Wild At Heart - John Eldredge

On my more jaded days I have found it difficult to sing some of the new choruses in church, especially the ones that just endlessly repeat to a rather simpering melody, ‘I love you’. And then those very soft altar calls, almost like an invitation to see a psychiatrist, with the tissues at hand. Where is my uneasiness from? No doubt my lack of spirituality…but here is another answer. It’s because I’m a bloke. And that’s what wrong with a lot of church. It’s become too feminine, no more ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, but only ‘When I look into your face’. This is relevant enough, but this book is about a lot more. As well as pointing out that men like things to be dangerous and so instinctively find church – sitting down, exposing your emotions, being ‘nice’ – difficult, it goes on to show how every boy needs in his crucial teenage years to be affirmed that he is a man by his own father. And even if that happens, which is not so often these days, there still needs to be that initiation with God the father, and then a man’s journey together, which involves false props being kicked away, a hard fight with the enemy, rescuing a ‘beauty’ and living an adventure. This was solid Christian teaching presented through this paradigm of a man’s walk with his heavenly father affirming his manliness. As such it was refreshing. I especially enjoyed this gem Eldredge has towards the end – ‘Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive