10 Lies that The Modern Christian Man Has Believed

The brainwashing of the enemy has affected you more than you know.

I’m often shocked when I realize just how susceptible I have been to modern programming and how many false beliefs I’ve internalized over the years. I think it’s wise to remain vigilant and to not think yourself immune to the propaganda that’s been spread over the last decades, because when you think yourself immune, you’ll be less aware of the lies they want you to believe.

Among Christian men, I’ve noticed 10 prevalent lies that most of us have internalized, and that have had the effect of emasculating us and making us less fit to lead our families and communities.

Here are 10 Lies that the modern Christian man has allowed himself to believe:

10. “Religion Has no Place in the Public Sphere”

Many well-intentioned Christians have let the world convince them that their faith is something that should only be practiced in private, because otherwise they would be “imposing it” on everyone else.

The problem here is that the public sphere will always be guided by moral principles, and if these principles are not based on the Christian faith, they will necessarily be opposed to it.

Our responsibility as men of faith extends far beyond the private sphere, and we are not only allowed but commanded to participate in the playing fields of the world and to openly proclaim that Christ is Lord, so that we can become beacons that reflect the light of God.

9. A Christian Man Should Just be “Nice”

Behind the pretext of “being nice”, most Christian men have internalized a cowardice that makes them incapable of standing by their values or proclaiming the Truth firmly.

Nowhere are we commanded to be “nice”. We are commanded to be kind and loving, but very often that means not being “nice” by worldly standards. The “niceness” that calls for unrestrained tolerance and acceptance of sin and evil is the kind of passive, counterfeit kindness that the world promotes so that evil ideologies can spread uncontested.

We are called to be much more than nice. We are called to be saints, and there has never been a saint who hasn’t had the courage to stand against the powers in place and proclaim the Gospel loudly and clearly.

8. All Ambition is Pride

There has been a subtle but persistent effort by the enemy to convince Christian men that any kind of fire and any kind of ambition is immoral and necessarily prideful. Afraid to fall for the greatest sin of all (pride), many Christian men have chosen to put out their fire altogether, to numb their ambitions and refuse to pursue any worthy, magnanimous goals.

Instead of ordering that ambition towards holiness and service, Christian men have chosen to believe the lies of the enemy and have started to believe that ambition is always, undeniably, an expression of pride.

Ambition needs to be ordered towards eternity, not eliminated altogether.

7. Humility Means Putting Yourself Down

Humility is probably the single most misunderstood virtue there is. A lot of people either consciously or subconsciously understand humility to mean putting oneself down.

Just like ambition and pride are not the same thing, humility and self-deprecation differ vastly.

Humility simply means standing in Truth, being accurate in recognizing your flaws and limitations and not thinking yourself to be more or less than what you truly are.

From Magisterium.com

True humility is not self-deprecating nor exaggerated, but the proper, honest recognition of where you stand and who you are.

6. Anger is Always Sinful

“He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”
―Thomas Aquinas

I believe that many of the cultural crises we are facing (abortion, surrogacy, etc.) have managed to spread in large part because we have not been angry when it was righteous to be. Maybe if we had been more outspoken about the evil behind these practices before they became mainstream we could’ve prevented them from spreading so quickly.

But because we’ve fallen for the lie that anger is always sinful or “unchristian”, we have become passive spectators of evil, ignoring our duty to be angry when there is a just cause for it.

As St. Thomas says, the real immoral action is to live amidst injustice without anger. And that’s exactly what we’ve been so comfortably doing.