I recently read John Eldredge's
Wild at Heart. It was a surprisingly refreshing book, in terms its take on manhood and its presentation of Christianity.
The book presents man's urges for adventure and battle as something natural, something that God even intended. The author goes explains how Christianity has somewhat portrayed the ideal man as a "really nice guy", and how that somewhat emasculates men.
The book raises very interesting questions about the relationships of a warrior - to his enemy, and especially to his brothers in arm, as well as his woman (wife, girlfriend, etc). Being a Christian-themed book, it expectedly supports the idea of marriage. Yet it offers more rationale than just "because God said so", and goes on to explain how ultimately, a real man pursues
all of a woman, and offers to her his strength. The book explains how men can often just go after a woman's body, and anyone who's (...well, anyone who's really lived life much will come across women with relationships issues, break ups, and the like...), but anyone who's been around women who have particularly been abused in a physical way can see how damaging this can be. So, the book offers a lot of practical reasonings for monogamy, marriage, and relationship, as well as showing how men can get caught up in chasing women, in trying to find themselves in women, and even touches on masturbation and how men can lose themselves in sex and pornography.
One of the most interesting moments I encountered in reading the book was a passage contained in the chapter entitled
The Battle For A Man's Heart. The section "What's Really Going On Hear, Anyway?" starts off with a description of 1944 and Omaha Beach (WWII).
WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE, ANYWAY?
Let's say it's June 6, 1994, about 0710. You are a soldier in the third wave onto Omaha Beach. Thousands of men have gone before you and now it is your turn. As you jump out of the Higgins boat and wade to the beach, you see the bodies of fallen soldiers everywhere - floating in the water, tossing in the surf, lying on the beach. Moving up the sand you encounter hundreds of wounded men. Some are limping toward the bluffs with you, looking for shelter. Others are barely crawling. Snipers on the cliffs above continue to take them out. Everywhere you look, there are pain and brokenness. The damage is almost overwhelming. When you reach the cliffs, the only point of safety, you find squads of men with no leader. They are shell-shocked, stunned, and frightened. many have lost their weapons; most of them refuse to move. They are paralyzed with fear. Taking all this in, what would you conclude? What would your assessment of the situation? Whatever else went through your mind, you'd have to admit, This is one brutal war, and no one would have disagreed or thought you odd for saying so.
But we do not think so clearly about life and I'm not sure why. Have a look around you - what do you observe? What do you see in the lives of men that you work with, live by, go to church alongside? Are they full of passionate freedom? Do they fight well? Are their women deeply grateful for how their men have loved them? Are their children radiant with affirmation? The idea is almost laughable, if it weren't so tragic. Men have been taken out right and left. Scattered across the neighborhood lie the shattered lives of men (and women) who have died at a soul level from the wounds they've taken. You've heard the expression, "he's a shell of a man?" They have lost heart. Many more are alive, but badly wounded. They are trying to crawl forward, but are having an awful time getting their lives together; they seem to keep taking hits. You know others who are already captives, languishing in prisons of despair, addiction, idleness, or boredom. The place looks like a battlefield, the Omaha Beach of the soul.
And that is precisely what it is. We are now in the late stages of the long and vicious war against the human heart. I know -- it sounds overly dramatic. I almost didn't use the term "war" at all, for fear of being dismissed at this point as one more in the group of "Chicken Littles," Christians who run around trying to get everybody worked up over some imaginary fear in order to advance their political or economic or theological cause. But I am not hawking fear at all; I am speaking honestly about the nature of what is unfolding around us ... against us. And until we call the situation what it is, we will not know what to do about it. . . .
(to be continued)
