There’s only one way to truly become awesome. Not seven steps in seven days. Not four ways to be awesome. One way.
Become like a child.
Those Who Reject This Way To Become Awesome
Is this not manly enough for you?
Enlightened thinkers argue this way to become awesome is for the weak and mild. Real men toughen it out. Real men take life by the horns and pull it to the ground. Real men rely on themselves. They are warriors.
Only religion calls men to be women. Only Christianity wants men to be boys. Freud thought Christianity was an infantile need for a powerful father figure. Marx thought religion was the opiate of the masses. Nietzsche famously wrote,
Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life.
But what is manliness? The qualities will be vast, but one can certainly say a man is manly if he’s willing to undertake an arduous task. No culture has ever praised the pusillanimous man.
Certainly, there are many difficult tasks that any give man might have to undertake in his life. Often times this depends on the period of history he exists in. Each generation has its own struggles. However, regardless of the time, every man must face the tough task of self-conquest–and I think an argument can be made that this might be the most grueling task of them all.
What Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche didn’t understand is thinking oneself as one’s own god is an infantile action. Thinking and acting this way is basically short circuited into us. There is nothing arduous about thinking of oneself as the center of the universe. One simply has to wake-up. It’s just the opposite. As Oliver Wendell once wrote, “The great act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.”
The Test To Become Awesome
This, then, is the task that will test your manliness. Are you willing to die each day to your perpetual desire to exult yourself and to come to your heaven father in faith? If you are, then you will become awesome:
God is ready to do everything for a soul who seeks him without pretense in true poverty of spirit, for one who is convinced that seek and desire him is a gift, and that its own powers are absolutely inadequate for salvation and sanctification, and for bringing it to intimacy with God. The more we realize our own powerlessness, the more God draws us to himself.
Fr. Gabriel
The fool says in his own heart that there is no God, and a dumb-ass thinks that he is God.
Don’t be a dumb-ass. Have faith as a child!
Great thoughts, but what is up with “Only religion calls men to be women.”?
Modern thinkers tended to think that religion made men effeminate. Religion was for the weak minded. Of course, I don’t hold this at all, i was merely giving reasons why “being like a child” would be rejected by modern thinkers.
“Awesome” photo courtesy of Sam Howzit via Flickr. Creative Commons: Attribution license – http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/8015841559/
Yes . . . Yes! I thought I had this photo linked back to flickr. Thanks for reminding me.