I've been catching up on several of the red man group videos while I do some of the more monotonous things around my house and at work. As much as I love Rollo's intimate knowledge of most subjects, /u/rian_stone steals the show for me. He makes it practical and down to earth. Knowledge is nothing without application and the two men balance each other well.

In one of their videos, though, they were commenting on the purple pill and it finally struck me why the folks in the secular subs believe Christians are purple pilled. For many Christians, they're probably right, actually - and it's no secret that I wear a purple pill badge when I post on MRP. So, let's talk about the purple pill for a second. But first ...


What is the Red Pill?

In short, it is a transformative awareness of the truth behind intersexual relational dynamics.

Christians should be fully versed with what I mean by "transformative awareness." James 2 talks about this in-depth, distinguishing between mere head-knowledge and those who apply it - especially when it is applied so deeply that the person himself is actually changed internally and not merely behaving differently. This is what the red pill can and should do to a person.

What things must a man be aware of and internalizing to call himself red pilled? There's too much to list all of them, but here are some fundamentals.

  • Hypergamy

  • Feminism and the feminine imperative

  • Marriage 2.0

  • Frame

  • Fitness Tests

  • Game

  • AWALT inclinations

  • Blue pill fantasies

Your red pill journey starts when you learn these concepts and begin living your life in a way that accounts for these truths. If you have a question on any of these concepts or what the Bible says about them, PM me or the mods and we'll put a post up about it.

What is the Blue Pill?

If the red pill is a transformative awareness of the truth, the blue pill is a transformation-resisting reliance on ideologies and fantasies about what life should be like. It focuses on what someone thinks should be true rather than what actually is true.

The problem with the blue pill is that we can talk until we're blue in the face about what "should" be true. But that doesn't make it true. I can talk all day long about how a wife should want to ride her obese, supplicating husband for hours, but that's not actually true. No amount of believing it to be true will make it true.

Another way to conceptualize it is that blue pilled men live in anyone's frame but their own - and remember this because I'll bring it up again soon. Whose frame?

  • It's usually their wife's.

  • But it can also be someone else's, like their mother's. How many times have you known a guy who is willing to say no to his wife like a true alpha ... because his mommy told him to do it? "I'm sorry honey, but Mother said ..."

  • Sometimes it's society's frame. He wants to live up to certain expectations that he sees in the media or to fit in with what other people are posting on Facebook.

  • Other times it can be no one's frame at all - he just has certain ideologies that he thinks should matter, so he orients his life around them, not even knowing why he's doing it in the first place.

No matter how alpha he becomes, a man remains blue for as long as he continues believing the lies society tells him or tries to fit the truth into his own fantasies. To that end, a man can be aware of red pill truth, but if he tries to use that knowledge to achieve his blue pill fantasies, he doesn't actually get himself anywhere. Such a man mistakenly keeps his red pill awareness as a context for behavioral modification rather than internal transformation.


What is the Purple Pill?

I had to give the above because you can't get to purple without blue and red. Purple is not a primary color. You either start with red and add blue, or you start with blue and add red. Purple doesn't exist naturally on its own.

Blue to Red

Virtually all men in first world countries start out blue. The purple pill is often a necessary (yet ideally short) intermediary phase. You can't void the blue first and then become red. You add the red to the blue, slosh around in purple for a while, and then ultimately kill the blue inside of you, leaving only the red to remain.

  • Note: For some high-quality reading on this, Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus has some excellent chapters titled, "The Everlasting No" followed by "The Center of Indifference" and then "The Everlasting Yea" (ultimately concluding with "Natural Supernaturalism") which defines this process in the context of salvation. Here's a link, if you're interested.

I think the reason so many people go through an anger phase is because they hate killing the blue. There is a clear identity change that happens. The old has gone, the new has come. As a result, they merely adopt red pilled behaviors, but try to apply them in the context of the fulfillment of their fantasies. This never works.

Red to Blue

The inverse also happens occasionally. A man will become truly red pilled, after having killed the blue. But then he may decide that he doesn't like it. Without a higher mission in life, many men can find it shallow and unfulfilling. This is why a man can't pedestalize getting pussy. Many men on TRP suffer from this struggle - even endorsed contributors. Sex is their end-goal. No doubt, it's a good desire to have. But if it's all you want out of life, you'll end up unfulfilled and longing to re-add old blue pill ideologies to give your life meaning again.

Several months ago I linked to a prominent TRP poster who had mastered the game. He was getting all the sex he could ever have want. If his story is to be believed, for a time he was about as red as they come. But at the end of the post he concludes: "Can't we just have enforced monogamy again? ... I became Chad, and the world I was inducted into horrifies me. I want out."


Christianity and the Purple Pill

Many Christians who allegedly swallow the red pill don't actually become red because they refuse to give up the blue. They want to apply red pill knowledge and behaviors in the context of fulfilling external ideologies that they find in the Bible or from the church.

"But that's because the Bible tells us to!" they argue. "We're supposed to do what the Bible says. We have rules for life, moralities to follow, missions to accomplish, etc."

At best, these are the guys who are blue trying to sprinkle some red in their lives, becoming purple. At worst, they're bluer than they realize and think that their behaviors define them. They don't. Either way, they may get some shallow results, but their lives are ultimately severely stifled.

I believe this is why the secular crowd assumes Christians must inherently be blue pilled. It's why they believe that "religion has no place in the red pill." I can't count the number of times this has been quoted to me on MRP or TRP.

It makes sense from a secular perspective. A man sees God's will and the Bible as outside influences that shape his behavior. He must abandon his own frame to live in Christ's frame. The Bible preaches certain ideologies and the man must believe them. Any red pill awareness he has can only be applied within those ideologies. Sounds pretty purple, right?


The Red Pilled Christian

What the secular crowd doesn't understand is the transforming work of Jesus. They view us from a evolutionary or behavioral psychology perspective. They see our commitment to God and the Bible as external frameworks we're attempting to live within. From that perspective, it comes off as: They do so that they can become.

If Jesus truly transforms a person, especially if he is spiritually mature, it is not an external framework we are trying to live up to. It is an internal framework that we are expressing. From that perspective, it is actually: We are, and therefore we do.

This is the same for red pilled men. Doing red pilled things doesn't make you become red pilled. But when you interalize what you know, that causes you to live a certain way - to do red pilled things and express red pilled behaviors. The behavior itself isn't "red pill," but if a man is truly red pill, there are certain behaviors that must automatically follow.

Likewise, as a Christian, I do not behave certain ways to live up to biblical ideals. I do not pursue a particular mission because God told me to. I do not talk to an external God in prayer to figure out his plan for my life and then try to live it out. That would be the definition of the purple pilled or blue pilled Christian.

The beauty of our faith is that the Holy Spirit indwells within us. He transforms us.

  • My mission is my mission, not God's mission that I adopted.

  • My love for my neighbor is because I personally and internally want to love my neighbor, not because God told me to love my neighbor.

  • My faithfulness to my wife is because that's who I am, not because that's what God told me to do.

  • My devotion to reading the Bible is because I am passionately in love with God's Word, not because it's something Christians are supposed to do.

  • My ideas on morality, politics, and life in general are my own, I don't believe something just because God says so.


Internalizing the Truth

Let me repeat that last part: I don't believe something just because God says so. I believe it because it's in my bones - because it's true and it's intimately a part of me. Even more: it IS me.

When I was saved, I became the truth, just as Christ said, "I am the truth." Ever wonder what he meant when he said that? I think he was referencing this concept. Truth wasn't an external thing to him that he learned from and lived up to. Truth was intimately a part of him. It was in his bones (or perhaps better worded: in his spirit/Spirit). It defined his very existence. And now that I have Christ, I went from embodying the lie to becoming the truth along with Christ.

That's what salvation is: recreating who we are in our innermost being. "The old has gone, the new has come." Just as Rollo says to "kill the blue," Paul says to "put to death" the flesh.

Do you see the difference? Are you trying to live up to an external standard in your faith? So be it. That's better than not trying at all. I'd rather you live up to external Christian ideologies than not pursue them at all. Purple is better than blue. If nothing else, it can be a necessary way-point on the path to becoming red in the first place. But at some point you must become your own man. And if the Holy Spirit is in you, that man will be Christ in you.

  • Note: I want to be clear, I'm not saying that all people who are genuinely saved are red. I'm merely saying that the processes of internalizing and digesting the red pill is parallel with the way a person internalizes and digests the Gospel in his own life. As long as either of them is an external thing you're trying to live up to, you haven't really made the leap from one thing to the next.

Sadly, this isn't how it is for most Christians. Their view is, "I'm a sinner. God is perfect. The Bible tells me how to be more perfect. So, I will live up to what the Bible says." This is going to sound like blasphemy, but hear me out: the man I am today doesn't need the Bible. I am the Bible. I am the message, not merely the messenger. The Spirit who wrote the Bible is the Spirit who wrote me and lives in me and is one with me. Does that mean I throw away the Bible? Heck no. It merely means that the Bible isn't an external thing I try to live up to. Because of my salvation, it is an internal thing that I'm constantly exploring and discovering within myself.

Let me be clear: it's not just you trying to become like Christ. Your identities literally intertwine as you become one. In Romans 11 Paul uses the imagery of branches being "grafted in" to a tree. Jesus references the same thing in John 15, saying, "I am the vine, you are the branches." A vine is still a vine and a branch is still a branch. We have our own unique qualities. I am not literally Jesus any more than a branch is literally a vine. But we are still one and the same. You can't look at a vine separate from its branches or vice versa - or if you do, it's because the branch fell off and it's dead. Don't be a branch trying to look like the vine. Be a branch that is on the vine, which gives it life.

Don't do things because the Bible says so. That's no different from doing red-pill-type behaviors because some guy on MRP said so. Do things because that's who you are. Don't leave your frame to go into Jesus's frame. If you're in Christ and on the vine, your frame already is Christ's frame. Start living like it.


APPLICATION

As I always say, knowledge without application is useless. So, what can you take away from understanding the distinction between the Christian Purple and the Christian Red?

  1. Stop viewing Christianity or the Bible as an external standard you're trying to live up to. When you read the Bible, treat it as an opportunity for self-discovery. A car owner doesn't read his vehicle manual to tell the car what it should be trying to do. He uses it to understand what his car already is and how to fix it when it's broken.

  2. People are stupid. We don't often understand ourselves, much less other people. Spend some time praying or meditating on who you are and how you can start living like that person.

  3. I didn't get into this point much, but the secular world believes we are singular people. This makes sense because their flesh and their spirit are both aligned, creating a singular, unified person. Christians have a dual nature. Our spirit is at war with our flesh. Accordingly, for the Christian the concept of "be your own man" isn't quite as simple as "what do you want to do?" We have competing goals and interests that we don't always understand right away. As such, make a list of any tensions you are experiencing in your life and decide which part of you in each of those dichotomies is going to shape the way you live your life. Then go do it.