It seems that men have only one goal: really, truly, deep within your heart, be a man. Eldredge calls men to build relationships with other men not to become women, but to rebuild a communal experience of manliness. He followed her into sin, but instead of turning to God for redemption, he and his woman both hid. Instead, he stood right by her side as she succumbed to confusion and temptation. The consequences of not feeling like a man can be disastrous.

If they don’t feel like men, they will turn to women instead of turning to God, the only one who can tell us who we truly are. They need fellow soldiers as they resist temptation and fight spiritual battles for themselves and those they must protect. They need other men to initiate them into manhood and to fight alongside them. They can only learn that from other men who tell them that they are no longer boys. Perhaps his most important conclusion is that men must truly believe that they are men. That seems problematic compared to his later conclusions. Here, the beauty must be a woman, and conveniently the battle and adventure often involve her as well. Perhaps it is because I am a woman, so neither end really applies to me, but this division seemed less drastic than the meek/domineering dichotomy in Captivating.Īs I mentioned in my last review, Eldredge characterizes men’s three goals as a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. Hearing this, they either shrink away from their calling to protect and defend or brush off that advice and lord their power over everyone else. He correctly notes that many Christian men have been told that they ought to be “nice guys”: don’t make waves, don’t get too close to anyone. I discovered as I read it, though, that despite still lacking some of the fundamental balance between the sexes one might find in the theology of the body, Wild at Heart presents a much more balanced approach to understanding the way Christian men experience God.Īside from rarely mentioning the arts and openly disparaging a career-focused businessman early in the text, Eldredge manages to keep his observations of men broad yet pointed. It focuses on male spirituality Captivating was written by Eldredge and his wife to complement Wild at Heart. John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart is not his first book on Christian spirituality, but it is arguably the best-known.

Catholic review of wild at heart