SCRIPTURE AS AN ALPHA

I'm always intrigued at how certain things that seem so obvious are somehow missed by the church. I DO NOT endorse reading Scripture for the purpose of finding a particular result. So, don't read it just to affirm alpha/RP tendencies or to force them where they don't belong. But the modern western church reading of many passages does exactly that, only from a blue framework.

They will read a passage like David and Michal (see 207) and totally miss the relational dynamic between the two. They will see it as: "David was passionate about God; Michal was not; Michal got punished and David didn't. Therefore, this is a story about how God interacts with those who are or aren't passionate about Him." Is that in the passage? Absolutely. But to completely ignore the fact of how David was dealing with his wife's outburst, or to refuse to make a statement on that tells me that:

  • (1) BP Christians simply are incapable of seeing everything God intends to communicate in Scripture because they're filtering out what goes against their psychological conditioning; or

  • (2) They're intentionally re-interpreting Scripture to avoid making statements that would be politically incorrect or culturally unacceptable.

Either way, it's wrong.

Now, reading Scripture from a red framework can lead to similar problems, but the risk is much lower. Why? Because the world was far redder back then than it is today. Blue is the dominant color today; red was the dominant color back then. So, if we want to understand what an author was trying to communicate, if we're going to have any bias in how we filter things, I'd much rather have a bias that's more consistent with the inclinations the author of each book likely held as well.

Moses didn't bat an eye at the concept of slavery or having a homosexual stoned. Today, Christians wince when they read those things because culture doesn't like it. I'm not calling to bring OT law back. I'm not Jewish, so I'm not under that law in the first place, just as the apostles said not to impose that law on the Gentiles. I'm glad that we don't have biblical slavery as a dominant economic force today. I'm glad I can embrace homosexual friends for the sake of the Gospel in their hearts today. But if we want to understand what the authors meant and were thinking when they wrote those passages, we've got to approach interpretation from the same mindset they were in - not one that has been polluted by worldly thinking. James 1:27 says that this (plus taking care of orphans and widows) is the only 'religious' practice that is "pure and undefiled before God."


HOW TO

The key to doing this is first and foremost to escape the fantasy world. Swallow the pill and accept the fact that God had an agenda when he created humanity and that agenda has been tainted. The "red pill" tries to explain how the world operates in the midst of this conflict between intentional design and mankind's fallen nature. Figure that out first.

Next, get some historical perspective. Once your Bible study skills are up to par, start reading some commentaries and learn what life was like back then. Don't just make wild assumptions or take the footnotes in your Bible at face value. Actually dig in and look it up. Get in the mind-set of the author.

Most importantly, ask the question "why?" to everything. Don't just read it and apply it. Try to figure out why God wants you to apply it in the first place.


EXAMPLES

The ten commandments are an easy example. Most people read; "Do not lie" and let that be the end of it. They do the best they can to stop lying, and that's that. But have you ever stopped to think about why Go doesn't want us to lie?

One can try to explain this stuff away with "higher morality" - to believe that there is some standard higher than God that decides right from wrong, and that God is always on the "good" side of this standard and wants us to be as well. That's garbage. There's no standard higher than God. God is the standard. If God wanted to say, "Lying is good - do it as often as you can," he could have done that. Who am I to put him in a box? But he didn't do this. Why not?

Probably because he wants to make us into the type of people who don't have to lie. Alpha men don't need to lie. Alphas are all OYS and tell it like it is. The beta avoids lying because he's afraid of the consequences, whether as small as getting caught or as grand as not wanting to be condemned to hell.

Consider some more:

  • "Do not steal" = God wants us to become the type of people who don't have to steal. Alphas position their lives in a way where we can provide for those we love, not relying on someone else's work to get the job done. The beta avoids stealing because "it's wrong" or he might get caught.

  • "Do not take the Lord's name in vain" = God wants us to be the type of people who both honor Him in the relationship we were designed to survive on, and also don't need to invoke the name of God over every trite thing in life. Betas "swear to God" that whatever story they're peddling to the girl at the bar actually happened. They ask God to "da** it" for them because they can't (or won't) do it themselves. God didn't want people to become so weak and passive as to defer everything to him when he empowered us with his authority to live and act on his behalf as his ambassadors and representatives.

  • "Do not commit adultery" = God wants us to become the types of men who don't have to - men who dominate the bedroom with our wives and are satisfied with making good use of what he's given us. The beta's reason for avoiding adultery is one of fear that he might lose his wife. The alpha's reason is simply that he doesn't have to or want to.

By now you should get the idea. God wrote the Bible for a reason - for our benefit. If we take it at face value and never ask why?, we'll never become the type of people God wants to mold us into. Specifically, the why of it all explains exactly who it is God's trying to help us become - and for men, that's the path to being alpha.