Redefining What It Means to Be a "Godly Man
- STEVEN WALDERMAN
God wants men to be courageous and fierce, says John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart. The bestselling book sees the men's movement through a Christian lens, urging men to overcome the stereotype of Jesus as a "bearded Mr. Rogers." Beliefnet's Editor in Chief spoke with Eldredge about how men can reclaim passion and adventure as part of their faith.
SW:
You write that Christianity as it currently exists has done some "terrible things"
to men. What do you mean by that?
JE:
Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on
this earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. Thats soul
killing! Its not true, and for a man to hear the message that the greatest achievement
of his life is simply not rocking the boat, not offending anyone, not taking any
risks but just being a genuinely swell guy that kills him.
His
nature is made for something much more dramatic. Heres how you can tell: look
at the games boys play or the films men love. Boys want risk, adventure, danger,
exploration. Why do men love maps? Women dont love maps.
Look at the
films men love, whether it's Chariots of Fire, Schindler's List, The Shawshank
Redemption, the Die Hard films, Indiana Jones, or James Bond. They
all involve a challenge, a great battle, something to be won, some deep hardship
to be faced and overcome. Thats the soul of a man. To tell him that youre really
not made for that, that what God really wants is for you to be an altar boy, kills
a man. It takes all the passion out of life.
SW:
Related to that, you argue that Christians misunderstand Christ.
JE: Good
grief, look at the images weve been given of Jesus Christ, particularly from
our Sunday school years. The pictures of Jesus we were given in fact, the
only pictures I have ever seen of Jesus in any church are 'gentle Jesus,
meek and mild.' Hes got a lamb on his shoulders. Or hes sitting in a field with
children on his knees, looking for all the world like Mr. Rogers with a beard!
Hes the sweetest guy you could possibly meet. And men cant relate to that, frankly.
You look at that guy and you say, "Hes a weenie!" This is not a man
I would follow on the beaches of Normandy. This is not a man who would lead me
in a protest against apartheid. This is not a man who would teach me how to romance
a woman. I mean this guy can't even drive a car, I bet.
So weve really
misunderstood who Christ is. Weve emasculated Christ and weve emasculated men
in the church.
It's a very inaccurate reading of Jesus. Hes called
the Lion of Judah, for heavens sake. When he comes back, the scriptures describe
him as riding a white horse with his robe dipped in blood! He is not sweet. Hes
loving, but he is also fierce and immensely brave. I think hes a whole lot more
like Braveheart William Wallace than Mr. Rogers.
SW: Whats been the reaction to that message as youve talked to Christian audiences?
JE:
A wild fire. Men are just desperate to hear a message of freedom, passion,
validation. Even better, women are writing and calling, saying, "I dont know
what you did to my husband, but Ill take him and you can keep the other one."
The modern man has this dilemma between striving for his passion and
being with his family. They're not always incompatible, but sometimes they are.
You write that sometimes a man has do it, even it means less time with his family.
I understand the tension because I live it myself. Im married. I have
three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs
trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for
them. They need a man alive. A dead man does them no good. A man who is bored,
depressed, in resignation about life if that man spends 40 hours with his
family each week, hes doing them no good. Before you can love well, and offer
them passion and aliveness, you have to go get that.
Dont ask yourself
what the world needs. Ask yourself, "What makes me come alive?" Because what the
world a wife, a child needs is men who have come alive.
Yes, there are times when I have to sacrifice my desires on their behalf. Ultimately,
where this message comes out is, God made men in the image of his strength. Not
just big muscles I mean soulful strength, courage, daring, and a fierceness.
It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in
the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats
of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of
others. Ultimately, Im not encouraging selfishness. I'm saying, go get your heart
back so you can offer it to those you love.
SW: My
favorite anecdote involves your son rock climbing. Could you tell us about that?
JE: I was
rock climbing with my three sons, Sam, Blaine and Luke. They love to climb. Theyre
going to climb anything anyway the fence, the refrigerator, the neighbors.
So we sanctify it and do it up right with ropes at some rocks near our house.
Sam is a typical first born, somewhat cautious, hesitant and fearful. He was climbing
up the rock. Hes perfectly safe; he couldnt fall more than four inches because
of the rope. But when you get up there you feel the height and its a little hairy.
He hits this one spot where he gets scared. "I think I ought to back
down. I said, "If you want to come back down, come on down." He was beginning
to get teary. I said, "Theres no pressure. Youve got nothing to prove. Let's
try something else."
He says, No, I want to do this.
You
know that shop talk sometimes men do with sons? "Hey, great move!" I was doing
that, and said, Hey, you are a wild man!
He makes it to the top. Maybe
15 minutes later he sort of sidles up to me and says, "Dad, did you really think
I was a wild man up there?"
That is the question that every boy is asking,
in some way, of his father. The boy wants to know, "Am I real man? Do I have what
it takes?"
Every man needs a battle to fight, an adventure to live and
a beauty to rescue.
SW: A lot of the book's
examples of adventure involve conquering physical obstacles in the wild. Do you
think it's important to have a physical element?
JE:
I do. Especially for boys and growing up to be men. For the most part, boys are
very physical. Its not enough for them to be told they have what it takes and
they have greatness. They have to discover for themselves. We learn by doing.
The doing has to be somewhat physical.
I dont believe the physical
adventures are the most difficult. Try intimacy if you want to get scary. The
greater adventures are walking with God. In the scriptures, every time God gets
hold of a man, he takes him into an adventure. He calls Abraham to lead a culture,
leave his job and home to go with a God hes just recently met. The spiritual
adventures are the most risky because the stakes are the highest.
SW:
Here I am sitting in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by Starbucks, with no
mountains to climb. Whats the message for us city slickers who are not going
to get to the woods any time soon?
JE:
You have adventures daily. Getting to your car late at night happens to
be one, getting a seat on the metro might be another. The important thing is that
when a man chooses a life of safety, something inside him dies. Unfortunately,
most men want to create an entire world around them where everything is predictable
and everything is under their control. I think adventure is waiting us wherever
we turn. It may be starting a new career. It may be the joining a fellowship of
men and developing male friendships. It might be the adventure of pursuing a woman
to be your wife to court her, to win her. Theres adventure all around
us. When we play it safe, we die. Something in our soul goes dormant, goes underground
and we lose our passion for life.
But I do want to add for the city
slickers because I worked in Washington, D.C. that you still need
to get out, whether its bike riding or raquetball. I do believe a man needs to
be physical. And you have to understand, I weigh 135 pounds. Im five feet nothing.
Im not some athlete. Ive just discovered that we learn by doing and some of
that doing involves getting out.
SW: Can women,
and do women naturally, have that same desire, that need for fighting battles
and having strength?
JE:
No. Ask one. She will tell you it's not so much a battle to fight, but she longs
to be fought for. Every woman longs to be pursued, to know shes worth fighting
for. I do think women long for adventure, but they very rarely long for adventure
alone. They want a shared adventure. They dont want to be left at home. They
want to be caught up in a great adventure.
I took my wife and sons with
me to Alaska, into a great adventure. We went sea kayaking. We took hikes. Women
do long for adventure. They dont want to be on the front lines fighting the battles,
but they want to know theres a man who wants to fight for them.
SW:
You talk about a beauty to fight for. Do you mean physical beauty?
JE: Yes
and no. To say physical beauty doesnt matter is ridiculous. Just look at culture
since the dawn of time. Weve always recognized beauty as one of the great virtues
not just beauty in a woman, but beauty in music, in art, in nature. We
crave beauty as human beings. And for men, theres nothing as captivating as the
beauty of a woman.
My position is this: Every woman is beautiful. Ive
seen it happen in my counseling practice. When shes in love, what you would call
a plain or ordinary or dull woman comes alive and actually becomes radiant.
But of course I mean more than physical beauty its a soulful beauty,
a spiritual beauty. Ive seen 80-year-old women who are lovely because of who
and what they are. Do they have the figure they had when they were 21? Of course
not. But something about them makes you say, now that is a lovely woman.
SW: Can the beauty to fight for be another man?
JE:
I dont believe so, not on a sexual level, because according to the Christian
tradition, God creates a man and a woman and they shall become one flesh. The
design physically, emotionally, spiritually is undeniable. The genders
fit together.
I believe men need the love of other men. Starting off,
a boy needs the love of a father. I mean touch, hugs, wrestling, time, words.
If a man does not receive that from his father, he craves it for the rest of his
life. If you go back into the story of most men who feel that what they have is
a homosexual nature or longing, youll find that every one of them had a bad relationship
with their father. What theyre looking for is masculine love. Thats good. But
theyve sexualized it, and I think thats wrong.
SW:
Is Christ the only way to heal the wounds?
JE:
Every man does carry a wound in his soul. You dont get out of this life
without it. Life is brutal on any human being. But the deepest wound is the "father
wound." Little boys or little girls learn gender identity from our fathers. The
little boy wants to learn from his father, "Do I have what it takes?" The little
girl wants to know from her father, "Am I lovely?" If you ask women, theyll say
that their deepest wound is from their father and centers around that question.
How do we get that wound healed? For many of us, our fathers are gone
or if we went back to them, theyd wound us again. Theyre not good men.
I think thats why, among other reasons, God is portrayed in the scriptures as
a loving father. We take our need from our earthly father and bring it to our
spiritual father, our real creator and the one who truly knows us, knows us more
deeply than we know ourselves. Only through God can the wounds ultimately heal.
SW: The flip side is the role of Satan in helping
to create the wound. You write that the Enemy wants us weak.
JE: Yes, absolutely.
Until we live like we have an enemy, we will not understand life. The problem
of evil is the ancient philosophical problem. We try to fix the blame on all sorts
of sacrificial goats we choose political systems or our mother-in-law.
We blame our boss, a policy, or a race of people.
But we are mistaken.
We are told and warned that there is an evil in the universe which is spiritual
in nature, ancient, and quite personal. If we live like that, life will begin
to come into crystal-clear focus. Well begin to see that there is someone who
hates us and really wishes us harm.
That will help us not to blame others.
Its not your wife and it wasnt even your father, to be honest. Your father may
have been a wicked man, but he was being used by that Ancient Evil the
Evil One to harm us. I believe Satan hates glory wherever he sees it. He
hates it in God and he hates it in human beings because human beings are in the
image of God. We really were meant to be glorious.
The story of many
peoples lives is the long story on the assault on their glory.
SW:
Some of our readers will be listening to part of your message, but will say, "I
dont believe in Satan or that Christ is the way to heal the wounds." If you dont
believe those two things, whats the relevance of your message?
JE: Aristotle
said long ago that if you want to know what is good the good simply
look at the conditions under which human beings flourish. Human beings flourish
where there is love, for example, and not hatred. Human beings flourish where
there is freedom and not tyranny. Those things are universal.
I think
the message of Wild
at Heart is universal at this level: that men long for freedom and passion;
they long for a cause, a battle; they long for an adventure with a beauty. They
cannot be happy without those things. They will not flourish as men and their
women will not flourish as women without them. So theres a universal truth in
this. If we will simply follow it honestly, well discover that the only reason
this could be universal must be because theres some great good behind it all
that wired the universe this way. God.
This is J. Fraser Field, Founder of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.
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Acknowledgement
Steven Waldman. "Redefining What It Means to Be a "Godly Man." Beliefnet.com (November, 2002).
This article reprinted with permission from Beliefnet.com.
The Author
Steven Waldman is Editor-in-Chief of Beliefnet.com.
Copyright © 2002 Beliefnet.com