on discipline

The following is from this week's It's Good to Be a Man newsletter:

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People look for the shortcut. The hack. And if you came here looking for that: you won’t find it. The shortcut is a lie. The hack doesn’t get you there. And if you want to take the easy road, it won’t take you to where you want to be: Stronger. Smarter. Faster. Healthier. Better. Free. To reach goals and overcome obstacles and become the best version of you possible will not happen by itself. It will not happen cutting corners, taking shortcuts, or looking for the easy way. There is no easy way. There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline.

Discipline. There must be discipline. Discipline: the root of all good qualities. The driver of daily execution. The core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses. Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say: not today, not now, I need a rest, I will do it tomorrow.

What’s the hack? How do you become stronger, smarter, faster, healthier? How do you become better? How do you achieve true freedom? There is only one way. The way of discipline. —Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Expanded Edition

Our friend Bill Smith shares the following reflections on the freedom of discipline, prompted by this counsel from Willink…

This counsel may be something of the wisdom of the sons of the east and Egypt (1 Ki 4:30). I don’t know the status of Jocko’s relationship with Christ, but much of what he says here lines up with the picture of the life of discipline that Solomon paints for us in Proverbs.

Discipline is a major thread in Proverbs that begins in the introduction and is then woven into the warp and woof of all of the instruction. Solomon desires his son “to know wisdom and discipline … to receive discipline in wise dealing” (1:2, 3). The fool, he says, despises wisdom and discipline (1:7). Our translations render this Hebrew word “instruction” throughout Proverbs with a few exceptions. That is a fine translation, but in many of our ears, “instruction” connotes more of the conveyance of information. The Hebrew word speaks of a “chastening lesson.” This is instruction, but it is not limited to oral teaching. It comes through the rod applied by authorities, general pain, mental toughness that is determined to do one thing and not another. “Discipline” is an alternative and better rendering, I believe.

Discipline is training that aims to produce a specific character that will cause you to fulfill your purpose and enjoy rewards. Discipline subdues, corrects, and directs passions toward long-term goals, willing to endure pain and short-term deprivation when necessary. Discipline is the way of wisdom. Discipline is wisdom’s path. Discipline is the guardrails that keep you in the way and the signposts that give you direction. Discipline is the drive that keeps you on the path, developing skills and doing the temporarily unpleasant things because of the long-term reward. Discipline encourages you when you are weary. Discipline rebukes you when you try to turn to the right or to the left or simply lie down. Discipline moves you when you are unmotivated; that is, when you’re just not feeling like doing whatever it is you need to do. Discipline is tough-minded, overcoming pain, fear, sloth, apathy, criticism, hurt feelings, disagreements, and wanting to give up. Discipline is wisdom’s eyes that keep you focused on the prize, wisdom’s hand that guides you, wisdom’s foot that kicks you when you need it, and wisdom’s heart that moves by your deepest desires.

Solomon exhorts his son repeatedly to hear and heed the discipline he receives, conforming his life to the wise corrections of his attitudes and actions (Pr 1:8–9; 3:11–12; 4:1; 8:10–11, 33; 19:20; 23:23). He desires this because the way of discipline is the way of life (Pr 6:23–24), the way of knowledge (Pr 12:1), and the way to honor (Pr 13:18). Discipline is the way to be all that God created him to be and receive all that God desires him to receive.

Discipline, therefore, is freedom.

Many misconstrue the nature of freedom, believing it is a life without restraints. This can’t be true. A man is not free to be a woman or vice versa. A horse is not free to live underwater, and a fish is not free to live on land. Freedom is the opportunity to live in the fullness of your God-given limitations. Freedom is the ability to maximize your potential within the boundaries God created, whether those are physical boundaries or boundaries of authority. Discipline frees you from things that keep you from being and receiving all that God wants you to be and receive.

Those who believe freedom is living life without restraints will lose their freedom. Proverbs 12:24 says, “The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” Discipline keeps you from being enslaved by desires and impulses that others can use to control you. Mark Horne observes in his book Solomon Says, “If you don’t govern yourself, you will be governed by others, and your own impulses will be the reins they use to lead you.” (p. 5) If you can’t discipline your desire for possessions, for instance, marketers will soon make you poor. They will use your desires to empty your bank account. If you can’t master your sexual appetites, someone who promises to meet your sexual hunger will master you. If you are unable to control your appetite for food and drink, you will be a poor man (Pr 21:17). A man given to anger is enslaved to other people and circumstances.

Discipline frees you by keeping all of your passions as servants, and directing their energy to serve your greatest good. This is the discipline that can deny oneself immediate pleasure or, at least, the desire to escape from pain, to face persecution and death for the cause of Christ. Discipline frees you to suffer and die with Christ so that you might inherit glory with him (cf. Rom 8:18). A lack of discipline will put you in bondage to fear of present pain and loss, that will keep you in bondage now and lead you to eternal death.

Do not despise discipline. Discipline is freedom.

books read: 2021

this year I read 107 books, which is in fourth-to-last place in terms of most books read since I've started doing a yearly Reading Queue. Just behind 2021 is 2018 (106 books), 2016 (102 books), and 2015 (a measly 57 books). I doubt I'll ever break 2019's record of a whopping 237 books.

~   Religion and History   ~

RELIGION

  The New Testament in its World (N.T. Wright & Michael F. Bird, 2019)

  Masculine Christianity (Zachary M. Garris, 2020)

  Revelation: Four Views (Steve Gregg, 1997)

  When the Man Comes Around (Douglas Wilson, 2019)

  Dark Agenda (David Horowitz, 2021)

  The Spine of Scripture (Bnonn Tennant, 2019)

  It's Good to be a Man (Michael Foster & Tennant, 2021)

  The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates (Michael Trewhella, 2014)

  Notes on Leviticus (Michael Heiser, 2021)

  Notes on the Book of Acts (Heiser, 2021)

  The Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book One (John Calvin)

  Romans (Calvin)

  Infant Baptism (Sean McGowan, 2020)

  Baptism: A Biblical Study (Jack Cottrell, 1990)

  Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up? (David Bercot, 1989)

  The Fitness Mindset (Brian Keane, 2017)

  The Unseen Realm

    The Unseen Realm (Heiser, 2019)

    Demons (Heiser, 2020)

    Slaying Dragons (Daniel Kolenda, 2020)

    Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Derek and Sharon Gilbert, 2021)

    Last Clash of the Titans (Derek Gilbert, 2018)

    Bad Moon Rising (Gilbert, 2019)

    The Omega Conspiracy (I.D.E. Thomas, 2007)

HISTORY

  American History in Black and White (David Barton, 2017)

  The New World (Winston Churchill, 2013)

  Hannibal (Patrick N. Hunt, 2018)

  The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (Daisy Dunn, 2019)

  Crusaders (Dan Jones, 2019)

  The Discarded Image (C.S. Lewis, 2020)

  A Short History of Europe (Simon Jenkins, 2019)

  A Journey to the New World (Kathryn Lasky, 1996)

  The Napoleonic Wars (Gunther Rothenburg, 1999)

  The Somme (Martin Gilbert, 2007)

  Pacific Air (David Sears, 2011)

  Landing in Hell: Pelileu (Peter Maragritis, 2018)

  I Marched with Patton (Frank Sisson, 2020)

  Every Man a Hero: A Memoir of D-Day (Ray Lambert, 2020)

  Supernova in the East (Dan Carlin, 2020)

~  Fiction and Literature  ~

HISTORICAL FICTION

  Historical Fiction of the Ancient and Medieval World

    The Odyssey (Gareth Hinds, 2010)

    Gates of Fire: The Battle of Thermopylae (Steven Pressfield, 1998)

    Tides of War: The Tale of Alcibiades (Pressfield, 2001)

    The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (Pressfield, 2004)

    Samurai Rising (Pamela S. Turner and Hinds, 2016)

 Historical Fiction of the Napoleonic Era, continued...

    The Nutmeg of Consolation, 1813 (Patrick O'Brian, 1991)
    The Truelove, 1813 (O'Brian, 1992)
    The Wine-Dark Sea, 1813 (O'Brian, 1993)
    The Commodore, 1813 (O'Brian, 1995)

    The Yellow Admiral, 1814 (O'Brian, 1996)

    The Hundred Days, 1815 (O'Brian, 1999)

    Sharpe's Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 1815 (Bernard Cornwell, 1990)
    Blue at the Mizzen, 1816 (O'Brian, 1999)

    Sharpe's Devil: Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820-1821 (Cornwell, 1992)

  Historical Fiction of the Second World War

    To Wake the Giant: A Novel of Pearl Harbor (Jeff Shaara, 2020)

    Pacific Glory (P.T. Deutermann, 2011)

    The Silver Waterfall: The Battle of Midway (Kevin Miller, 2020)

    The Nugget (Deutermann, 2019)

    Sentinels of Fire (Deutermann, 2013)

    The Commodore (Deutermann, 2016)

    Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961)

    Devastation Road (Jason Hewitt, 2015)

    The Good Shepherd (C.S. Forester, 2018)

    Run Silent, Run Deep (Edward Beach, 1956)

  Historical Fiction of the Vietnam War

    The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien, 2009)

    Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes, 2009)

    The 13th Valley (John Del Vacchio, 1982)

A PANOPLY OF FICTION

  We Are Unprepared (Meg Little Reilly, 2016)

  The Street Lawyer (John Grisham, 1998)

  Onslaught (David Poyer, 2016)

  Red Phoenix (Larry Bond, 1989)

  Liberty's Last Stand (Stephen Coonts, 2016)

  Crescent Dawn (Clive Cussler, 2010)

  Roadwork (Stephen King, 1974)

  Insomnia (King, 1994)

  Wizard and Glass (King, 2016)

  Night Shift (King, 1978)

  Science Fiction

    Persepolis Rising (James S.A. Corey, 2017)

    Tiamat's Wrath (Corey, 2018)

    Starfish (Peter Watts, 2000)

    Old Man's War (John Scalzi, 2005)

    Footfall (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1985)

    Engineering Infinity (The Infinity Project, 2011)

    Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero (Sean Chen and Travis Beacham, 2013)

  Fantasy

    Before They Are Hanged (Joe Abercrombie, 2007)

    The Last Argument of Kings (Abercrombie, 2008)

    The Mad Lancers (Brian McClellan, 2020)

    The Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan, 2016)

    Blood of Elves (Andrzej Sapkowski, 2009)

    World War Z (Max Brooks, 2006)

    Half a War (Abercrombie, 2015)

    Kings of the Wyld (Nicholas Eames, 2017)

    The Shadow of What Was Lost (James Islington, 2014)

    The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter, 2019)

    The Grey Bastards (Jonathan French, 1918)

    The Bone Ships (R.J. Barker, 2019)

    Star Wars Legends, continued...

      From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (Del Ray, 2020)

      X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar (Aaron Allston, 1999)

      The New Rebellion (Kristine Rusch, 1997)

  American Westerns

    All The Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy, 1992)

    Death Without Company (Craig Johnson, 2007)

    Kindness Goes Unpunished (Johnson, 2008)

    Spirit of Steamboat (Johnson, 2013)

    Wild Justice (Loren D. Estleman, 2018)

    Boone's Lick (Larry McMurtry, 2001)

    The Revenant (Michael Punke, 2002)

    A Good Day for a Massacre (William & J.A. Johnstone, 2020)

    Springfield 1880 (Johnstone, 2018)

    The Chuckwagon Trail (Johnstone, 2017)

the month in snapshots

 

Dino of the Week: Saltriovenator

Type Species: Saltriovenator zanellai

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia – Theropoda - Ceratosauria

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: Italy

Diet: Carnivore

The twenty-five-foot long and one-ton Saltriovenator was the megapredator of the Early Jurassic. Its remains were discovered in modern Italy (what would’ve been southern Laurasia) in what would’ve been a watery grave. The specimen had died and been washed out to sea (or in a bay) where it was scavenged by marine organisms. At least thirty bore marks on the bones come from a variety of marine invertebrates, and its remains were entombed with a single tooth and jaw fragment from a bony fish. Saltriovenator has the unlucky distinction of being the first dinosaur discovered to have been gnawed upon by marine animals. 

The find gets even more intriguing: Saltriovenator was a large, bipedal carnivore similar to the much later Jurassic predator Ceratosaurus, and it’s classified as the oldest known ceratosaur. It was much stockier and larger than other Early Jurassic theropods, and other theropods of its size wouldn’t crop up in the fossil record until another 25 million years later. Saltriovenator’s large size took place in tandem with the emergence and gradual enlargement of sauropod herbivores, suggesting a prehistoric ‘arms race’ between predator and prey. As Dr. Simone Maganuco writes, “The evolutionary ‘arms race’ between stockier predatory and giant herbivorous dinosaurs, involving progressively larger species, [began] 200 million years ago” – more than twenty million years earlier than scientists had previously believed. 

Dino of the Week: Barapasaurus

Type Species: Barapasaurus tagorei

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Cetiosauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: India

Diet: Herbivore

The Early Jurassic sauropod Barapasaurus is one of the few dinosaurs that have been discovered on the Indian subcontinent. It lived during the Sinemurian and Pliensbachian stages of the Early Jurassic (199-182 million years ago). Over 300 Barapasaurus fossils were discovered in the Godavari Valley of south central Indian in 1961. The remains included no skulls or feet, but it was determined that the remains belonged to at least six individuals. The fossils were found among large tree trunks scattered over an area of over 250 square meters. Paleontologists speculate this assemblage was due to a catastrophic flood, in which the herd of these early sauropods in a conifer forest were swept away – along with the trunks of their foodstuffs – and deposited a distance away. As they began to decompose, the bones began to disarticulate, and the disarticulated skull bones were removed by the residual water streams because they were light. 

Barapasaurus was an early sauropod, and it exemplified many of the derived sauropod traits. An adult reached about sixty-six feet from head-to-tail, and it had the elongated neck and tail of the sauropods. It had a short trunk and columnar limbs. Its vertebrae show signs of transitioning to the type seen in more derived sauropods: though Barapasaurus had rudimentary weight-saving scoops or hollows common in sauropods, they were less prevalent than those found in later sauropods. Only three whole teeth and three crowns have been discovered. The largest known tooth is 5.8 centimeters in height. Its teeth were spoon-shaped and show wrinkled enamel, as is the case with derived sauropods. Barapasaurus was likely slow and plodding, feeding for many hours a day. It stripped vegetation and swallowed its food without chewing, allowing gastroliths in the gut to break down the food for processing. 

Dino of the Week: Kotasaurus

Type Species: Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia – Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Eusauropoda

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: India

Diet: Herbivore

The thirty-foot-long and 2.5-ton Kotasaurus was one of the earliest known sauropods. It shared its habitat with another sauropod, Barapasaurus. The fossilized remains of twelve individuals – lacking, unfortunately, their skulls (though two teeth have been recovered!) – were discovered in India. The remains were jumbled together in what had been a Jurassic riverbed, and scientists speculate that the herd drowned in a flash flood and was washed to a bend in the river where they were deposited en masse. Only the heaviest bones remained to be fossilized, for after the floodwaters receded, their carcasses would’ve been set upon by scavengers. The absence of skulls isn’t surprising, since skulls are very loosely connected to the spine and thus easily wrenched free and taken to other locations for eating. Kotasaurus had a heavy body, a long neck and tail, columnar limbs, spoon-shaped teeth, and a horizontal posture.  

Dino of the Week: Lufengosaurus

Type Species: Lufengosaurus young

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore

Lufengosaurus lived in China during the Early Jurassic around 190 million years ago. It’s similar to its contemporary Yunnanosaurus: both were prosauropods that reached to about twenty-three feet in length and half a ton in weight (though some more recent estimates have put Lufengosaurus at up to thirty feet long); both had small heads with long necks and tails, tubby torsos, and both were quadrupedal; both had deep and broad snouts; both had shorter forelimbs than hind-limbs (though Lufengosaurus’ were slightly shorter relative to the hind-limbs); and both were named only one year apart by the same paleontologist. These coincidences prompted theories that Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus were the same dinosaur with intraspecies variation. This would mean that Yunnanosaurus was actually a variant species of Lufengosaurus, since Lufengosaurus was named first, in 1941. Others have built upon this theory and added a twist: both Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus may have been different species of the earlier Massospondylus. Thus all three would be species of Massospondylus, and paleontological textbooks would need to be rewritten. These theories have fallen out of vogue, however, due to the fact that Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus differ wildly when it comes to their teeth. Whereas Yunnanosaurus teeth were narrow and spoon-shaped (like those of sauropods), Lufengosaurus retained the widely-spaced, leaf-shaped teeth common to early sauropodomorphs. 

Lufengosaurus was herbivorous, though – like all prosauropods – it had sharp claws, especially on its thumbs, and sharp, serrated teeth. This has led some to speculate that Lufengosaurus – along with its prosauropod kin – was omnivorous. However, modern herbivorous iguanas have sharp teeth and claws, and they don’t eat meat. The strongest theory is that Lufengosaurus was herbivorous, using its sharp claws for defense or for raking foliage from trees. This prosauropod has made headlines at least twice after its discovery. First, its fossilized embryos have been discovered, and they represent the earliest evidence of vertebrate soft tissue preservation. Second, in 2017 scientists discovered 195-million-year-old collagen protein (used in connective tissues) in the fossilized rib bone of a Lufengosaurus.