Wild at Heart

This book, by enthusiastically-masculine church founder John Eldredge, is terrible, for so many reasons. As a pre-explanation justification for why I read it, it was at a swap shop (basically unwanted-item-bartering; the majority of items being blouses, cutlery or picture books) and I figured a book aimed at christian men was more interesting than the alternatives. So I took it, started reading it in April, hated it, got angered and depressed by it but determined myself to finish it despite it gradually driving a significant negative wedge in my active attitude to christian life, and eventually finished it, read a couple of articles from prominent pastors supporting my problems with the book (here's the best one), tore the book apart* and put it in the blue recycling box thing for waste paper.

   Eldredge's general premise is that men in modern society have become domesticated, stifled by boredom and the effeminate demands of a post-1945 world, and for christian men, this has meant we've lost touch with who God means us to be, and thus also with God. To reclaim our identity in ourselves and our faith, we need to look deeper into our manly hearts and bring forth the innate adventurous risk-loving desires of "being the hero, of beating the bad guys, of doing daring feats and rescuing the damsel in distress" (quote taken from the blurb, but the text inside reeks of just as much repressed childhood). I had a biggish problem with what he had to say about gender roles, and several other biggish-to-enormous problems with the way he wrote, argued, and handled his points through what was supposedly christian theology applied to manhood.

   To get it out of the way though, I'll state what I do agree with him on: masculinity in men is becoming less prevalent, even in christian circles, as a result of cultural and social trends.** I'm also very much supportive of his opinion that The Great Escape is a great movie.

   Now then for my quarrels with John Eldredge as regards his book's content, methods, and implications. This could run into an entire blog post of its own but this one's already relatively long for a book I disliked so I'll try to keep it brief. These can be boiled down into roughly five points of contention:

1. Unhealthy, unhelpful, unrealistic discussion of gender roles. This is to be expected in my response to pretty much any christian book's treatment of gender issues, as I still have some serious questions regarding those attitudes, but nevertheless John Eldredge's book brings them to the fore in new infuriating ways. He paints gross caricatures: ideal men as strong, unruly, brave, delighting in wilderness and beards and meat and potential violence; ideal women as pretty much not doing anything independent but being pretty and feeling really good about the fact that this ideal man is providing and caring and loving her. My sensibilities vomited as I read some of his descriptions. I'm a feminist and strong supporter of LGBT+ rights and I'm aware that much of those ideas will not be taken on board by christianity any time soon, but surely there must be some middle ground between fully liberal gender attitudes and such hopelessly primitive portraits as the men and women of John Eldredge's bleak binary imagination? Dunno. Anyway, the manhood he extols has its merits, but should by no means be allowably stamped as being central to our identities. I get the feeling that were I to meet him and honestly disclose that I have no interest in taming horses or mountain climbing or white-water-rafting, he would put down his shotgun, shove aside his steak, lay a tanned arm on my shoulder and offer to pray for what he perceived to be my struggles with homosexuality. (Hey, if he's allowed to caricature literally everyone of both genders, I'm allowed to caricature him).
2. Weak, structureless, and frequently ridiculous methods of argument, designed to garner mass-persuasion rather than reasonable conclusions. Unbecoming of a christian author and/or someone with the use of rational thought, (a) most of his points are very hazily drawn out and founded on very shaky assumptions (some of which turn out to be heresies, yippee), and (b) most of the evidence he turns to in support of these points turns out not to be scriptural or theological but cherry-picked out of an unusual selection of proverbial butts. Anecdotes about his friends, wife, children, himself, his adventures in the wilderness; lengthy explanations and quotes from action films; lengthy expositions of the lives and actions of great manly men (I  half-jestingly reckon William Wallace comes off as a stronger role model than Jesus from sheer quantity of mentions); absurd, maybe even ignorant generalisations about personal variables of sex (there's not even the slightest examination of gender psychology, probably because empiricism would destroy his premise), character, spirituality and worldview; quotes from a book he doesn't give (can't remember?) the name of and from many others he does, but with the same gravitas as Bible verses. Instead of realising a reasonable conclusion through searching scripture, philosophy, theology, etcetera, and pathing the way to it soundly referencing his research sources as support, he ploughs toward an unjustified conclusion using vague handfuls of irrelevant unreliable spewage to prop up his points. It relies on the strongly empathetic emotive content of much of his "evidence" overriding readers' propensity for realising that what they're being told is almost nonsense.
3. Distortion of biblical scripture to suit arguments. That is, when he actually uses scripture, instead of the much-more-frequently-employed tactics described above. The same article linked in the intro highlights some of the main examples. 
4. First actual heresy - strongly implies that God is less than sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient and independent. He somewhat humanises God, making him out to be (a) a lover of risk and uncertainty (which one cannot be unless there are things one doesn't know or control) and (b) at least partially dependent on human love to justify his existent character. This contradicts all solid theology on the matter. The linked article again highlights some of points where this is clear.
5. Second actual heresy - strongly implies, assumes, and argues that the human heart, other than being a dark well of sinful nature and selfishness, is something intrinsically good, to be trusted and relied upon in informing our thoughts/words/deeds/relationships, and that in better knowing and living from the depths of our own hearts we can better engage with the characteristics that God implanted in them to bring us to fulfilment. This is directly contrary to all actual theology of human nature and sin, and isn't just a mistaken casual aside-point but is the central assumption to his entire book. Again, that article highlights some of the main examples where the assumption surfaces, though very obvious threads following it run throughout.

   The first, I can intellectually forgive because I'm quite liberal in my theological approach to gender, and I realise that the gender roles he discusses are not overly dissimilar to a majority of christian opinion. This still annoys me because I think it's flawed but that's separate to deconstructing this awful book.

   The second, I absolutely cannot intellectually forgive because it shows clear signs of either laziness, stupidity or manipulative populism in thought about actually quite serious matters, especially when the conclusions he draws are so downright sketcky.

   The third, fourth and fifth, I intellectually object to and as a christian strongly object to. Misrepresenting the truth of God in ways that John Eldredge has done in this book is the sign of either (a) deliberately false preacher whose contra-orthodox theological teachings have no place in a published christian book, let alone the pulpit of a megachurch, or (b) accidentally ignorant preacher whose complete lack of understanding of basic theological concepts have no place in a published christian book, let alone the pulpit of a megachurch. John Eldredge, in promoting our independence upon knowing ourselves, has glorified the heart of man and humbled the person of God; exactly the opposite of sound christian advice. Daryl Wingerd wrote this long but excellent article (same link as before) critically analysing the book, which I strongly recommend if you've read the book and are seeking wisdom to affirm everything you may or may not have thought was wrong with it. I'm genuinely concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of the people who listen to macho-man's sermons every Sunday (given recent controversies surrounding Mark Driscoll also, something in me wonders if questionable leadership and overemphasis on manliness are correlated... probably), and moreso concerned for the upwards-of-two-million people who have contributed to this book's sales success. Such wobbly wrong messages do not deserve to be so widely disseminated. If you are a christian, I urge you not to read this book (or if you do, have loads of salt ready to sprinkle a pinch onto each page). This other book is an excellent gender-neutral alternative, full of legitimate gospel-centred biblically-grounded teaching about how to reclaim our identity in relationship with God.

   I think this is my longest post so far on this blog. Fitting, for the book I've despised most since I started blogging each one. I had a few more things to say about the responsibilities of reason and wisdom in authorship but never mind.

* A staunch bibliophile, I usually detest causing damage to books, but the sheer dungliness of this one drove me to ensure that at least my own copy could never be inflicted upon a human brain again - though over two million copies have sold worldwide, which is a bummer.

** Being objective here. He goes on to blame this for all manner of spiritually-stultifying evils, whereas I'm not at all sure it's that bad of a thing, but yeh, he nonetheless made the objective point, and I agreed with him on it.