Wild At Heart (PART 5: The Battle)

*WARNING: This blog entry contains adult themes, messy spirituality, and psychological nudity! Reader discretion is advised - please enter with discernment!!*

Do you remember The Question?

Do I have what it takes? Am I powerful?

As a man, you may not like what I'm about to say:

--"You cannot turn a cheek you do not have..."

--Many of your "best choices" to let someone else decide how you should live have slowly removed "one vertebra at a time, until in the end you have no spine at all..."

--"...our culture" is determined "that the aggressive nature of boys is inherently bad, and we have to make them into something more like girls."

--The answer to The Question isn't in the size of your wallet...or your penis.

--"...the church may have a masculine exterior, but its soul has turned feminine."

--All the pornography, addiction, greed, or ignorance in the world isn't going to let you off the hook in answering The Question or help you in healing The Wound.

This isn't supposed to be nice, or make you -- as a man -- feel good. Let me ask you to consider the wound...your wound. Is it nice? Does it feel good?

In Chapter Five of Wild At Heart (2001: Thomas Nelson, Inc.), author John Eldredge (http://www.ransomedheart.com/) tells us a very evident, but often denied, truth: "But for many, many men their souls still hang in the balance because no one, no one has ever invited them to be dangerous, to know their own strength, to discover that they have what it takes." (p. 79)

Don't want the wound? Too bad -- and get used to it. According to Eldredge, "...a man is not wounded once, but many, many times in the course of his life." (p. 79) As a man, each time I'm wounded I choose to take a hit -- an arrow -- directly in the place of my strength, my heart.

And, to be honest, as a man -- and as a Christian -- I'm tired of taking arrows, I'm tired of the Enemy's attempts to take me out each day...and I'm tired of being a man who fails, at times, to claim the power and the image of the One who created me to be a much stronger man.

Who's firing the arrows? Who's got me in the cross hairs? I'd like to change the story...

Finishing Him Off

As a man, I have a wild side -- dangerous, sharp, adventurous, and masculine. Society wants me to either emasculate myself and play nice or else allow the endless parade of people, places, or things associated with the world, the flesh, or Satan force me into a kaleidoscope of poor imitations of what a man can -- or should -- be.

"Our culture," Eldredge asserts, "has turned against the masculine essence, aiming to cut it off early." (Wild At Heart, p. 80)

Would I be any less of a man if my genitals were cut off? Of course, a large measure of society would say, "Yes -- you are now less of a man."

Has the church lost its manhood? Have men, in general, lost it to the ravages of emasculation? Single or married -- it doesn't matter.

"Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man," Eldredge notes, "but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he'll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone." (Wild At Heart, p. 82)

Where has my passion gone? Where -- as a man -- has yours gone? Who put me in a cage? Why is a lion -- or God -- put in one?

Danger...

No, no, no -- don't' be dangerous. That's the message -- that's the bottom line. The church, perhaps, would be pleased to have all men be Sunday School Jesus, the Lamb instead of the Lion.

And, in turn, what has happened to that dirty word...initiation?

Robert Bly (Iron John) says, "We know that our society produces a plentiful supply of boys, but seems to produce fewer and fewer men."

Have a clue?

"There are two simple reasons: We don't know how to initiate boys into men, and second, we're not sure we really want to. We want to socialize them, to be sure, but away from all that is fierce, and wild, and passionate. In other words, away from masculinity and toward something more feminine." (Wild At Heart, p. 83)

As a man, my heart is crying out for heroes of masculinity. Women can be heroic -- but we've forgotten along the way that "it was a Man who let Himself be nailed to Calvary's cross...It's simply to remind us that God made men the way they are because we desperately need them to be the way they are. Yes, a man is a dangerous things. So is a scalpel. It can wound or it can save your life. You don't make it safe by making it dull; you put it in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing." (Wild At Heart, p. 83)

Here's a question: Are you a stallion or a gelding?

What's Really Going On Here, Anyway?

My father was in one of the waves that landed on the shores of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. As a boy, I once asked him what it was like. He became very quiet and would not talk about it. It wasn't until I was a man, and saw the first thirty minutes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan that I understood why.

My father had been to war -- but he never prepared, or initiated, me for the battles that lay ahead.

There is still a war going on -- and the hearts of men are being taken out, left and right. Have a look around you -- what do you observe?" Eldredge asks. "What do you see in the lives of the men that you work with, live by, go to church alongside? Are they full of passionate freedom? Do they fight well?" (Wild At Heart, pp. 84-85)

Men at war take wounds. Sometimes I think the wounds from my father or those delivered by life are nothing compared to those I've inflicted on myself. For years I've been bleeding -- the abuse of drugs, pornography, and the minefields of pride have left me alive but badly wounded.

They are trying," Eldredge says of such wounded men, "to crawl forward, but are having an awful time getting their lives together; they seem to keep taking hits. You know others who are already captives, languishing in prisons of despair, addiction, idleness, or boredom. The place looks like a battlefield," he says of our lives, "the Omaha Beach of the soul." (Wild At Heart, p. 85)

This is war. And there is insanity that will keep me -- or us -- as a man from being honest.

Sometimes I get tired of it all -- the waste of time, the softness of men, the battlefronts and casualties. Sometimes I don't care about anyone or anything but myself, the narcotics of arrogance and pride running slowly through my veins. And there are times when I forget about Adam standing by and not fighting for Eve against the Serpent of Old.

And I tell you this: just because you want to deny that there is a ware, that there is an Enemy, doesn't make the realities of both disappear.

"We were born into a world at war," Eldredge declares. "This scene we're living in is no sitcom; it's bloody battle. Haven't you noticed with what deadly accuracy the wound was given? Those blows you've taken -- they were not random accidents at all. They hit dead center." (Wild At Heart, p. 86)

We were born into...war.

"And there was war in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in Heaven. The great dragon was hurled down -- that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him." (Revelation 12:7-9 NIV)

The Enemy is here, assaulting our hearts as men. Why?

"Do you know why there's been such an assault?" Eldredge asks us. "The Enemy fears you. You are dangerous big-time. If you ever really got your heart back, lived from it with courage, you would be a huge problem to him. You would do a lot of damage...on the side of good. Remember how valiant and effective God has been in the history of the world? You are a stem of that victorious stalk." (Wild At Heart, p. 87)

But as men at war -- against the Enemy and in the battle for our hearts -- we must be initiated into our authentic and powerful masculinity...and be trained and armored for the onslaught ahead.

And we -- as men -- must choose to go to war and be willing to engage the Enemy with all the weapons of manhood.

"Most men," Eldredge concludes, "have never been initiated into manhood. They have never had anyone show them how to do it, and especially, how to fight for their heart." (Wild At Heart, p. 87)

Your heart, men, may be in captivity behind Enemy lines. To get it back, you will have to heal the wound, and in doing so, ask yourself this question:

"What's at risk?"

Our Search For An Answer

What's at risk for me to be initiated into manhood?

What's at risk for me to hear the words my father never told me?

What's at risk for me to know who I am and that I have what it takes?

Eldredge isn't shy in answering these kind of questions for me -- or for us, as men.

"In order to help you find the answer to The Question, let me ask you another: What have you done with your question? Where have you taken it? You see, a man's core question does not go away. He may try for years to shove it out of his awareness, and just 'get on with life.' But it does not go away. It is a hunger so essential to our souls that it will compel us to find a resolution. In truth, it drives everything we do." (Wild At Heart, p. 88)

On the journey to recapture my heart, I will have to understand the concept of validation -- and how it can skew the compass so vital to my search to mislead me in any number of directions. And, for me as a man (and as a Christian), the more I refuse to listen to God's voice, the further I end up off course.

"Listen, my sons, to a father's instruction; pay attention and gain understanding...I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble...My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man's whole body. Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." (Proverbs 4:1, 11-12, 20-23 NIV)

With initiation, a young man listens to the voice of his father and other mature men. And in our society and culture, so many young boys have become men without initiation, without validation, and listening to the cacophony of voices that make no sense...or give a man any significance of sense of belonging.

"Where does a man go for a sense of validation?" Eldredge asks us. "To what he owns? To who pays attention to him? How attractive his wife is? Where he gets to eat out? How well he plays sports?" (Wild At Heart, p. 90)

To that list I could add: "To how much is in his wallet? By the quality of his toys? How big is his house? The number of cars he owns? Where he vacations? To the size of his manhood? To the amount of his tithe?"

The snipers keep shooting, and men are taken out. Some, most -- if not all of us, as men -- crawl, with our wounds, to one universal place.

"But the deadliest place a man ever takes his search, the place every man seems to wind up no matter what trail he's followed, is the woman." (Wild At Heart, p. 90)

Taking It To Eve

When a man takes his question to the woman," Eldredge suggests, "what happens is either addiction or emasculation. Usually both." (Wild At Heart, p. 93)

Here, once again, I testify from truth and experience...Eldredge is dead-on accurate.

With an absent father in my early teens, I was wounded next by my mother -- caught with pornography, shamed into a corner of my soul for the sins of my father, and left for impending disaster in seeking an answer to The Question from a source who couldn't (or wouldn't) --or shouldn't -- provide it.

The truth is, whether in porn or in trying to find the answer from Mom or thinking that sex equals love, I longed to "be the hero to the beauty -- that has been my longing, my image of what it means to really, finally be a man. Bly calls it the search for the Golden-haired Woman." (Wild At Heart, pp. 90-91)

I became addicted to pornography at a young age -- long before I was seeking the answer in drugs. According to Eldredge, it's no wonder.

"But the deeper reason is because that seductive beauty reaches down inside and touches your desperate hunger for validation as a man you didn't even know you had, touches it like nothing else most men have ever experienced." (Wild At Heart, p. 91)

Men know this: sex sells, sex is seductive, and sex is not the answer. I have never found the Golden-haired Woman (or a beauty worthy of my hero) in the abysmal black hole of pornography. And, no matter how loving she was, as a man I could never be initiated by my mother. "Femininity," Eldredge reminds us, "can never bestow masculinity." (p. 93)

So for years I sought my power -- and the answer -- through my erection. Eldredge agrees. "If a man can feel an erection, well then, he feels powerful. He feels strong. I'm telling you, for many men, The Question feels hardwired to his penis. If he can feel like the hero sexually, well, then mister, he's the hero. Pornography is so seductive because what is a wounded, famished man to think when there are literally hundreds of beauties willing to give themselves to him?" (Wild At Heart, pp. 91-92)

But, as I said, the answer isn't there. It's not there. As the poet William Blake said, "The naked woman's body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man." But, as captivating, mysterious, powerful, and deeply emotional as the creation of woman by God is, asking one the answer to The Question -- or expecting authentic masculine initiation from oen -- is simply an illusion.

And Eldredge sums it up perfectly:

"Because we cannot hear the real answer until we see we've got a false one. So long as we chase the illusion, how can we face reality? The hunger is there; it lives in our souls like a famished craving, no matter what we've tried to fill it with. If you take your question to Eve, it will break your heart." (Wild At Heart, p. 95)

There is only one source. And, men, I encourage you to take your question back -- and let our journey continue.

Walk away from all the places you've been seeking it in where it can't be found. Stop chasing after it in an empty sense of self.

As George MacDonald says, "Who can give a man this, his own name?"

Next Week: Wild At Heart (PART 6: The Father's Voice)