Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
by John Eldredge
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Book Summary Information
Author: John EldredgeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-01-03
ISBN: 0785287965
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Book Reviews of Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
Book Review: How to be a man and escape a "life of quiet desperation"
Summary: 5 Stars
Henry David Thoreau said, "Men lead lives of quiet desperation." If this was true back in the 1800s, how much more today in our soft culture? How much more in the emasculated church where we are told that the problem with men is we don't know how to keep our promises, but if we try real hard we can reach the lofty summit of becoming... real nice guys. What boy or young man ever dreamed of being a "real nice guy"? Don't get me wrong, kindness and goodness are important spiritual qualities that I live by but sometimes doing the kind or good thing is not doing the nice thing. Was Jesus being nice when he radically cleared the temple of greedy people and religionists -- throwing over money tables, cracking a whip and yelling? It may not have been the nice thing to do but it certainly was the right thing for that situation.
John Eldredge powerfully explores the subject of authentic masculinity, how to know your true identity & purpose and how to live a life of passion & adventure regardless of your age, location or temperment. This book is for you if:
- You've always had a negative vibe about the concept of "accountability partners (or groups)." Such partners/groups are based on the notion that you're really a fool just waiting to rush into folly or evil, so it's best to post a guard by you to keep you in line. We don't need moronic acountability partners like this we need gatherings of warriors.
- You instinctively know that God and Christianity are much deeper than the shallow theology of churches tainted by legalism, which usually define spirituality in terms of going to EVERY church service and not drinking a sip of alcohol, not cussing and not watching movies. The idea that this is what Christianity is all about is absurd, to say the least. Don't get me wrong here, I'm all for personal holiness, put too many Christians overemphasize these issues to "keep appearances up" at the expense of the bigger issues -- arrogance, greed, foolish lusts, envy, jealousy, rivalry, strife, slander, lies and hatred. In other words, they strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
- You have little room or patience for clueless religionists who try to convince you that the Song of Solomon is nothing more than a theological metaphor referring to Christ and his bride. (Why sure!)
- If you want to love with so much more abandon and stop waiting for others to love you first.
- If you want to hurl yourself into an energizing, creative work or battle designed specifically for you and worthy of God.
Here are some things the book effectively addresses:
- Corporate policies and procedures are designed with one aim: to harness a man to the plow and make him produce. But a man's soul refuses to be harnessed; the soul longs for passion, for freedom, for LIFE!
- You can tell what kind of man you're dealing with simply by the impact he has on you -- Does he make you bored? Does he scare you with his doctrinal nazism? Is he just so darn nice it makes you want to scream? Is he so arrogant and condescending you want to take a pin and bust his giant bubble of hot air?
- All men die but few ever really LIVE. What's the key to "really living"?
- Many men are posers putting up a facade, an elaborate fig leaf; they're just faking their way through life. Are you a poser or are you real? If you're a poser, how do you escape this "false self"? How can you become genuine (regardless of your temperment or interests)?
- How not to be a weakling who won't stand up to the boss or pastor (etc.) and offer legitimate criticism when the situation demands it.
- How not to be a weakling who hides behind the fig leaf of niceness and faux-spirituality, never confronting difficult situations (and, no, I'm not advocating foolish rashness either).
- How is masculinity imparted? It is the father who gives the blessing and 'names' the son, as detailed in Scripture. Even Jesus needed to hear words of love/affirmation from his Father, "You are my Son, whom I love and am well pleased" (i.e. "I am deeply proud of you and you have what it takes"); this is, in effect, a cosmic pat on the back.
- When a father and son spend quality time together we could say that a substance passes from the older to the younger. That substance is masculinity -- love, affirmation, knowledge, skill, confidence, correction and encouragement. But what if your father is unworthy of imparting such or isn't around for whatever reason? Thankfully, like Jesus we have the Heavenly Father; He is more than worthy and capable of imparting all these necessary "substances" for a man to be fully alive.
- If a father fails at his parental purpose and "wounds" the son -- intentionally or not -- the son will inevitably overcompensate for the wound and become driven (violent men) or shrink back and go passive (retreating men). Sometimes it's an odd mixture of both. Regardless, wounded men like this must be delivered and healed to be whole and live healthy lives (for themselves and those connected to them).
- Our prisons aren't filled with women. Columbine wasn't the work of young girls. Obviously, something has gone wrong in the masculine soul in our society, and the way we've decided to handle it is to take that dangerous nature away -- entirely. A man is a dangerous thing. So is a scalpel. It can wound or it can save your life. But you don't make it work by making it dull; you put it in the hands of a skilled doctor who knows what he's doing (i.e. the Creator).
- You know the expression "He's just a shell of a man." Men have been taken out right and left. They've lost heart. They're either living zombies or badly wounded and ineffectively crawling through life. They're captives languishing is prisons of despair, addiction, idleness or boredom. Getting their lives together under these conditions is next to impossible. They need healed, prepared and sent back out.
- Do you know why there's such an assault against you? The Enemy fears you. You are dangerous big-time. If you ever really got your true heart and lived from it with courage, you would be a huge problem to him and his kingdom. You could do a lot of damage... on the side of good.
- The failure of so many fathers, the emasculating culture, and the passive church have left men without passion or direction. If you want your wound healed and your strength returned and to find your true name (identity), you're going to have to FIGHT for it. Life's a fight -- FIGHT IT.
- Most of us have always thought that man's relationship with the Almighty is of God sitting on His throne waiting to whack you broadside when you inevitably screw up. No, it's the Mighty One calling you out of Egypt (the mire of sin and captivity), taking you on a journey and giving you your true name and thus your true mission, which includes the fight you must fight, the adventure you must live and possibly even the beauty you must "rescue." The specific fight, adventure and beauty are unique to each individual, but you'll never discover these things if you act like the Creator doesn't exist and refuse to seek Him.
- Even if your father did his job he can only take you so far. There comes a time when you have to leave all that is familiar and go into the unknown with God.
- Don't look to the world for your strength and identity. Can a world of posers help you to do anything but pose yourself?
- To escape the fig leaf of the false self you'll likely need to do the very opposite of what you've always naturally done as a poser. For instance, have you always shrunk back in wimpiness and said nothing when you should've spoken up, regardless of the consequences? It's time to be bold and make a stand. If all you've ever done was dominate a meeting because your sense of worth comes from being in charge then you need to shut up for a season.
- Everything runs on something. What good is your car without gas or your dog without chow? God designed the human machine to run on himself. He is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn.
- Although Christ was amazing, awesome and, at times, even fearsome, he lived in desperate dependence on his Father. He said that he could do nothing by himself. He even bragged aout his relationsship with his Father: "I and the Father are one."
- The central passage in the entire Bible about Jesus, the one he chose to quote about himself, is Isaiah 61:1, which plainly states that he came to bring good news, heal hearts and set free. Why not take him at his word and ask him to heal you of your wounds and ailments and set you free of whatever holds you down?
- The gospel is called the good news for a reason; it promises to give us a new spirit and a new heart, but we have a part to play if we truly want it. You can't be lazy and weak if you want to escape the false self and effectively walk in your true identity. Rise up!
- Please understand that the false self is never wholly false. Those gifts some of us have been using and leaning on are quite natural and authentic, but we've used them to hide behind.
- Christ warned against anything that gives a false sense of power. When you walk into a company dinner, church service, family function or banquet he said take a backseat. Choose the path of humility, don't be a self-promoter, self-hyper or poser. Climb down the ladder. Where are you deriving your sense of strength from is a good question to ask yourself... often.
- We need to be balanced with the descriptions of the Lord in the Scriptures. Yes, he's described as humble, gentle and loving, but He's also described as mighty, awesome and a warrior. And we're called to imitate God (!!). There's nothing wrong with being an awesome, mighty warrior as long as the battle you're fighting is the right one and your motives are right.
- Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: It means a strong desire to truly live taking the form of readiness to die.
- The whole point of spiritual devotions is connecting with God; the discipline itself is never the point. This is our primary antidote to the counterfeits the world holds out to us -- adultery, porn, gambling, drunkardness, drugs, arrogance, gangs, crime, idolatry, etc. If you do not have God and have him deeply you will naturally turn to other lovers.
- Jesus said that violent men take the Kingdom by force. In other words, if you're going to live in God's kingdom it's going to take every ounce of passion and force you've got. Things are gonna get fierce; that's why you've been given a passionate, fierce heart!
- Most men desire and seek the beauty of the maiden but some want it without any sort of cost to themselves. They want all the joys of the beauty without any of the woes of the battle. This is the sinister nature of pornography. Porn is the beauty of choice for weaklings.
- The Creator of the universe rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk, which is to say, only when we live by faith. A man just won't be fulfilled until he's got adventure in his work, in his spiritual life and in his love. Faith equals risk.
- God gave the moral law as a sort of handrail to help us back from the precipice, so to speak. Yet the goal of Christianity is the transformed heart -- we move from a child who needs the law to a man (or woman) who is able to live by the spirit of the law.
- When you are tempted by thinking that what you really need is something unholy, you should automatically ask yourself what is the desire beneath this desire? Because that's the desire that truly needs quenched.
- God is a person, not a doctrine. The realm of God is dangerous. You must enter INTO IT and not just seek information about it.
- The modern era seems to hate mystery; and the ultimate Tower of Babel is the scientific method. Yes, science has given us many awesome advances in various areas, but we've tried to use those methods to tame the wildness of the spiritual frontier, and it doesn't work, because God by his very nature is infinite. Just because something works for one person in a certain situation doesn't mean it's what we should do in our similar situations.
- God called Moses his friend; Jesus called his disciples his friends. God wants you as a friend -- He wants to talk to you, personally and frequently. One of the best places to commune with God is a solitary place somewhere in nature. Moses encountered the Living God in the wilderness of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt. The same is true of Jacob, who was a homebody; he had his wrestling match with God not on the living room floor or sofa but out in the wilderness. There's just something about nature that is conducive to God's presence, which is why men tend to make excuses to get back to nature one way or another (fishing, hunting, skiing, etc -- not that there's anything wrong with these activities, unless of course they become idols). David did it; Elijah did it; John the Baptist did it; Jesus did it; Paul did it. Do you think the Bible is telling us something here?
- One of the most important points of the book is this: Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
You're never going to agree with anyone about everything. As with all books of this nature, get the gist of it; take the good and leave the bad (or at least put it on the back burner for future consideration).
One criticism is that Eldredge too often references modern cinema, but no where does he say that true men must like films. He merely refers to numerous popular films to illustrate points because he's aware that 95% of men out there are quite familiar with these movies. For better or worse, these are our modern campfire stories and the majority are well versed in them. Actually I found it refreshing to have a spiritual teacher refuse to pretend like most of his (or her) listeners don't watch movies. He knows this isn't true and uses it to his advantage. This is a wise strategy, not a detrimental point.
Another criticism is that Eldredge only supports the macho big game hunter notion of masculinity. I've read the book multiple times and this isn't even remotely true. Eldredge doesn't teach that all men must be of the same temperment and love the outdoors or big game hunting, etc. (in fact, he makes it clear that he's not a hunter-type in the least); what he teaches is that men must seek intimacy with their Heavenly Father wherein masculinity, power and blessing will be bestowed upon them, including their true identity, not to mention healing their hearts and discovering their true purpose or objective(s).
FINAL WORD: I realize this is a ridiculously long review but I wanted to help people determine if it's worth their time and money. If many of the points above struck a chord in your heart get this book ASAP. It will have a positive life-transforming effect on you as it did me, that is, if you rise up out of your stupor, take the risk, meet your adventure and fight your battle by wisely putting the ideas into practice.
The book is a must for women too if they desire to understand the male heart and struggle.
Summary of Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
Helping men rediscover their masculine heart, this guide to understanding Christian manhood and Christian men offers a refreshing break from the chorus of voices urging men to be more responsible, reliable, dutiful? and dead. God designed men to be dangerous, says John Eldredge. Simply look at the dreams and desires written in the heart of every boy: To be a hero, to be a warrior, to live a life of adventure and risk. Sadly, most men abandon those dreams and desires-aided by a Christianity that feels like nothing more than pressure to be a "nice guy." It is no wonder that many men avoid church, and those who go are often passive and bored to death. In this provocative book, now available in trade paper, Eldredge gives women a look inside the true heart of a man and gives men permission to be what God designed them to be-dangerous, passionate, alive, and free.If Christian men are going to change from a pitiful, wimpy bunch of "really nice guys" to men who are made in the image of God, they must reexamine their preconceptions about who God is and recover their true "wild" hearts, writes bestselling author John Eldredge in Wild at Heart: Discovering a Life of Passion, Freedom, and Adventure. Eldredge throws down the gauntlet--men are bored; they fear risk, they refuse to pay attention to their deepest desires. He challenges Christian men to return to authentic masculinity without resorting to a "macho man" mentality. Men often seek validation in venues such as work, or in the conquest of women, Eldredge observes. He urges men to take time out and come to grips with the "secret longings" of their hearts. Although the book succeeds best in its slant toward a male audience, it also strives to help women understand the implications of authentic masculinity in their relationships with men. Eldredge frames the book around his outdoor experiences and appealing anecdotes about his family, sprinkling the text with touches of humor and overlying everything with heartfelt passion. Even as he mixes eclectic ideas about masculinity from popular movies such as Braveheart with classic words from Oswald Chambers, and lyrics from the Dixie Chicks with stories from the Bible, he points to only one answer for men searching for their true wildness of heart. Writes Eldredge, "The only way to live in this adventure ... with all its danger and unpredictability and immensely high stakes ... is in an ongoing, intimate relationship with God." --Cindy Crosby
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