|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 | ||||||||
 | ||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
Lazy At Heart
28 October 2003There's a bestselling book out there advising men to reclaim their masculine souls from the clutches of a feminized culture, to connect with their hunter hearts, to "pursue beauty" by pursuing women (some might call that "stalking") and to do all of this for Jesus — whom, the author writes, wants fellas to ask not WWJD, but rather, What Would Maximus — The Gladiator — Do? The book is called Wild At Heart, by John Eldgredge, and The Toledo Blade is on the story — by promoting the book so shamelessly The Revealer almost wonders whether money changed hands. The paper's religion editor, David Yonke, doesn't so much profile Eldredge as channel him, presenting theology as a priori fact, offering no dissenting views, and dismissing opposing viewpoints by tautologically reporting that Eldrege disagrees with them. Wild At Heart is a genuine phenomonon — 1 million copies sold to date, and the book is gaining in popularity — which means that it deserves a more careful look. At Christian Communicators Worldwide, Daryl Wingerd, a former L.A. deputy sheriff, goes mano a mano with Eldrege and concludes that the he's a theological wimp . You don't have to agree with Wingerd's theology — or Eldredge's lack of theology — to realize that what's missing from the Blade's ostensibly secular report is the religious context for Eldredge's Christian macho.
|
|
