I’ve read Francis Schaeffer, so I’m sure it can happen, but for a Christian teacher like Eldredge to encourage his generally-young-or-otherwise-immature readers to pursue such “religious experiences” via secular works ungrounded in the Word is to lead these feeble lives down a slick and dangerous path. Secondly, I couldn’t get behind his philosophy of church or his dangerous ideas of “getting closer to God” through music, art, and movies. Baloney’s made for dorm-room sandwiches, not for molding young, fertile minds. As a Bible-believing student at the time (and now teacher), I’ve never been one to blame anyone but myself and Adam for my own sin, so when he started getting into all the “it’s your father’s fault” crap, he totally turned me off. Towards the middle of the book, however, Eldredge started to lose me, first with the “my dad didn’t love me” garbage. As I waded through his examples of adventure and personal accounts and anecdotes from movies and songs, I saw that I was in for the long haul. Although I’m the most practically-unromantic guy in the world, I’ve always had a vividly romantic imagination. And when he spoke of there always being a beauty to rescue, well, as a hormone-raging college student, I was immediately hooked. When I first began reading the book, I was struck by his talk of a boy’s ingrown desire for adventure and danger.
Eldredge seems like a smart and adventurous guy, but he also seems very capable at manipulating his readers, giving just enough Bible to please the Christians, and just enough psychobabble to please everyone else.Īt the core of Wild at Heart is Eldredge’s worthy mission of helping men to become less sissified and a bit more manly in this increasingly gender-mixed society of ours.
Otherwise, you might run the risk of leading young men astray. This book makes an all-right read for a Christian Men’s Group (which is how I came to read it in college), but leading that group must be a discerning man with a doctrinally sound head on his shoulders.
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