The men’s group at the church I attend is doing a Bible study called: Into the Wild. This study is based on John Elderedge’s Wild at Heart. I have read Wild at Heart while in college and even attempted to lead a Bible study using it as the source material. What follows are some of my current thoughts on the first chapter.

Elderedge uses the first chapter to setup the premise of the book. What I understand that to be, is: We as men have stopped longing for the desires of our heart and have instead attempted to mold ourselves into what “the world” thinks men should be. “The world” would be the society around us, including the Church.

Elderedege proposes that men need three things: A battle to fight, An adventure to live and A beauty to rescue. He seems to think that the only way one can find their spirit of adventure is to journey into the wilderness. While, I do enjoy vacationing in the mountains, I’m not 100% sure this idea applies to all men. In fact, the undertone of this big adventure in the wilderness gets quite tiring and I haven’t even finished the first chapter.

Skipping back to the battle to fight… Elderedge asks us to think back to our childhood days and remember the games we’d play and how they revolved around themes of war, cops and robbers, Coyboys and Indians and so on. Honestly, as a young boy, I enjoyed the swing set and the sand box. I’m not sure what kind of battle a bulldozer, a dump truck and a cement mixer can have. Sure, we had water guns and water balloons but, we mostly just ran around an squirted each other. Having said all of that, deep down, there is a part of me that wants to “fight for the little man” and I often find myself rooting for the underdog.

The beauty to rescue. Elderege hasn’t really gone into a lot of detail about this topic just yet. He does talk about how every great story has a beauty to rescue (Like a prince rescuing a princess). I can never recall not aspiring to one day have a wife. However, I have never really given much thought to rescuing a woman to be my wife until I read this book. I have since found my beautiful wife and am eager to learn or relearn how to edify her.

Some other thoughts… To truely appreciate this book you have to be familiar with certain movies. So far, this seems to be: The Gladiator and Braveheart.