Lift Up Your Hearts!

Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2001)
Captivating, by John and Stasi Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2005)

When a good friend lent me Wild at Heart, it took a long time for me to steel myself to read it, for I expected it to make me angry. I've had more than my fill of books, especially from Christian authors, telling men to be authoritative and women to wear makeup and Saran Wrap.

After the first few pages, I was sure I was right, and I was going to hate the book. But I kept reading—something I'm not sure was true of many of those who wrote the negative reviews I read—and became convinced it's a worthwhile book. Oh, there's plenty I found exasperating, a lot I disagree with, and much that's expressed poorly, but Eldredge is asking important questions and has a few good answers. Although it deals with much more than just the church, the book is worth reading if only because it dares reveal church as a place where, all too often, the men are bored and the women are tired—and offers a remedy. Captivating attempts to do for women what Wild at Heart does for men. It is not as good, but still valuable.

(I wonder why it is almost all of my reviews these days seem to boil down to, "This book has some good things to say even though it requires a lot of work to get past the way in which they are presented.")

If you're expecting a summary of the books, you'll be disappointed. I dislike summarizing books, even if I have time. Not only am I no good at it, but I believe that if a book is worth reading, it can't be effectively distilled; you must read it for yourself to get the truth it has to offer. "What's the bottom line?" is an inappropriate question for a good book. Herewith, then, not a review—because the library is sending me dunning notices; I am engrossed in a serious battle with Windows and Palm for the soul of my computer; and choir practice starts in two hours—but several random quotations (italicized) and points of commentary. [Correction: choir practice started and ended; the night passed into day; and I'm still not done. Could it really have taken longer to write a more formal review than just these bits and pieces? Well, yes, it could and would have.]

• Corporate policies and procedures are designed with one aim: to harness a man to the plow and make him produce. But the soul refuses to be harnessed…. The soul longs for passion, for freedom, for life…. A man needs to feel the rhythms of the earth; he needs to have in hand something real—the tiller of a boat, a set of reins, the roughness of rope, or simply a shovel. The chief strength of Wild at Heart is its realization that modern society is trapping, taming, and enslaving us. The first sentence of this quotation could be said as much of the school as of the corporation, and it is applicable to women and girls as well as to men and boys. Although the author doesn't quote Wordsworth, I'm sure he would also say, "The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." The chief weakness of the book is its portrayal of both the problems and the solutions as special to the male sex. It is possible that men have been more afflicted than women, but that's no excuse for denying women both the recognition and the remedies. Eldredge has some wonderful suggestions for raising our sons; I'm saddened that some will read his book and not realize they are equally valid—and important—for our daughters.

• If the Eldredges would use words like "some" and "many" instead of "all," their pronouncements would be much more believable. Anyone who tells me that all girls love to wear "twirly" skirts and to preen in front of a mirror, and all women delight in painting their toenails and in wearing jewelry, immediately loses credibility because I know it's not true.

• I've noticed that so often our word to boys is don't. Don't climb on that, don't break anything, don't be so aggressive, don't be so noisy. But God's design—which he placed in boys as the picture of himself—is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate. So true!—and at least as true of girls. Children, male and female, wither under a constant "no" and an artificial taming of their nature. Denied reasonable opportunities to take risks, test their strength, and satisfy their need for adventure, they will either weaken and retreat or seek their adventures in unreasonable, more dangerous ways.

• The Eldredges rightly emphasis the importance of fathers in the lives of both boys and girls, and pins on them the responsibility for delivering both the affirmations that lead us to true personhood and—sadly, more often—the wounds that cripple us.

• [Forgiveness] is not saying, "It didn't matter"; it is not saying, "I probably deserved part of it anyway." Forgiveness says, "It was wrong, it mattered, and I release you."

• Much of the criticism I've seen of Wild at Heart is similar to my original fears, decrying any attempt to return us to a society of chest-beating men and passive, women valued only for their appearance. A cursory reading of the book might support that fear, but Eldredge is clearly not saying that, even if it sounds like it in isolated passages. There is plenty of support here for men as musicians as well as mountain climbers, and for women with careers both within the home and without. There is much about his definitions of masculine and feminine I question, but I also concede the possibility that there is more to what he's getting at than my prejudices currently allow me to respond to.

• We are faking our way through life, sure we will be found out. Violence is a coverup for fear, so is hardworking achievement, so is passivity.

• When the Bible tells us that Christ came to "redeem mankind" it offers a whole lot more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone running a marathon, "It's okay that you've broken your leg. I won't hold that against you. Now finish the race."

• The Big Lie in the church today is that you're nothing more than "a sinner saved by grace." You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ.

• [Eldredge quoting someone he does not name] Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

• Anyone who quotes George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton wins major points in my book. I can't wait to read more of the Chesterton essay from which Eldredge extracted this homage to a homemaker's job: To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.

• I think one reason I found Captivating weaker than Wild at Heart is that the Eldredges have three boys and no girls. They seem to understand boys a lot better than they do girls, though perhaps I feel that way because our children were girls and not boys. Another weakness in both books is that John and Stasi each grew up in fairly dysfunctional families, which helps them identify more with brokenness and healing, but leaves me wondering what they truly know of healthy life situations.

• [Eve] is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch.

• Eve is God's relational specialist given to the world to keep relationship a priority…. [B]ecause of the Trinity, relationship is the most important thing in the universe.

• Wild at Heart's descriptions of who men are, what they've lost, and how they might regain it reminds me very much of The Compleat Mother magazine, which comes from a totally different perspective. Yet its analysis of how modern attitudes toward pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding have stolen from women our birthright, our strength, and our heart is similar to Eldredge's view of society's emasculation of men. Although the authors touch briefly on the uniqueness of a woman's role in giving life, literally and metaphorically, I find their cursory treatment of the subject to be a glaring omission, a gaping hole in their philosophy. The maternal force that wells up in even tiny girls is far more significant and important than swirling skirts and painting toenails!

• This complaint is probably of little consequence to most, though I found it a significant impediment to understanding the books: in both the authors frequently make their points through references to movies and popular songs, which meant they were largely lost on me. What am I to make of a passage like this: "Think of Fran in Strictly Ballroom, or Tulah in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Remember Lottie in Enchanted April, Adrian in Rocky, or Danielle in Ever After." I can only respond, "Huh?" I have heard of Rocky, and even watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, though it didn't help any because I have no memory of who Tulah was. More exasperating, however, are references to movies I know, because then it's clear that the analogies given are based solely on cinematic characters. When Eldredge talks about William Wallace, he's speaking of the character portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, not the real, historical Scottish hero on whom the movie is loosely based. Examples from The Lord of the Rings reference scenes and dialogue that never appeared in the book, and which for all I know are quite contrary to J.R.R. Tolkien's intent. I'm not against fiction, which is the best medium for conveying some truths, and I certainly can be inspired by movies. But both the analogies and the frequent use of them in these books shout to me that the authors and I live in vastly different worlds, which leads me to wonder how applicable their conclusions can be to my life.

• We are in the late stages of the long and vicious war against the human heart…. I am not hawking fear at all; I am speaking honestly about the nature of what is unfolding around us…against us. And until we call the situation what it is, we will not know what to do about it. In fact, this is where many people feel abandoned or betrayed by God. They thought becoming a Christian would somehow end their troubles, or at least reduce them considerably. No one ever told them they were being moved to the front lines, and they seem genuinely shocked at the fact that they've been shot at.

• If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you'd wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he spits on the ground and makes mud and puts that on his eyes. To a third he simply speaks, a fourth he touches, and a fifth he kicks out a demon. There are no formulas with God.

The bottom line (not of the books, but of my reactions): Wild at Heart, and to a lesser extent Captivating, are much better books than a cursory glance could lead one to believe. There is error here, and much confusion, but there are also truths and ideas and revelations that we cannot afford to ignore.

Economists are accustomed to drawing conclusions from statistical studies and aggregations of data. It's hard to reduce economic behavior to controlled, double-blind studies, and laboratory rats aren't necessarily a good model for corporate rats. So it came as no surprise to me that some Cornell University economists thought they might get a handle on the elusive cause of childhood autism by studying rainfall and the availablity of cable television. Working from the assumption that children spend more hours watching television in households that have cable TV, and in locations where high rainfall keeps them indoors, and observing significantly higher rates of autism in communities with a confluence of those conditions, the researchers suggested early television viewing as a possible trigger for autism spectrum disorders.

A little bald-headed bearded man, almost a dwarf, he ran a doctoral seminar in which he projected tables and graphs onto a screen without any legend or explanation. "Look at the figures," he'd say, "and tell me what they tell you." The students would point out this irregularity in a distribution or that periodicity, this pattern or that internal contradiction, and the little man would nod, smile, argue, and get across a great deal about numbers as a grammar without even belaboring the point. Then he'd flash on the screen two series of figures that obviously belonged together; they showed a close correlation, almost one to one, over long time periods. "Clearly," all the students said, "these two series are causally related." "That's what every statistician would say," the little man responded, "but perhaps you can tell me what the relationship could be. This series," pointing to the table on the left, "is the annual herring catch off Newfoundland; and that one," pointing to the right, "is the number of illegitimate children born the same year in North Dakota."

It may be that the Cornell professors' study has produced only a "correlation" of this type. However, the really interesting story is not the report, but the reaction to it. Television promoters and viewers are digusted; parents of autistic children are offended; and the study has been mocked, ridiculed, and satirized. It is not true because it cannot be true. Let someone report a study that indicates one race or sex might be inherently predisposed to excel another in some area, and he will find he has called the Furies down upon his head. Dare to suggest that day care might be harmful to children and your research will be attacked, because such a conclusion hits us in our most vulnerable place. The famed science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, showed no patience for those who base their beliefs on faith rather than on objective science; nonetheless, I heard him say that he believed the universe to be cyclical, ever expanding and contracting, rather than a single expansion after one Big Bang, solely because he did not want to believe that the universe would ever come to an end. Modern American society does not want to believe that television might be harmful; therefore any such suggestion must be laughed out of court.

So, Porter delves into the dark recesses of an accumulation of objects, lifts up an old keyboard, and shouts, "I see a mouse!"

Perfectly logical. Janet had discovered that not one but both of her computer's mice are malfunctioning, and I knew we had a spare one somewhere. Unfortunately, this was the wrong kind of mouse.

It was PS/2 instead of USB.

I try not to make this blog too personal unless I know the person doesn't mind, so the honoree shall remain nameless, but nonetheless I wish to say

Congratulations!

On attaining the lofty and venerable

Half-Century Point

One of Janet's friends from Japan needs as many responses as possible for a survey that will become part of her senior thesis. Please take a moment to help her out. The survey is below; you can respond in a comment, or e-mail me if you'd prefer a less public venue, and I'll send her your answers.

Questionnaire

Name:
Age:
Nationality:

1. Do you believe in the American dream? Why or why not?

2. What is that dream?

3. Do you personally have your own American dream?

4. Who do you think has realized the American dream in this century?

5. What contemporary films do you think express American dreams?

Questionnaire

Name: Linda Wightman
Age: 54
Nationality: Citizen of the U. S. A.

1. Do you believe in the American dream? Why or why not?
Yes. Just because it is not always realized doesn't mean it isn't real.

2. What is that dream?
That because of our freedom, we are able, through self-discipline and hard work, to provide for our children a better life than we have had.

3. Do you personally have your own American dream?
I don't know if you'd call it an American dream, but it's similar to my definition above: I want our children to stand on our shoulders, learn from our successes and our mistakes, and do better for their own children than we have done for them. This goal covers all aspects of life, though it is more spiritual/mental/emotional than material. That is, I'm more interested in the development of their gifts and talents; in their being more Christ-like, loving, giving, joyful, serene, patient, etc; and in their having strong, happy homes and making positive contributions to the world; than I am in their having better paying jobs and nicer houses—though one always wants financial security and stability for one's children. And I have to say I'm quite pleased with them so far!

4. Who do you think has realized the American dream in this century?
Referring to my definition above of the standard American dream, I'd have to say our immigrants, primarily. I think of our landlord when we lived in Boston, a first-generation Irish immigrant who worked incredibly hard and became very successful. When we knew him, he had a large collection of rental property and was probably quite wealthy, but he still worked long hours and did much of the apartment maintenance himself. I think of an acquaintance who as a teenager was one of the Vietnamese "boat people"; he started in this country with nothing and is now a successful businessman and proud U. S. citizen. Second and subsequent generations tend to take for granted what their parents worked so hard for.

In the past few decades, the number of college-bound students has skyrocketed, and so has the number of world-class schools. The demand for an excellent education has created an ever-expanding supply of big and small campuses that provide great academics and first-rate faculties.

So says Newsweek, which procedes to list 25 top schools it calls the "New Ivies," rivaling the traditional powerhouse schools in excellence. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might find your alma mater on that list, which includes Carnegie Mellon, Colby, Kenyon, Vanderbilt, Davidson, RPI, and my own University of Rochester.

That's good news, right? Certainly. But I'm struggling with how to reconcile this with what I hear from friends who are university professors and others recently associated with the college scene, and what I know from my own experience with American education: that the overall quality of students emerging from American high schools has plummeted. Granted, most of my professor friends are not teaching at the top-level schools, but they have contacts throughout academia, and even at the University of Rochester a professor told me that in his view the student body has only recently come back up to the quality it was in the 1970's.

My own observation is that it is harder to get a good pre-college education in America today. I'd venture to say that my father's very ordinary public school education in the 30's left him both more knowledgeable and better prepared to continue learning than today's average high school graduate. But for those who can take advantage of it, whether through private schools, home education, special public school programs, or extraordinary effort, it is possible to acquire an excellent education. Our local public school offers far more than my prestigious, Main Line Philadelphia high school did 40 years ago, though few are the ones who profit as much as they could from it.

So—whence the flood of excellent students fueling the boom in top-notch colleges? Despite the extraordinary pre-college educations achieved by some, I don't believe there are sufficient numbers of superior American students to explain the phenomenon. Take a look around the campuses of our great schools, and I think the answer stands out: foreign students. No matter how much we bemoan the state of higher education today, America's top schools are recognized as superior by many foreign countries, who send us their best and brightest students, far more so than in the past. If this competition makes it more difficult for an American student to get into Harvard, it has several salutary effects, one of which is the elevation of formerly second-tier schools.

Another benefit, and one which is probably even more important, is the greater intermingling of cultures, and the bringing together of students half a world apart, that they may get to know one another as people, as fellow-students, as us rather than an anonymous, faceless them.

Many years ago the folks who were then our medical practicioners strongly urged me to go on hormone replacement therapy drugs, stressing that it was the best thing I could do for my heart, even more effective than losing weight and getting in shape. I declined, having no wish to take any drugs that were not absolutely necessary. Now that HRT has been linked with serious problems—especially for the heart!—I feel justified in my reluctance.

No one has yet suggested I take Fosamax or any other drug that targets osteoporosis, but I foresee it coming, given my age and sex, and find myself skeptical once again. So I was not surprised last week during a visit to the dentist, when I was handed a paper with the impressive title, Bisphosphonate Medications and Your Oral Health, which I was able to find online as well. The article begins with the following warning:

If you use a bisphosphonate medication to prevent or treat osteoporosis (a thinning of the bones) or as part of cancer treatment, you should advise your dentist.

It seems that in rare instances these drugs can cause osteonecrosis of the jaw, severe loss or destruction of the jawbone. No doubt these drugs do much good in many cases, but it's important to understand the risk that something we take to strengthen our bones just might have the opposite effect.

There's nothing like good news in the morning! Stop a moment, go fix yourself a nice cup of tea, then come back and read yet another news story about the benefits of drinking tea.

The results of a double-blind experiment conducted by researchers at the University College of London indicate that drinking black tea helps people recover more quickly from the stresses of life. Volunteers were given either a tea-laced concoction or one that was identical but without the tea ingredients, and subjected to stressful situations. Stress levels, both subjective and measured, rose for all participants, but the tea drinkers recovered significantly faster. For example, their blood cortisol (stress hormone) levels had dropped an average of 47% after 50 minutes, compared with 27% for the non-tea drinkers.

The Lancaster County Amish community released a statement through the state police thanking police and firefighters for controlling all the traffic -- often lethal to Amish riding in slow, black buggies -- that has clogged the rural roads around the schoolhouse this week.

They also asked to be left alone to grieve.

"Please respect our privacy. The media frenzy and the hordes of outside people have not been appreciated. We don't know or understand why this happened, but we do believe God allowed this to happen. For the rest of us, our lives will go on," the statement said.

School administrators there didn't tell the children about the shooting, preferring to let parents decide how best to break the news. (my emphasis)

The small, tight-knit Amish community will bury four of the girls today and a fifth on Friday, said Rita Rhodes, a Mennonite midwife who helped deliver two of the girls.

For the funerals, as is Amish custom, the partitions on the main floor of the families' homes will be removed and two rows of benches -- one for men and one for women -- will be placed inside. The service lasts about two hours, Rhodes said.

Rhodes said the girls' families are despondent but are being helped by family and friends.

"And it's not just that their family and friends are around. It's the faith inside themselves," she said. "Both sets of families expressed to me that they are so glad their daughter is not suffering. ... They're also very thankful that they didn't have to go through any abuse, like the man had intended to do to them. They're really, really thankful.

 

"They have forgiven the shooter, and that's amazing," she said.