A couple of months ago I almost pulled the trigger on an AlphaManGuru Challenge. I actually didn’t even know what was happening until it almost happened, which is pretty much how I do life.
I just wanted to get a book.
It was Garrett J. White’s “Warrior” thing. His outfit was selling his book basically for “free.” In the past it was about $100, but now he was bundling it with another book for just the cost of shipping.
“Okay,” I thought, “Deal. If nothing else, it might be interesting to reverse engineer the framework that apparently works for thousands of men, and maybe sprinkle some holy water on that sucker and baptize it for serious Christian men.”
I respect White on a certain level. He’s a hard-driving, ambitious and successful man. He was dealt a few cards in life that would challenge anyone, but he built an empire or two, lost them, nearly lost his family, but came back bigger and more powerful than ever. More than that, he’s doing what 99% of other men can’t or won’t do - he’s teaching other men how to get their act together in every area of their lives.
The downside? Hang on.
I got the books. Then came the emails. And the texts. And the direct, grab-me-by-the-collar, spittle flying in my face, “Do this challenge or keep lying to yourself, Beta-Man!” call to action.
At the time, my soul was smashed like a pile of LEGO that had until recently been a meticulously constructed spacecraft, but had been dropped onto the hardwood floor. (That’s very topical in my home). So, I accepted an invite to get on a call with one of White’s lieutenants to hear more about this challenge.
The guy, (I’ll call him John, because that’s his name), was direct, challenging, and clearly a master brewer of the Kool-Aid. And I guess their system works for men who consider profanity the mark of authenticity, because boy he let it effing fly. Personally, I’ve never been one to take offense at naughty words, occasionally even thinking that they have their place in the right effing milieu. I even developed a distrust of men who hit their thumbs with hammers and scream, “Darn it!” Or, guys who evidently would really like to use blasphemy, but instead demure with such G-rated constructions as, “Cheese and Rice!” (Stay clear of those dudes. They’re likely to have a Bible verse justification for any sin.)
But this? This stuck a pitchfork into the derriere (sorry) of my inner pacifist puritan.
This guy John started off with, “So, what the f@#$ is going on, Christopher?” and went from there. It got to the point that, bellowed into a corner, motivational spittle dripping off my face, I had to pull the religious card. “My faith is, uh, a pretty big deal to me, and I appreciate how Garrett at keeps…uh… a placeholder in his system for ‘spirituality’.”
You could hear John shuffling the index cards in his head as he pivoted to that part of the script.
“Oh yeah, man. Yeah. That’s important to me, too. In fact, he helped me to finally have a relationship with God.” And then came the testimony, because that’s what a certain, large segment of muscular American Christianity does - it shares testimonies. Unrequested personal stories with lots of uncomfortable self-disclosure culminating with, “and then I got saved, and you can too!” And so, I got to hear about how his effing relationship with God unlocked new effing powers, justified his divorce from that b!*&^ of an ex-wife, and made him totally cool with himself.
Does that sound judgemental? Sort of? Well, let me make it clearer: That man has never met God.
Nonetheless, I still thought there might be something to this “Warrior Way,” and so I dove into the books.
I knew there was a problem when I realized I was hiding the books from my wife and kids. If either of my young, starving-for-direction sons picked it up to see what Daddy was reading, I’d have a whole lot of ‘splaining to do. Particularly to my wife, whose impurity detector is among the most advanced in the galaxy. Have you ever tried to encourage someone like that to “lighten up?” To, “Just be cool” with something they consider akin to putting venomous snakes in the baby’s crib? Just so we’re clear, it doesn’t fly, especially when your whole argument essentially rests on making more room for just a little bit of sin in your life…
So, for a couple of nights I read in secret, well after normal bedtime hours. It took just a few hours of reading to realize the blazingly obvious - the library of Hell is well-stocked with these things. I couldn’t deny it. The principles are sound, and it’s filled with fairly practical, objective, and concrete steps for getting control of one’s life in the usual key areas: physical fitness, family, spirituality, and business. (Body, Being, Balance, Business, in this brand’s parlance. Notice the alliteration? That’s how you know it’s a powerful, cohesive system that works, slave!)
I tried. I really did. But even my slower-than-molasses intellect realized, consciously and without a doubt, that this was just wrong. I didn’t want to be one of these guys who criticized it because it sounded hard; guys who, in order to avoid something difficult, hide behind Constantinople-grade walls of sanctimony and, say, write critical blog posts about it. It was so, I don’t know, devoid of transcendence.
How so? In as far as I could read it, it barely talked about the prerequisite for true enlightenment - emptying oneself of oneself. The objectives of the book, and the movement, seem to be to fill oneself with all the stuff of life - money, sex, power, things. In a tell-tale sign that the diabolical is present, it inverts self-abnegation and just about makes you believe that obtaining all this stuff is really, when you think about it, the most altruistic thing you can do for your family and community.
That’s the attraction of it, I think - all the glory, honor, and power of the world, obtained BY you, for the good of others (of course).
I’d been hanging a lot of hope on it because it also seemed like a last outpost of reality, crude and aggressive as it was. In my binary thinking, the “other side” appeared to be engineered to make men weak, passive, long-suffering doormats who should do nothing but endure the crumbling of their careers, families and marriages. It’s called “dying to yourself,” which I believe IS necessary, but man, it’s so easy to get that twisted around the axles.
I seem to come across a quote at least once per week from one holy man or another who praises passivity in the face of adversity. I get the core of it, I do. But I also believe to my bones that there are times when we have to stand and push back. All this advice to be passive and just bear it are probably why suicide is a leading cause of death among men - more than twice the rate for women. It goes against our God-given natures.
So, I put Garrett J. White aside and went into monk mode. I prayed and I thought.
More to come…
One hundred percent of this post was written by a genuine, legacy style intelligence, i.e. an original human male. (ChatGPT was offline.)
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Alpha Detox
1) Constantinople-grade walls of sanctimony. Nice.
2) The “having it all” lies for men, just as the Second-Wave feminists promised it for women in the Seventies. It was a B.S. lie then, and it’s a B.S. lie now.
3) I’m guessing this book/system’s attitude is geared towards a younger generation (or men who think it’s tough and military to curse all the time) with the profanity—the moment Lt. F-Word Troop opened with that stupid nonsense, I’d have been out. There’s a time and place, and that wasn’t it. He immediately communicated that he was in a radically different place versus yours.
4) Passivity gets overplayed. There is patience in bearing our crosses as we suffer with the Lord. There are times when the mature Christian can discern that a more passive, receptive, “baring our backs to the scourger” approach is required by God for our good. We needn’t default to that, however! The Lord bore His suffering in a particular way to fulfill the Scriptures and the Father’s Will. This doesn’t mean we should never push back, or fight, or jump into the fray, rather than taking a beating. Again, the mature Christian should work on discerning these things: Should I fight hard this time? Should I be more passive? What’s the situation, and what does my prayer with the Lord say to me?
The key here obviously is having a regular and earnest spiritual life, so that one may better discern, be strengthened, and fight however the Lord wants. But the very fact that the Scriptures are replete with metaphors of combat for the spiritual life should underscore that passivity is hardly the best choice in every situation.
*That’s* what the F-Troop’s going on, Christopher. ;)
SO good! Would it be weird to have this printed out and framed? Wow!