We Need More Men

Posted on Thursday, September 29, 2011

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I just finished reading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge about ten years after everyone else.   He writes:  When a man’s life becomes an adventure, the whole thing takes on a transcendent purpose when he releases control in exchange for the recovery of the dreams in his heart. Sometimes those dreams are buried deep and it takes some unearthing to get to them.  We must pay attention to our desire.  Often the clues are in our past, in those moments when we found ourselves loving what we were doing.  The details and circumstances change as we grow, but the themes remain the same.

Preach it John.

Many of the men that sit across my desk are….well, bored.  Their life is a series of predictable events.   They trudge through their weeks.  Coffee, poop, shower, shave, breakfast, kids, drive, work, telephone, coffee, work, lunch, coffee, work, time wasting, work, drive, soccer, exercise, eat, television, book, sex…….repeat five times and then on the weekend mix in golf and church and beer.  All of a sudden our hair is gray, our tummy has expanded and we are living with a bunch of strangers in our house. 

We are a stranger to ourselves too.

We long for high school or college and we try to relive it through our kids or tailgating on the weekends.  We need affairs, hunting, pornography, golf and television to escape the cacoon of safety we have created in our little brick houses, on a hillside, filled with stuff that gets old.  We have a hardwired fascination and yearning and curiosity so we get stuff to repress that craving or we engage in destructive behavior to create toxic adventure.

If this is your man- he is dying.  A man needs adventure.  He needs deep connection in community.  He needs God.  He needs to get dirty- to be wild.  He has developed a mask or a false self that appears to be reality but is actually a defense mechanism to cover up all those little hurts when deprived of love as a child.  Maybe that defense is addiction or work or simply relying on his God-given-giftedness.  All of the above is bad- life sucking.

Men must answer the call to resolve ourselves to become a warrior with a cause bigger than ourselves.  Remember the reverse logic of the gospel- give up this life to gain real life.  Eldredge writes"  The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death.  All men die; few men ever really live.  Sure, you can create a safe life (or lie) for yourself....and end your days in a rest home babbling (with one leg) about some forgotten misfortune.  I'd rather go down swinging.  Besides, the less we are trying to "save ourselves,” the more effective a warrior we will be." 

We must seek our life "in a spirit of furious indifference to it; (we) must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine."

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