You Need to Be Fighting
Will you answer the call?
It’s been years since I read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, a book which came to me when I was very young and desperately in need for guidance.
I had begun reading about self-improvement and masculinity from pagan or atheist authors, so Wild at Heart was the very first book I encountered that spoke about masculinity from a Christian perspective. While the other books had some valuable information in them, they lacked the clear moral code and the structure of values that Christianity provides, and thus were incomplete.
One of the main points in Eldredge’s book is man’s innate need to be struggling against something, to be perpetually engaged in fighting for a worthy cause:
A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family.
John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
It’s undeniable that we live comfortable lives. Trapped by the ease of modernity, man is now too able to exist without struggle, to walk through life without an enemy and to wake up every day without a burning purpose to drive him forward.
It’s an epidemic of comfort, a comfort so overbearing that it can be enslaving, keeping our hearts tied, numbed, and unwilling to go forth into the unknown and take the risks necessary to make life purposeful and joyful.
The problem is that even though it’s a good thing that we’ve made life easier and safer, we’ve forgotten that a man’s heart —as Eldredge says—, desperately longs for a battle to fight. Call it a cause, call it a mission, or call it whatever you want, the point remains the same: a life of ease and comfort, a life in which there’s no enemy to beat, no reason to fight, or no rock to roll up the hill is a life that will crush your masculine spirit and leave you thirsting for something more.
I was surprised to find out that Nietzsche points to this same topic —from a different perspective, of course— in Beyond Good and Evil:
Maybe Eldredge’s view is more hopeful, and Nietzsche’s more nihilistic and hopeless, but they both arrive at a similar conclusion: a battle to fight is an essential component of a healthy masculine heart.
And isn’t it true that if there’s no enemy outside the gates, a man will find an enemy inside his city?
Isn’t it true that we have a heart that is built for battle, and if we fail to find a battle in the outside world, we’ll start fighting against ourselves?
You desperately need a cause to fight for, and if it’s not a worthy cause, you’ll make your own demons just so you have something to fight against.
Both Nietzsche’s and Eldredge words should resonate in the depths of your soul, and make you question the current state of your life:
Have you found a cause worth living and dying for?
Have you given your heart the worthy battle it needs to thrive?
Have you chosen to honor God by fighting for a cause that glorifies Him?
If not, you have work to do. Maybe you’ll find that elusive purpose in truly committing to fight against your own sin first, so you can shift your focus outwards after you’ve successfully, through God’s grace, purified the most obvious sins that still plague you.
Maybe the first battle you’ll fight is the battle against the snares of the devil in your own personal life.
Maybe then you can look outside of yourself, analyze the talents God’s given you, and find ways in which those talents could be useful to the world. You can understand your natural strengths and find a cause that resonates with your heart, and make the courageous decision to dedicate your life to it.
Because fighting is, at the end of the day, a choice that you can make or fail to make. You can choose to answer the call of your heart, or you can cowardly refuse it and silence it with cheap entertainment, video games, shallow relationships, junk food and comfort.
What will you do?
Every man is a warrior inside. But the choice to fight is his own.
John Eldredge
In Christ,
Juan — Simple Man
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One of your more impactful essays to date!
I believe this is on topic.
We have an animal rescue/welfare organization. Means we have a lot of dogs and cats in our home, always have. Taking care of these animals, especially when they become ill is a lot of work. Often, I can become bitter after stepping in vomit or there is cat pee on my desk...and I'll think unkind thoughts...Two days ago we had to euthanize two older, sick cats.
We share a note about how breakfast went. I'm up hours before my wife and do my chores before leaving the house.
Yesterday, the day after we lost those two, I wrote in the note, "Breakfast was smooth. No problems...and now I recognize that is the problem."
Love is an action verb, not a feeling. Work with purpose, even if others disagree or dismiss or minimize one's purpose/goal--is the point. There is no there there--beyond difficulty and strife--that is the point. That is when we know we're alive.
bsn