

Finally, this passage from St. James’s letter appealed to me today:

¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. ¹⁵ Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. ¹⁶ For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

(James 3:13-17)

Well, maybe not appealed to me. Rather, convicted me. Envy is one of my long running problems, one that has been very difficult to stamp out. I’ve made progress in a lot of other areas, but this one still eludes me.  All the more reason for me not to boast, and to remember that I too depend utterly on the mercy of God.

Incentive V. Motive Force

I recommend that my readers, if they haven’t already, read Dalrock’s two most recent posts: “Headship makes all the difference”  and “Incentives matter.” There is an important point or clarification that I think should be made here, especially with regards to the first post.

People like Gilder believe that women civilize men. Another way of putting it is that they feel that women are the motive force which pushes men to become civilized. Women push, and men are moved. This is not at all how it works.

Rather, women can act as an incentive to men to civilize. However, it is men who civilize other men. [And women too, while we are at it- but that is for another post.] And the approach used, if one wants to succeed, is always the tried and true method of the carrot and the stick.

The stick takes the form of punishment and discipline. Discipline must be taught, must be encouraged, and perhaps even beaten into a man growing up. Without it he will revert to his “factory default setting” and become a thug. [At the same time it is possible to go overboard and beat out the masculinity from a boy- in which case he doesn’t truly become a civilized man at all, as he is not a man.]

The carrot, however, can be a couple of things. Respect being one of them. Access to a good job and position in society being another. But the most powerful carrot is the promise of a woman… and with her a family. The promise of locking down a loyal woman, and the attendant sexual access that comes with it, is a powerful incentive for men. The kind of incentive which will make them endure the “stick” and become civilized.

However, as others have pointed out, that only works if the carrot is edible. When women are no longer seen as marriageable, when men no longer see them as ‘worth the effort’, then it all falls apart. Without the carrot, men won’t finish the “civilizing” process. It seems that there are two primary outcomes from this: they resist the discipline, and becomes thugs, or they  simply endure it as long as they have to and then become the so called “grass-eaters.” Either way, the fail to live up to their potential and the civilization they live in suffers for it.

This is something that used to be understood in the past. Unfortunately our society has thrown it out, along with so many other necessary bits of knowledge. As things continue to fall apart, I anticipate efforts will be made to try and address this. There might even be an effort to seek out what was lost. But I do not anticipate any actual solution happening- society won’t want to give up what it has “gained” for itself.

Selected Sunday Scriptures- #139

Today’s post will have no central theme. Rather, I will feature some scripture which caught my attention in the last few weeks. First up is a verse from Proverbs 31:

She girds herself with strength,
    and makes her arms strong.

(Proverbs 31:17)

I have tended to skip past this particular verse when reading through Proverbs 31 in the past. However, I am now of a different mind. This week at Church I saw a mother with two young children holding them throughout the service. Neither kid was a newborn- 1 and 3 years old, respectively. And she held them throughout much of the service. That couldn’t have been easy. [For those curious, dad was dealing with the older and more troublesome children.]

Physical strength is often something which is seen as a male attribute. But women need strength of their own as well- being a mother pretty much demands it. While I’ve intended to get my wife a gym membership when/if I get married, it was mostly focused on general health and keeping the weight off. But building muscle is another important thing which I had overlooked until today.

Next comes this passage from Romans:

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For whoever has died is freed from sin. ⁸ But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹² Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. ¹³ No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

(Romans 6:1-14)

I’ve never understood those Protestant traditions which have held that Baptism is “optional” for Christians. Scripture alone is clear on its importance- its necessity. We must die to the sins of this world, and be born anew into the family of God. And baptism is the means we do so. It is a spiritual drowning, if you will, which recalls back to the parting of the Red Sea. This leads to a seeming paradox- the only way to live is to die. But this life is bound by death already. The only way to escape that is through God. And in so doing we become His children. See also this from John’s Gospel:

¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

(John 1:12-13)

Going back to the passage from Romans, we can also see that if we choose to live a life of sin, we can bring back that part of us which was supposed to die. That life where we were the children of the Enemy, and not of God. We must keep that old self buried, and never seek to dig it up. If we can do so, then eternal life with our Heavenly Father is before us.

 

Trust Issues

Today’s post will tag along with my previous post, found here. It was prompted by the following comment, left by a man named Cem:

A lot of perspectives in this particular site revolve around Christianity while other RedPill venues focus on short term gains such as “bang”, “lay” etc. I want for myself to apply a moral but also sharp RedPill understanding in order to secure a marriage with a worthy girl. For religious reasons, I refrain from sex since it’s before marriage forbidden in my belief. I am Muslim and 30 y/o. That being said I study RP for more than 5 years tracing it back to the Mystery and Neill Strauss’ book, and have considerable experience of day-time pick-ups and dates. Only difference is that my efforts don’t lead to bed, as my choice. While some argue that this is not game at all, I can say that I garnered enough understanding about the ways of women (not just in intersexual dynamics but also other social areas) and that this discipline opened my naive eyes. Five years ago, I’d never have thought that taking an engaged woman home would be so easy. However, now I see every woman as a conniving covert-whores who spread their legs after enough gaming, and can’t trust any woman’s loyalty. How does a man get past this?

To begin with, I am glad to see my readers come from a variety of backgrounds. Different perspectives add a lot to the blog.

A few thoughts came to my mind after reading Cem’s comment. The first was that it was interesting to see a Muslim back up the writings/reports of secular, Christian and Jewish men (I don’t know of any major ‘spherian’s who are Muslim, if one is let me know in the comments below. The second was to note that Muslim men can, just like Christian men, choose to learn without giving into sin. The final bit was that distrust of women is universal- which really shouldn’t have been as surprising to me as it was. But enough about all that. What I want to talk about is this part here:

However, now I see every woman as a conniving covert-whores who spread their legs after enough gaming, and can’t trust any woman’s loyalty. How does a man get past this?

This is tough. Real tough. It doesn’t matter what your faith tradition is, women are still women. And when they are allowed to act as they are in the West, the vast majority will choose to use that liberty for license. That is the thing about the modern era: we have allowed women to act like they’ve always wanted to act throughout history. Women haven’t really changed, or at least, their nature hasn’t. What has changed is the social environment in which they find themselves.

This is my fancy way of saying this simple and ugly truth: Women weren’t really any more trustworthy in the past than they are now. My previous post showed some examples of 2000 year old+ thought on how far you could trust women to keep their legs shut.

So how do you deal with it? Well, here is my advice to Cem, and to other men who worry about trusting women.

• The possibility of betrayal is part of the human condition. Only God is trustworthy, everyone else can betray you and one shouldn’t be surprised to find oneself betrayed. Family, friends… it can be anyone. Accept it, and don’t let fear of it get you down. Instead vow to be stronger than your fear.
• Not every woman is a harlot. There have always been some who have showed restraint, whether in permissive cultures or restrictive ones. Even today some women don’t sleep around. The goal of any man intending to marry is to look for those women. And don’t marry if you don’t find one.
• You can reduce the chances of betrayal by being in an environment which discourages and penalizes such behavior. Stack the deck in your favor by leveraging whatever you can against her betraying you.

Will this resolve the uncertainty forever? No. But it will help give some peace of mind. The truth is that this world will always carry with it risks and disappointments. That cannot be stopped. Instead we must do what we can to get the odds in our favor.