I’m starting up my blog again with. I know what you’re thinking,

“Here’s the return of the blog that nobody asked for.” 

True as that may be, I’m back. Deal with it.

I’m even starting up a new feature! Man-Up Monday. Wherein on Mondays I’ll share with you man knowledge. Some of it will come from my own brain, some of it will come from elsewhere, and some will come from guest contributors (any takers?) For that minority that wasn’t thinking the above statement allow me to introduce my first topic for Man-Up Monday . . .
Making a budget

Few things are more boring than making a budget. Not that that’s out of the way let me continue by saying few things are more rewarding than making a budget. Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of making a budget.

Pros

• You’ll always know how much money you have
• You’ll always know where you money is being spent
• You can adjust your spending habits to save more or less money
• You never have to feel guilty about spending as long as you stay in the budget.

Cons

• You’ll have more money than you know what to do with. 

As you can tell from the above list I really like using a budget. So let’s get started. 

Getting Started

Without a doubt the best way to make and keep to a budget is using Microsoft Excel or a comparable program. You can do a budget without a computer (who are you and how are you reading this blog?) but it is much easier with one. Excel is by far and away the best program. But there is freeware from Open Office that will do just fine. Before we make the sheet there are a couple of questions you need to figure out. Here are a few,

How much do I make in a month? (I do my budget by month but you can do yours by week.)

What do I want to save for?

What are things I have to pay? (Things like rent, food, and car insurance)

How much do I pay for the things I have to pay for?

Have you figured out the answers? No? Too bad we’re moving on any ways. 

Design

Sorry about the quality :(

Here’s a shot of how I set up my budget.

You’ll see that I’ve itemized every expense (blue arrow).

Itemize? That mean’s I’ve specifically noted every expense and subtracted it from what I make every month. By the way, you don’t need to know how poor I really am so I made up the numbers. But I assure you I don’t clear 60K per year.

Also, you’ll notice that I have tabs on the bottom (Pictured above, black arrow). These tabs further itemize all my expenses. Let’s take a closer look at the “food” tab.

I'll try for better pics on the next post. But you get the idea.

You see that on the left I’ve included the date (blue arrow), the place I spent the money (black arrow), and how much I spend (yellow arrow). You’ll also notice that the number on the right keeps going down. The reason it’s going down is because Excel is automatically subtracting based on a formula I put in.

Pretty cool, right?

At this point you’re asking, “how can I make an awesome budget like this?” I’m not gonna tell you this week.

Come back next week and I’ll get into the nitty gritty of making your own budget.

It’s good to be back . . .

Did you like this post? Did you hate this post? Just let me know your weren’t completely indifferent! Email your comments here.

Today we open up our three part series about the God’s personality “flaws.” At Fully Man we believe that God is perfect. God doesn't really have personality flaws. What we are going to talk about are the most unpopular of God’s characteristics. They are unpopular, I think because they are misunderstood. In the coming weeks we’ll discuss God’s Wrath, God’s Judgment, and God’s Holiness. As we work our way through these attributes we’ll see that they are different but related.

The wrath of God is very unpopular and hard to even think about. What is God’s wrath? Generally speaking in the Bible God’s wrath is vengeance or punishment as the result of His righteous anger. This aspect is hard think about because we like to think that a loving God doesn’t get angry or punish. Also, if God is infinitely loving and infinitely mercifully why does he get angry in the first place? The answer is that a God without wrath is a God without love.

Important Note: Occasionally you will see references to Scriptures throughout this blog. If you hover over the link the scripture text will pop up in a small window. Please read the scriptures. They are very important to understanding God and His attributes.

Anger Management

There are two things we need to understand about God’s wrath, anger and punishment. God gets angry. There are several places in the scripture that backs this up (Deut. 9:20, Ex. 32:9-11, Rom. 1:18, an many more) In the bible there are a variety of things that make God angry, worshiping false gods (Ex. 20:3), defying his created order (Eph. 5:6), and disobeying his commands (Gen 3:17-18.) There are, I’m sure others, but these are the most ordinary. They have a common denominator and that is they all assume we can do better than by following God. God, being our creator knows what is best for us (Matt. 6:31-33) so naturally God gets angry when we try to deviate from His will. Some think that this makes God sound like an omnipotent baby. He seemingly says, “You’re not doing what I want, I’ll show you!” But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Tim Keller often says that, “the opposite of love isn’t anger it’s indifference.” For example, a father gets angery with his son when the son disrespects his wife. The father is angry. Not because he hates the child but with the child’s sinful behavior is leading him towards wrong. What would become of the child if the father did nothing when he misbehaved? It is precisely because God loves us that he gets angry with our sinful behavior. Next comes the punishment.

Punishing us is one of the primary ways that God show his love (Heb. 12:7-11). That sounds strange doesn’t it? I’ll go one step further and say that if God doesn’t punish us then he doesn’t love us. Think about it, why did your parents punish you? So that you would eventually be good! This is a simplistic example but I think that it is correct. God punishes us so that we can realize our errors and turn back to following Him. Ultimately God’s wrath is for our good. But God wrath isn’t good for everyone.

In church we love to sing songs about how great it is going to be when we eventually meet God after our death. And, for the Christian, it will be great to meet God. But for the non-Christian meeting God isn’t going to be all that great. God pours His wrath out on those who disobey his will (Ex. 22:21-24, Rev. 6:15-17). If God wasn’t wrathful we could all look forward to an eternity in heaven with Josef Stalin, Charles Manson, and Adolf Hitler. Is it loving to give everyone entrance to heaven even if they disobey God’s will? The answer is no.

God’s Wrath and the Man of God

A question that we are fond of asking on Fully Man is what can this teach us as men? As it turns out, a lot! We can see that God loves us when he punishes us. He only punishes us because he wants us to be more like him. The practical advice is that when you feel like life is tough man up and ask yourself, “what is God trying to teach me?” The other, less obvious, application is that it is okay to be angry. Just like when we talked about zeal, anger can be a good or a bad thing. Men show their anger more frequently than women. I think the reason is because God created us to be leaders (more on that in a later post). So we naturally need to get angry but only in the righteous sense. That means, we only get angry when others offend God not when they offend us. Finally, it’s a good thing that God punishes evil. So when people ask you, “why would a good God send people to Hell?” You can explain to them that if He didn’t He wouldn’t be good because he wouldn’t be punishing evil.

Part 1 down only 2 to go! I hope you enjoyed this post, I know I enjoyed writing it. If you have questions or comments leave them below. Or send them here.

Captain America was, for me, the best movie experience of the summer. Granted it’s the only movie I’ve seen this summer so I suppose that assessment is a bit unfair. But in seriousness, this was a great movie! Not only is this one of the best superhero movies that I’ve seen but it has some great things to say about being a man. So, without further ado, let’s jump into the movie review. 

I didn’t say this with True Grit since that movie was old and but this one is new so consider yourself SPOILER WARNED.

This movie revolves around the WWII adventures of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) a.k.a. Captain America. Rogers starts out as a scrawny and sickly lad that wants nothing more than to fight for his country like his best friend James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan) Unfortunately, Rogers keeps getting denied admission to the army due to his health but he is given a special opportunity by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci). After proving his mettle Steve is pumped full of special juice and electricity. Rogers then emerges as, you guessed it, Captain America. After some initial hesitation on the part of Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) Cap is put into action after he, almost singlehandedly, liberates some POWs.

Cap and his team then go to work dismantling the criminal empire of the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). After unearthing Red Skull’s evil plan to destroy New York Cap and Red have a huge, and awesome to watch, fight on the bridge of his ship. In order to save New York Cap crash lands Red Skull’s plane in the Arctic. Cap is then unfrozen and wakes up 70 years in the future setting us up for next summer’s Avengers.

This crystal Rubix Cube took
forever to figure out!

This movie was well directed and well acted. It’s not a great piece of cinema but it is a great summer movie. It has comedy, romance, and action. More importantly, it has all of them in the right measure. Special props go to my man Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith!) who is just having a BLAST playing Red Skull. His character is always menacing and never goofy (a tough job for a comic book movie.) Kudos also goes to Tommy Lee Jones for infusing Col. Phillips with just the right amount of comedy and seriousness.

I only have two minor complaints about this movie. The first is the opening scene that shows Cap being unearthed in the present before jumping immediately to 1943. This opening robs Cap’s heroic sacrifice in the finale of some of its drama because we know that he is going to be okay. Secondly, Cap gets a team about half way through the movie. It makes sense that Cap would need a team but we’re never shown that Cap REALLY needs at team. All the movie’s big action sequences are Cap versus a million bad guys.

These are, however, minor complaints. This movie is totally worth your 10 bucks and it has a lot of great things to teach us as men.

Does this movie “Man Up?”

Unlike Rooster Cogburn, Captain America isn’t a complex character with flaws and virtues alike. No, Cap is all virtue. What was particularly good about the message in this movie was that Rogers is chosen to become Captain America because of his determination, bravery, and willingness to always do what’s right. Rogers does this despite the fact that he was being pitted against a platoon of men who were big, strong, and good looking. Dr. Erskine explains to Rogers that his heroism is in his character not his powers. Red Skull, like Cap, was given Erskine’s formula but it was his blind ambition and thirst for power that turned him into a super villain, not his new found strength.

So the important lesson we learn is that what makes a great hero is character not superpowers. This is true for us today as men. Our society puts a premium on being the strongest, the fastest, and the best looking. But the men we admire are the ones of character. Take the example of Saul and David. Saul was chosen as king of Israel because he was the best looking (1 Sam. 9:2, 1 Sam. 9:15-16). However, he thoroughly lacked in character (1 Sam. 15:10-11). David, on the other hand, was small and came from a poor family (1 Sam. 16:7). But there was no one in Israel with more character. When the time came to show his character David bravely faced Goliath (1 Sam. 17:24, 31-37, 48-50) while those around him trembled. In the same way Rogers unflinchingly dives on what he thinks is a live grenade while those around him run.


Here’s what it boils down to men, men of character will always be the heroes when things get tough. Cap crash’s a jet to save New York in the finale. We also see character in Jesus’ example. He was God and could have saved his own bacon anytime he wanted to (Matt. 26:53-54). But Jesus was a man of Godly character. Instead, he sacrificed himself to save humanity from sin.

Rating