MB #027: Alcohol, Gnostics, and Temperance

Read Time: ~5 Minutes

Hey friends,

Welcome back to The Mission Briefing.

A quick reminder if you missed the last few announcements, the brand-new Mission-Fit Dads community space has launched on Circle! 🎉

Here's what we've got going on in the community:

1. I've launched a new course and will give you free access to all new community members joining, prior to August 1st. After that, it will be available for a cost. It's a 4-module training with 36 videos on different mini-topics. You can either work start-to-finish through it or you can cherry-pick and jump straight into the health topics you're most interested in.
2. I'll be posting regularly on there with additional tips, free training, sharing strategies, etc. that aren't on social media or in this newsletter.
3. I'll launch frequent "Ask me anything" live video chats where you can pop in almost like an "office hours" and ask me anything at all.
4. Research proves that people are healthier and fitter when they surround themselves with other people on a similar path and journey in life.

There are a ton of guys who are already there!

Jump in here for free!

Now, on to today's special issue below talking about a very unique health and fitness topic...

It pains me to admit that one of the biggest issues I often face as a Christian man is my lack of temperance. Now before you jump to conclusions, it's worth calling out that I don't mean what you probably think I mean when I say "temperance". In fact, on average, I only consume alcohol once or twice per month.

Let's take a peek at this quote from C.S. Lewis for context and then unpack how this is relevant to health and fitness as a Christian man:

Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened “Temperance,” it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotalers…. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christiain way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning...One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the questions of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as “intemperate” as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-maina do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.