Nothing Among You

Christian, husband, father, son, brother, 1689, American man. Works hard, plays hard. Early gray but I’m not dying it. Spurgeonist, Weightlifting

[Max Tegmark @tegmark]

Humanity's lackadaisical response to the superintelligence threat makes me feel I'm in the movie "Don't Look Up". I just explained why here: https://t.co/9rQ1NmpY7s

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

Thanks to Infantry Dort for the support! His description only scratches the surface

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

LABOR DAY TRIBUTE #7: THE CHAPLAIN CORPS
1775–Present. Because after six weeks of creating an Army, Congress apparently looked around and decided these people were going to need God.

Founded: 29 July 1775
Weapon: Scripture, coffee, suspiciously good snacks, and the ability to appear exactly when morale has hit rock bottom.
Natural Habitat: Chapels, command posts, field services, and wherever someone has just said, “Sir, this is getting pretty bad.”
Primary Labor: Caring for Soldiers’ souls, counseling the broken, comforting the grieving, and listening to things no commander should ever hear.
Doctrine: Bring faith, hope, and occasionally decent coffee into places where all three are in short supply.

The Chaplain Corps has served beside American Soldiers since the Revolution, walking into battle without weapons and carrying something the Army cannot put on a property book: faith, comfort, perspective, and somebody willing to listen when everything has gone sideways.

That is serious work.

It also makes chaplains the Army’s unofficial repository for every marriage problem, existential crisis, command complaint, spiritual emergency, and sentence beginning with, “Chaplain, hypothetically…”

They will pray with you before the mission, counsel you after it, sit beside you when someone does not come home, and somehow produce coffee and cookies in a location where logistics cannot produce toilet paper.

The Infantry worries about the enemy.

The commander worries about the mission.

The Chaplain worries about all of them.

Labor Day salute to the Chaplain Corps: keeping the Army’s soul alive since 1775, one prayer, counseling session, and suspiciously well-stocked snack table at a time.

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

This is the way

[RAW EGG NATIONALIST @Babygravy9]

Stallone will always be my hero. I did a podcast a little while ago where I said there are just a handful of people whose opinion of me matters. My family, obviously, but also Stallone. If he had something to say about me, I’d listen.

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

@linadreaamy 223

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

@linadreaamy @sevdaloji 10

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

@10mirbeyxx 216

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

Emily and I have been together for a little over 27 years, and today marks 23 years of marriage. As has become my habit, here are 23 reflections on marriage, one for every year God has graciously given us together...

1. Marry for demonstrated potential. Anyone can imagine who a person might become. Marry someone whose character and trajectory you can already see. Catch them on the way up.

2. Marry as young as is reasonable. There is something good about growing up together. You develop your tastes, habits, traditions, and way of life as a team rather than trying to merge two established lives later. You do not need to have everything figured out before you get married. Much of life is better figured out together.

3. Children are infinitely better than pets, so do not put them off. A pet is not a substitute for a child, no matter how much modern people pretend otherwise. Your childbearing years are shorter than they seem, and the years with your children at home go even faster. Start having them sooner rather than later.

4. Talk frankly about sex. Do not expect your spouse to read your mind or leave important desires unspoken for years. Talk honestly about expectations, frustrations, frequency, and enjoyment. Then have as much sex as the two of you reasonably can.

5. Argue from the same side. In the middle of a disagreement, stop and remind each other, "I love you. We are on the same side. We are going to work this out." Your spouse is not the enemy, and beating them in an argument gains you nothing. The goal is to solve the problem without damaging the marriage.

6. Pray together every day. Shared prayer should be a normal part of married life rather than something you save for a crisis. Talk about what you are reading in Scripture and what the Lord is teaching you. Your spiritual lives should not develop on two separate tracks.

7. Own your sins and failures. When you are wrong, say, "I was wrong. There is no excuse. Please forgive me." Do not qualify it, explain it away, or immediately bring up what the other person did. Clean repentance does a great deal of good in a marriage.

8. Have a budget and regular conversations about money. Most financial fights are made worse by secrecy and surprises. Decide together what you are doing with your money, write it down, and revisit it regularly. You should both know where the money is going.

9. Make plans and follow through. Make three- or five-year plans and break them down into one-year goals. Decide where you want to live, what you want to accomplish, what you want to save, and what kind of family culture you are trying to build. Then quit talking about it and do the work.

10. Go to church every Sunday. Make Lord's Day worship a settled part of your household. Do not attend only when the weather is good, the children are behaving, and nothing else sounds more enjoyable. Go when you are tired. Go when you are traveling. Go every Sunday unless you are providentially hindered.

11. Do not have close, private friendships with the opposite sex. Your closest friendships should be with people of your own sex or friendships you share as a couple. Friends of the marriage are a blessing. Private emotional intimacy with another man or woman is foolish and unnecessary. You are not above temptation, and neither is your spouse.

12. Do not let the children divide you. Children quickly learn how to play one parent against the other. Do not permit it. Even when you privately think your spouse handled something poorly, support one another in front of the children and work out the disagreement behind closed doors.

13. Wives, do not nag. Husbands, follow through. These two problems often feed each other. A wife keeps reminding her husband because he does not do what he said, and the husband grows resentful because she keeps reminding him. Wives should back off the constant correction, and husbands should become men whose word can be trusted.

14. Once something is forgiven, leave it buried. Forgiveness means you no longer keep the offense loaded and ready to fire during the next argument. You may need to work through consequences or rebuild trust, but you do not get to drag an old sin back into court after you have said it was forgiven.

15. Balance each other in raising the children. Mothers often need to be warned against coddling their children into weakness. Fathers often need to be warned against provoking them into bitterness. A good husband and wife correct one another and pull each other back from their natural excesses.

16. Keep some margin in your life. Do not schedule every hour, spend every dollar, and use every ounce of energy. A family with no margin is always one flat tire, sick child, or unexpected bill away from a crisis. Leave enough room to serve others and absorb problems without living on the edge of exhaustion.

17. Willingness matters more than blame. Many problems are solved faster when both people stop building a case and start showing a willingness to help. You may eventually need to determine who was responsible, but proving that the whole mess was your spouse's fault does not repair anything. A willing spirit will carry a marriage a long way.

18. Divorce is almost always worse. A hard marriage is painful, but divorce usually creates several new forms of pain while solving fewer problems than people imagine. It affects your children, your finances, your friendships, your future, and often your faith. Fight for your marriage every day rather than fantasizing about how easy life would be without it.

19. Live well within your means. Some of your friends will have nicer houses, newer vehicles, and better vacations. Some received help from their families. Some are incredibly disciplined and successful. Some are financing a life they cannot afford. Do not compete with any of them. Spend what is yours and enjoy the freedom of living honestly.

20. Build shared habits and interests. Run together, garden, lift weights, work puzzles, travel, read books, or build something. Find pursuits beyond television and children that belong to the two of you. The children will eventually leave, and you do not want to discover that you have become two strangers sitting in the same house.

21. Encourage one another's same-sex friendships. One of the kindest things you can do is push your spouse toward close and godly friends of the same sex. Your wife needs good women around her, and you need good men around you. Those friendships strengthen each of you, and two stronger people generally make a stronger marriage.

22. Play the long game. Marriages have seasons, and some of those seasons are harder than others. Things may get worse before they get better. Do not treat a low point as though it tells the entire story of your marriage. Stay faithful long enough to see what years of repentance, patience, and love can build.

23. Enjoy the life you have together. The years move far faster than you think they will. The loud house will grow quiet, the children will become adults, and your strength will fade. Many of the things that seem urgent now will prove unimportant. Pay attention, laugh often, and enjoy one another while the Lord gives you the time.

[The Patriot Oasis™ @ThePatriotOasis]

🇺🇸🔥 BADA*SS! A stunning and creative performance of the Star-Spangled Banner has gone viral after it was played by shooting steel plates with rifles, each hit producing a precise musical note.

Marksmanship and Patriotism! 🇺🇸

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

Another well supported, thought provoking post from Nancy Pearcey. Careful, sister. When I don’t feel like my daily academic readings are stimulating, I more and more look for your posts here. Keep sharing!

[Nancy Pearcey @NancyRPearcey]

It was not easy for any Christians to take the biblical view of marriage seriously:

"Such even-handed treatment was genuinely novel, and it was not easy for men to embrace. In the fourth century, Augustine was still preaching sermons on why it was not acceptable for men to commit adultery with their slaves—which, he observed, was “a daily occurrence.” He warned Christian husbands that their wives would hold them accountable for their sexual sin. He also warned wives that in response to being held accountable, husbands may grow angry and abusive:

'Supposing today someone has to put up with rather more sharpness from his wife and more open grumbling than usual, because she used to assume that it was all right for her husband [to commit adultery with his slaves], and now she has heard in church that it is not all right for her husband; so if he has to endure his wife grumbling more freely, and saying to him, 'What you are doing is not right. We both heard him saying so. We are both Christians. Give me the same as you require of me. I owe you fidelity, you owe me fidelity, we both owe Christ fidelity...' When he hears things like that which he is not used to, he gets angry, he becomes abusive.'

But Augustine did not let these angry husbands off the hook. He admonished them to hold themselves to the same standard of fidelity that they expected of their wives: “You are told, 'You shall not commit adultery' (Exodus 20:14); that is, do not go to any other woman except your wife. But what you do is demand this duty from your wife, while declining to pay this duty to your wife.”

In this way, Christianity laid out a complete mutuality in conjugal rights. As sociologist Rodney Stark explains, it was a symmetry “at total variance … with pagan culture.” As a result, “the Christian woman enjoyed far greater marital security and equality than did her pagan neighbor.”

Stark concludes, “Christianity was unusually appealing because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large.”

(The Toxic War on Masculinity)

[Nancy Pearcey @NancyRPearcey]

The Supreme Court of Finland has convicted a member fo parliament for supposedly “insulting” a minority group.

Not for incitement to violence or hatred, but merely for “insulting” a group favored by the government.

[Nancy Pearcey @NancyRPearcey]

I encouraged our sons to play mentally challenging strategy games like Sid Meier's Civilization
(not shoot 'em up games).

Looks like that was a good idea.

[Humble Flow @HumbleFlow]

Every civilization falls the moment it decides it knows better than human nature:

“We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world. The great marches of civilization have not come from the clever, the adaptable, or the fashionable. They have come from men who stood still while the rest of the world rushed past them, and who held fast to certain moral truths as to a rock. Progress itself depends upon the retention of permanent things. A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.”

— G. K. Chesterton

[Maria Made in Cosmos is taking a break✨ @made_in_cosmos]

everyone should have two therapists, a man who tells you to grow up and get your shit together, and a woman who tells you to love yourself the way you are. Ideally they should be married to each other since at least 9 months before you were born

[Brett Favre @BrettFavre]

For more than 20 years I put my hands up in celebration on the gridiron.

Now, I put my hands up to the One that gave me all my talents and abilities — the King of my life, Jesus Christ.

I’ve never claimed to be perfect, but my aim is for the direction of my life to honor Christ and I pray my faith increases.

So I do want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, whether you’re solo, with family, or friends, and if you haven’t done so, put your faith in Him who can save, Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-9

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

[Jade✨ @jadebriegett]

“Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”

~Saint Augustine

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

When a believer grows tired of hearing about Jesus and His work as Saviour and Redeemer, it is never a small issue. It exposes a heart drifting back toward self righteousness. The people who know their sin the most are the ones who never grow weary of the gospel. The people who forget their sin the quickest are the ones who begin to find the gospel repetitive.

Scripture shows this repeatedly. Israel forgot the Lord and trusted in themselves, and God says they “did not remember His power” in Psalm 78:11. The psalmist confesses, “I forget the Lord and lean on my own understanding,” echoing the reality that our hearts wander unless God holds us fast. Peter warns believers that without constant remembrance they become “blind” and “forget that they were cleansed from their former sins” in 2 Peter 1:9.

This is why we need the gospel every day. We forget it every day. We forget how lost we were. We forget that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” as Romans 3:23 says. We forget what it cost Christ to save us. We forget that “He was wounded for our transgressions” as Isaiah 53:5 declares. We forget our weakness and begin to trust ourselves again, even though Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” in John 15:5.

Paul told the Corinthians that he delivered to them “as of first importance” the death and resurrection of Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 4. He warned the Galatians that if they began by the Spirit, they could not now perfect themselves by the flesh in Galatians 3:3. And the writer of Hebrews urges us to “consider Him” daily so we do not grow weary and lose heart in Hebrews 12:3.

A Christian who understands grace never gets tired of hearing about Jesus. The gospel is not the doorway into the Christian life. It is the foundation, the food, the strength, and the anchor of the Christian life. When our hearts cool toward the gospel, it means our hearts have warmed toward ourselves.

The cure is simple and painful and beautiful. Return again to the cross. Remember again the mercy that saved you. Let the Word humble you, expose you, and revive you. A heart that sees Christ clearly will never find Him boring.

[autocorrect2.0 @autocorrect2_0]

Today I’m thankful that God sent His Son to die for me while I was unworthy. That He resurrected that I may have hope in the face of death. That I may have mercy and grace undeserved.

HE deserves all the Praise, all the Love, all the Glory for ever and ever amen

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

@WhitneyGrenaway Done

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

A man born blind.

Not sick. Born that way.

childhood spent in darkness. Parents carrying the shame. Neighbors calling him cursed. Begging at the gate for thirty years.

The disciples saw him and asked Jesus: "Who sinned? This man or his parents?"

Jesus said neither.

He said the man was born blind "that the works of God should be made manifest in him."

Thirty years of suffering.

So that one afternoon, Jesus could spit in the dirt and prove He was the Light of the world.

The man didn't get a testimony.

He got used.

And that was the privilege.

Your suffering is not your identity. Your tragedy is not your platform. Your wound is not your brand.
You are not the point of your own story.

God is.

Thursday everyone will thank God for what He gave them.

Few will thank Him for what He took.

Fewer still for what He never gave at all...

[Nothing Among You @NateWhiteside]

@SeekingAnon Nope