Warning!!! This is not the title of a DVD sold on infomercial tv at 3 AM.

I was talking to an online friend the other day that I had not talked to in a very long time. As we caught up on old times and began talking about the NBA playoffs and the fact that the Hurricanes are still playing hockey, the conversation shifted from sports to recollections of the book “Wild At Heart” by John Eldredge. I told my online friend

There is life beyond Wild at Heart

He asked me to explain what that meant. I then began to explain that even though the book was a good book and that if I ever met John Eldredge in real life, I would probably think of him as being a cool dude; that it was time to progress and move above, beyond, onward, and forward to eat more spiritual meat.

I then began to explain how I knew many men who read the book and got so ‘obsessed’ with camping, dude ranching, and being ‘Marlboro Men of The Messiah’ that they can never see beyond the environment of the Pentecostal Ponderosa. The concepts of the book grossly fail to go beyond the weekend warriors of the wild and the fantasy camps of the fearless to be applied to everyday life to be wild and passionate about your life, your career, your family and children, your hobbies, and most importantly, your everyday walk in Christ.

As the ‘Rugged Rustic Remnant’ look for their next adventure to overlive (and sell their equipment on E-Bay months later to get money for equipment for the next new adventure), their next battle to pick a fight, and their next something sexy to obtain for their trophycase, I really wonder if the core question of the heart and soul is still either unanswered and if the true thirst was never quenched to begin with. I really wonder if the question as it relates to the perceived image of their own self was ever answered to begin with. I wonder if the void was ever filled or if we are walking around it while being in denial of the void.

We must find the delicate balance here. We must not go from the extreme of refusing to face a challenge to the extremes of picking challenges to fulfill. We must not go from the extreme of refusing to fight when needed to the extremes of picking a fight when fighting is not necessary. We must not go from the extreme of refusing to protect and defend our wife (for you married guys) to the extremes of making up wars to defend her from to make her feel fought for.

There is a time we must face a challenge
There is a time when we have to fight
There is a time when our loved ones need defending.

However, the challenge of adventure, battle to fight, and beauty to rescue extends far beyond the ranch out west, the ropes course at the corporate teambuilding getaway, and the delay in rush hour traffic.

It’s everywhere. The challenge on the job to succeed. The battle to ensure integrity when someone wants to shortcut in the name of increasing production while sacrificing quality. The skin deep looks to deny when tempted to forsake the covenant made to the core beauty of the wife/girlfriend. The challenge to make that risky golf shot when the pin is ten yards from the edge of the green surrounded by sandtraps and water. The battle to not waste money on some new corporate craze seminar but pocketing the money to increase profits. The maintenance, care, and well being of your wife/girlfriend when you want to neglect her to buy you something frivolous.

Lets look at our churches. The challenge to be the best Christian we can be. The battle to spend finances wisely instead of the latest Christian megatrend seminars. The ministry to our wives/girlfriends to keep them from repeating Wisteria Lane in your life. The battle to build disciples over bigger buildings and landscapes. The challenge to be a leader and protect the congregation against heterodoxy, heresy, and gnostics who want control in order to control others.

However, for some unknown reason, the renewal of the man’s heart went in the direction of the fantasy role playing game instead of the revolution of the resuscitated real-life of the man. It never left the ranch with the herd of cattle to come back to the split-ranch house where we house our family called the American Dream. It never left the sanctuary of the open plains to come back to the sanctuary we worship at on Sunday morning. It never left the labor of love and hard work of the pasture to come back to the labor of our career which we love the money but in secret despise the concept of having to do any for of laborious work.

We love the rush of courage of killing the evil wizard and destroying it’s magical effect on an imaginary kingdom in a X-Box video game but can not generate the backbone to go into spiritual war to defeat the satanic strongholds trying to destroy our children within our castle. We love to think of ourselves as William Wallace, Maximus or any other superhero but can not see ourselves as the hero to our own family. We love to dream about some exotic land flowing with a rainbow, pot of gold, milk, and honey but can not motivate ourselves to go away for a personal retreat when we need it. We love to think of ourselves as Bobby Thompson, Michael Jordan, Dwight Clark, and other athletes who scored in the clutch with little time remaining to win but fail to see how we came through in the clutch with little time remaining of steering our children away from drugs, keeping a producton line going saving thousands in downtime, keeping a church from discarding orthodoxy for pragmatic heresy to eventually conquer the adventure that was forced upon us.

In fact, when we go away to a fantasy sports camp, a dude ranch for a spiritual retreat, etc. It shows that we want an adventure, a controlled and voluntary adventure where we decide what we want and if we fail, the leader will rescue us and make us. What happens when the involuntary adventure is thrown right at you when your son skips school and you find dope in his knapsack and at the same time your daughter gets pregnant and you want to both yell at her and kill the father of the baby at the same time? What happens when your wife is bored and gets ‘ideas’ from her girlfriends at the beauty salon whose repetitive poor choices cause cyclic consequences? What happens when you have a sales goal to reach and you are behind in your quota? What happens when you have to rebuild after a tragedy or a natural disaster? What happens when you are told that ‘your services are no longer needed’?

Who is going to fight for you? Who is going to rescue you? Who is going to teach you ‘on the job training’?

It better be God Almighty.

The heart of the matter can not be answered until we begin to partake of the heart of the Father. Instead of explaining why we are wild at heart and how to deal with it in a Godly sense, we have rationalized the excuse to become wilder, more arrogant, boisterous, and self-centered instead of learning the discipline, self-control, focus, and submission that is really needed to live out the adventure, fight the battle, and rescue the beauty.

In fact, have we reduced the adventure to live to discovering the ‘purpose-driven life’? Have we reduced the battle to fight to defeating the “DEMONcrats” and electing the Republican dog catcher every November? Have we reduced the beauty to rescue to just another ‘Jenny Jones makeovered’ desperate housewife?

Look at the television commercials today. Burger King parody’s the “I Am Woman” song with ‘I Am Man”. Miller Lite Beer has ‘Man Court’. A commercial for Dial’s soap for men tells man to take back the bathroom. The war is raging right now as a society has finally waken up from the suppressing of man to the outright fight for the existence of man.

How we as God’s children handle the war of society’s definition of manhood along with the battle to fight and rescuing the beauty determines what we are made of and what or who we are really serving. Are we serving a cause or are we serving Christ? Are we going to express our feeling in a healthy manner or are we going to go to Promise Keepers this summer and hug other men like Miss America contestants hug each other after the winner is crowned while making sure the pornography we saw in the hotel room the night before doesn’t show up on the monthly credit card invoice? Are we going to fight to provide a better life for our children or we going to play Butterfly Kisses with them? Are we going to go out and face the reality of our wild life or will we find some weekend warrior dude ranch to escape to and beat the tribal drum screaming out our internal demons while singing ‘Kumbya My Lord’ at the end?

Men of society are looking for the answers to the questions. However it appears that the church has no answers to provide because we are questioning the past answers of being a sister to our wife/girlfriend in a male anatomical package or we have been so seeker-sensitive in the three-ring Trinitarian circus within the revival rodeo that we became enraptured with to the point where we forgot to get the questions within us answered.

Maybe answering the question of our manhood in light of God’s Scriptures and God’s view of us is the ultimate battle to fight, the ultimate adventure to live, and the ultimate beauty to rescue…..