Men: Firing Through All of Life
Al Stewart
Blue Bottle Books, Sydney, 2007, 168pp.
Available for ordering from Moore Books
02 9577 9966
info@moorebooks.com.au
www.moorebooks.com.au
Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul
John Eldredge
Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2001, 224pp.
What does it mean to be a real man? What does it mean to be a godly man? And what does it mean to be a man in a world like today’s when life can be really hard going?
If you are a male with eyesight and a heartbeat, you must read Al Stewart’s latest book, Men: Firing Through All of Life. It is brutally honest—particularly about ageing and how middle age brings some unwanted things that differentiate you from the young, fit, good-looking bloke you used to be (e.g. p. 22: “My eyebrows have gone crazy”). It is also fiercely biblical, and it will change your attitude to life. If you’re a Christian man, this book will give you a great understanding of how to live faithfully throughout your whole life without falling into the devil’s traps. If you’re a man and not a Christian yet, it will help you to understand why you should be a Christian, and how that decision will change your life forever.
One of the book’s strengths is its brutal assessment of modern-day life. Stewart paints a bleak picture of middle-aged men. Many of them are in the ‘hurt locker’ and most don’t know why. Depression in men is at an all-time high. So are suicide rates and divorce rates. Stewart explains powerfully why this is the case. Initially I thought he may have overstated the extent of male unhappiness, so I started asking the men I hang out with a few more targeted questions. Their responses were tragic. Middle-aged men face a whole gamut of problems: medical fears; the slow, but sure decline of your once impressive physical abilities (even if they only existed in your own mind!); frustration for not having achieved what you thought you would have by now; boredom with married life; dramas in broken relationships; and the crushing realization that one day you will die. A lot of men are wearing masks that hide their suffering. But this book is a great antidote to their pain.
Men: Firing Through All of Life will instantly be attractive to men because, for most of us, there is nothing better than finding a solution, and this book aims to fix these problems. Stewart says the answer to our modern-day malady can be found in the ancient Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes was inspired by God but written by a bloke who was searching for true meaning. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find it in the things of this life. Stewart goes on to helpfully exegete the key parts of Ecclesiastes which explain why we will only ever be frustrated and disappointed by the things of this world, before going on to reveal where true satisfaction, contentment and meaning lie.
The solution, of course, is not what you’d expect. Who would have thought that true satisfaction and meaning only come when you lay down your life at the feet of someone other than yourself? This biblical fact tastes bitter in the mouth of the worldly man, but to those who believe, it is the sweet taste of eternal life. Here is where the book proves its worth and demonstrates why every male needs to read it: Stewart brutally exposes the lies of this world for what they are, and constructs in their place the life-changing message of God’s salvation. It’s a message driven by God’s love for his fallen children and achieved through the sacrifice of the sinless, God-man Jesus. Once you understand how your salvation came about, the response that is expected of you makes perfect sense.
The last chapters of the book explain how we should live out this ‘revolutionary’ response to being saved. They are characterized by typical Al Stewart honesty and humour. I particularly enjoyed his chapter on marriage and family. I am convinced that most men don’t know what their role at home entails. There are two reasons why this is so: laziness and feminism. The solution is that men need to stop being ‘lovable dopes’ and, instead, start showing some responsibility, leadership and initiative in the household. Stewart then takes a brave look at Ephesians 5 and explains bluntly what it means for us men: it is not a license to be a dictator; it is a license to love. The love we have for our wives and kids should be modelled on the same selfless, sacrificial love that God showed us in Christ. This love pulses through our hearts now that we have been joined with our Heavenly Father through his Spirit—the very same Spirit who gives us the power and the self-discipline to obey. The truth is that God does it all for us; we’ve just got to get off our backsides and put it into play.
Unfortunately, having read and applied all of this, the danger for some men is that life will not be ‘adventurous’ enough. That’s why I’m glad that Stewart also addresses some of the arguments put forward by John Eldredge in his Wild at Heart books. Stewart takes pains to remind us that the Christian life is not about living like a great American frontiersman, conquering Indians and plotting courses through the Northwest Passage all on the same day; the Christian life often feels like Groundhog Day. But there’s nothing wrong with that. The real man steps up to it and proves himself to be faithful, even if he is changing his one thousandth nappy, or he is picking up milk and bread on his way home for the millionth time. The real tough guy does these things willingly, and he does not whinge about them. The real Christian man loves and romances his wife through the triumphs and tragedies of life. I kept getting the feeling that Stewart wanted to say, “Harden up, princess, and do your job”, but he refrained.
Men: Firing Through All of Life is a good book for any bloke who wants to know God better. It’s great to have a resource on this topic written by such an outstanding Australian Christian man, and Stewart’s humour and Australian-ness make this the perfect gift to give to all your mates. You will learn things about the Bible you didn’t know, and you will learn things about ageing that you did not want to know! If Stewart had had a few more pages, I would have liked him to explain the holiness and greatness of God in a bit more detail as I believe that a healthy picture of God and what he has saved you from is the driving force behind an obedient life. But obviously Stewart had to cram big theological issues into brief summaries for the sake of space.
The Book of Ecclesiastes ends by saying, “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccl 12:13). It sounds a lot like the motto of the Royal Australian Regiment: ‘Duty first’. When a soldier whinges about the hard life of the Infantryman, his mates remind him that he is no longer a lazy, soft, selfish civilian, and that his life is now about serving his country. Soldiers understand sacrificial service and duty; we have a lot to learn from them, and ‘Duty first’ may not be such a bad motto for Christian men. We often shy away from the word ‘duty’. But a man has certain duties, and we men need to take those duties seriously. Stewart’s book will help you understand what those duties are and how to carry them out.
Wild at Heart by John Eldredge is a very different book to Al Stewart’s. The reason is that Stewart is theologically trained and Australian, whereas Eldredge is an American psychologist. Eldredge really should have asked a theologian to assess some of the big biblical conclusions he makes because this is where his book lets us down.
I have two big problems with Wild at Heart. Firstly, Eldredge’s attitude to God’s word worries me.1 His main thesis is that most messages for men fail because “They ignore what is deep and true to a man’s heart, his real passions, and simply try to shape him up through various forms of pressure” (p. xi). This a fairly harsh and sweeping generalization of messages for men, but he then goes on to back up his claim with Proverbs 20:5a: “The heart of a man is like deep water…”. From this verse, he concludes that,
The church wags its head and wonders why it can’t get more men to sign up for its programs. The answer is simply this: we have not invited a man to know and live from his own deep heart. (p. 8)
The point of this seems to be that since the heart of man is deep and elusive, men need help in understanding their hearts better. They need to learn what really makes their hearts come alive so that they can find true fulfilment and become really useful to God.
Now, I get what he is trying to say, but there are two problems with the way he is going about it. Firstly, Proverbs 20:5 does not say that. In the NKJV (the version which Eldredge says he quotes from), it says, “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water”. The heart of man is not meant to be the subject of that sentence; ‘counsel’ is. So ‘counsel’ (or ‘purpose’, as it says in the ESV and NIV) and not “the heart of a man” is like deep water. And there’s a very good reason for that: our hearts are sinful to their core.
This leads us to the second problem: Eldredge overrates our hearts and underrates sin. As Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer 17:9). I know what is in my heart, and if I went after that with the vigour that Eldredge recommends, things would get very ugly very quickly. I know I am saved and that I now have a regenerate heart, but I also have a healthy understanding of my total depravity. But Eldredge argues that because the believer is now regenerate, so too is everything that comes out of his heart. Here he shows his lack of understanding of both the doctrines of justification and sanctification: once we have been justified by faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit who now lives in us begins to conform us into the likeness of Jesus. So Eldredge’s explanation that “my sin is not me” (p. 144) is not only confusing, it begs the question, “If your sin is not you, then who is it?” What men need to hear is the biblical truth that their regenerated heart is still inclined to sin, but that it can be overcome by the self-discipline and power that comes through the Holy Spirit who now lives in us.
As a result of his poor handling of the Scriptures and his poor understanding of the sinfulness of man, Eldredge comes out with some other clangers. He claims that men are risk-takers and adventure-seekers at heart because God is. In the course of his argument, he fundamentally weakens the sovereignty of God (pp. 31, 32, 56). He also claims that the reason men need to find their ‘lost’ hearts is because Adam was created outside of the Garden of Eden:
Man was born in the outback, from the untamed part of creation. Only afterwards is he brought to Eden. And ever since then boys have never been at home indoors… The core of a man’s heart is undomesticated and that is good. (pp. 3-4; emphasis in the original.)
Therefore, because the woman was created in the Garden, she loves domestic life.
I do not think he understands the theological consequences of some of these outrageous claims. What he is saying with these two examples is that God is not really in control. Instead, you are, and God is happy to give you that freedom. Eldredge also seems to be saying that Adam was better off before God brought him into the Garden of Eden. This is where his psychology gets in the way of his theology, and the result is confusion.
Despite these criticisms, there is a lot I got out of this book. Eldredge’s practical tips are his strength, his critique of society is deadly accurate, and there is a lot I found myself agreeing with. I do believe that men have become lazy and feminized, and that they need to be more masculine. Like Eldredge, I am attracted to the action and adventure of life: I loved being an Army Chaplain, deployed to war zones around the world on short notice. I loved living in the dirt and wearing body armour (although getting shot at was overrated!). And I want my three young boys to become real men—brave, faithful and ready to stand up for the truth. But the way that I will help them to grow into godly men is by living the life of godliness before them, by reading the Bible with them and by chatting with them about it so that they know what God is like and know what he has done for them. It is simple, but it works because God’s word is like no other book on the face of the earth: it changes your life. As we read it, God’s Spirit and word work together in us to convict us of sin and encourage us in righteousness.
When I first read Wild at Heart in 2002, I really wanted it to be a great book because there was a shortage of Christian books for men. And so I would recommend it to people but also explain its weaknesses. Like me, those I recommended it to did feel more motivated to follow Jesus in a proper masculine way after they read it. But this just poses the question of why the publisher didn’t fix the theological issues which bring this book down. It could have been great! In the future, I think I will just recommend Al Stewart’s book instead.
Endnote
1. Daryl Wingerd has written a very helpful critique of Eldredge’s use of the Bible. It can be found at http://www.ccwonline.org/wild.html.]↩
