A Deeper Magic

There is another phrase from the Chronicles of Narnia that I feel applies to this whole John Eldredge, "Wild at Heart" discussion.

Just as an explanation, when the Hero, Aslan the Lion, defeats the Snow Queen He does it by applying a "Deeper Magic" than the magic the Snow Queen knows.

What I love about John Eldredge's book, "Wild at Heart" and what Eldredge is trying to do is to heal the deep wounds of the hearts of men. Now, I'm sure most of you know that many men would rather jab their eye repeatedly with a sharp object than to talk about their feelings. Yet, Eldredge is able to open up his heart and get to the heart of many men through his book. So, in the end, this is what I love about "Wild at Heart".

Some of the negative reviews that I have read about "Wild at Heart" accuse Eldredge of being 'shallow'. I could not disagree more. The things of the soul are very deep and hidden from view. "Wild at Heart" deals with the deep places of a man's heart and the deep wounds that a man can acquire as a boy, specifically from his father. And, though he never uses the phrase from the Narnia books, Eldredge appeals to a "deeper magic" than even the level of the soul. He points men to draw on the deeper things of the Spirit and get their healing from God their heavenly Father.

As a person who also looks to the Father, the Spirit, and to Jesus as the Healer, the over all message of Wild at Heart is much appreciated.

The short comings are that Eldredge focuses a bit much on the wounds that a father gives to the neglect of other wounds, like from a mother, or from culture. There are so many things that can wound a child. It can be one or both parents. It can be passed down curses or family dynamics. It can be negative ancestral influences. It can be cultural influences.

My point is this. When a child is conceived and given birth to, there is much foundation building in the early part of the child's life. Anywhere along the way, things can be missed or abuses can be committed. What the child should have been given, in the way of development was withheld. Also what the child might have developed naturally, if just given a stable environment, can be destroyed by someone or something in the child's surroundings.

Anyway, whatever goes on that wounds or even destroys the child, this is a deep wound in a deep place of who the child is. It takes something deep to reach that soul realm. The soul is very deep. But there is "a deeper magic still" that is found in the spirit realm.

And we are encouraged in the Bible to look at and trust in that which is deep an not readily seen.

2 Corinthians 4:8 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds (ages) were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Sometimes going deeper is intimidating or even frightening. But I believe in the deeper things of the Spirit.

A Window Into My Soul

I have an Internet persona and keep my personal life very private. But for the sake of explaining the appeal of Wild At Heart to me personally, let me tell you about myself.

Even though I now live in the fertile prairies of the Heartland, I was not born here. I was born in one of the Plains states. It is rugged and wild country that I love. And most people not from that country have a hard time appreciating the beautiful, untamed, desolation of that area. John Eldredge is also from the wild country in Colorado. So when he described chasing a deer over that country, it set my heart on fire and made me remember my roots. They are roots that my friends from the Heartland, or the South, or the East Coast don't understand. My ancestors cut out an existence in those unforgiving plains. They went through the Dust Bowl for Pete's sake. They were strong and stoic and sometimes I get impatient with the spoiled heartland dwellers who have only known green and tamed terrain.

In my next post I'm going to link a Rich Mullin's song about the beauty of the plains. One of the lines goes like this, "How the Lord takes by its corners this old world and shakes us forward and shakes us free to run wild with the hope that this thirst will not last long that it will soon drown in a song not sung in vain." The state I was born in is listed in this song.

Rich was an anomaly. A Quaker boy born in the green, moist and tame Heartland wouldn't normally have an attraction to the desolate plains. But Rich did. He appreciated it and he wrote a song about it and about praising God that makes my heart sing. Funny. Other people are not nearly as stirred by that song as I still am.

Further back in my past, my family is from Denmark. Another rugged and desolate place of warriors and Vikings. Their men weren't just fierce, so were their women. They had to be to survive. I read a book that was made into a movie call "The Thirteenth Warrior" and was amazed at the feeling of affinity I had with some of the Viking thought processes. In the next post, along with the Rich Mullins link, I'll link an ancient sounding song with images from the old country which also touches a terrible deep place in me.

Why am I telling you this? I'm explaining the structures in my life, set up by my culture and my heritage that are not dissimilar to the structures in John Eldredge's life. But where he tries to make these structures into Biblical foundations, I know better. They are extra-biblical. This doesn't make them bad. I'm proud of my heritage. But these foundations are not Biblical. And they are not sturdy foundations to build a house of wild, spiritual, freedom on. The word of God is quick and active and sharper than any two edged sword and is able to cut between the soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12).

Hopefully, after the post with the song links, I can present Bible verses that promise us freedom. These verses ARE a firm foundation and are not someone else's culture and perspective. They are a spiritual foundation and aren't given to us to cancel out other people's cultural influences.

My Main Issue with "Wild at Heart"

As I mention in my 4/1/11 post, I read a book called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. There is a link in the 4/1/11 post to the book on Amazon.

I mentioned that Wild at Heart has been used by men like Mark Driscoll to form a religion giving emense freedom to men while continueing to supress women in a puritianical strangle hold. And I speak of my frustration with such men.

But even knowing that John Eldredge is the author of a book that other men have abused for their own personal gain, I still can't hate Eldredge. As I read his book, I read what came from his heart. He wanted people to be free, men and women. And he understood at least one thing. If men aren't free, they sure as heck aren't going to allow their women to be free. Whatever degree of bondage men are under, they will most likely turn and place their women under worse bondage.

Even so, I disagree with the foundation of sand Eldredge laid for his doctrinal house. He made the claim that since man was made outside the garden, he was fundamentally wild and free. Women, however, were made INSIDE the garden and therefore were fundamentally domesticated.

This is pure speculation and amounts to nothing more than shifting sands and I'd like to address the error with actual scripture.

When God brought Eve to Adam, he wasn't amazed at their differences or in the different places they were created. What he said was, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called Woman Because this one has been taken out of Man." (Genesis 2:23)

Adam gloried in their similarities, not their differences. He majored on how much alike and a part of him she was, not in the cute or annoying little things about her that made her different. He didn't jump up and down and start defining and building a box or role for her. God brought him a companion, one like him that he could be with.

The fall completely broke this so that when God confronted him, he turned on this one made like him and betrayed her in front of both God and her. It was as though he betrayed himself. And the drive to push her away and make her different, foreign and less continues to this day.

This is an Old Testament proof against Eldredge's premise. I also have a New Testament proof.

Yearning for Freedom

Once a person embraces the rigid structures of religion, he/she wilts under its weight and wonders if this is all there is.

Puritanical religion doesn't just hurt women, it also hurts men so men look for a way to get out from under the burden.

One of the latest moves among men is led by a man who wrote the book, Wild at Heart.

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Heart-Discovering-Secret-Mans/dp/0785268839


Now I read Wild at Heart and enjoyed it and took the message to heart for myself, that I also needed to be wild and free in the Lord and that it wasn't just limited to men, even though the author implied that it was men who needed to let loose their spiritual wild side, not women. But I hold no grudge toward the author. Not when his book was used to help me shake off some false structure that had attached itself to me.

However, I do hold a grudge towards certain preachers that have taken the Wild at Heart message, ran with it and excluded women from the freedom they feel men need to walk in.

Mark Driscoll is just such a preacher. While he teaches that it's okay for men to burp and fart and cuss and drink beer and a whole lot of other wild manly things, he still holds women to a structured, religious oppression and even calls on them to be saved by fulfilling a role.

Mark Driscoll Quote: "Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your roll in the scripture."

Through slight of hand, men like Driscoll allow themselves some Dionysian freedom from Apollonian over structure while making sure their women remain under rigid structure and control in order to fulfill the needs, wants, and desires of men. While the men get some level of freedom, women continue to wilt under puritanical control.

Actually, there is one place that Mark pushes for Dionysian freedom to the hurt of women, as my friend Jane pointed out. One place and one place only. This place is in the bedroom where she must throw off all inhibitions and change from a mild and meek mouse and turn into a nymphomaniac porn star. All for the sake of satisfying men and keeping them from straying off to real porn stars.

So, here is the dynamic of Apollonian and Dionysian being used and manipulated so that the man gets the best benefits of both principles and the woman must conform to the structures men create for them.

This building of structures on the sand of human thinking is hurting and even destroying many. This is why it is needful to see the false structures and false dynamics for what they are. Human, man made, and false.

We have looked at a couple of overviews of Apollonian/Dionysian thought and structure. I hope to look at a few specific arguments used against women.

What I Said Was...

Since my last Blogger post is all messed up, I thought I'd repeat something here that is at the end of the previous crunched together post.

Apollonian is always about light, structure, order, and is always portrayed as male. Dionysian can be chaos and negative. Or it can be freedom from over structured repression making it good. And even though Dionysian is a man, he had some 'feminine qualities.

I've seen people claiming that anarchy is good and believe what they mean is freedom from oppressive rule. Dionysian can also be portrayed as nature loving and happy dancing out in the forest with flower garlands on their heads. This is also generally viewed as positive but can also be viewed as negative.

I'm saying all this to point out that Apollonian/Dionysian can be portrayed as order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structured/freestyle or stiff/creative or any other number of things. It really is all quite squishy and mailable in the hands of whoever wants to tell the story or use it for their own purposes.

And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these constructs aren't necessarily bad. But they are not suitable foundations for building doctrine. And this is what I want to get into in future posts.

Order vs Chaos Recap

We've talked about order vs chaos here and I'd like to move on to more specific and general examples, but first feel the need to pull a couple things together and clarify something in particular.

We mentioned in the March 4th post the story of Job and how his friends tried to make sense of a situation that doesn't make sense and pointed out that it is human nature to try to do this. The story of Job happened long before the Greeks came along with their Apollo and Dionysus and even longer ago than when the terms and philosophy of Apollonian and Dionysian were coined by Nietzsche in the late 1800s.

Nietzsche was only labeling what he saw as the push and pull of the opposing forces that people have always seen like in Job's case. (We talked about the Philosophy in the March 7th post.)

We also compare the Apollonian and Dionysian concept to the concept of yin and yang in our March 12 th post. We talked about how sometimes good and bad are attributed to Apollonian or Dionysian or both or how they can just sort of balance each other and how this is pretty arbitrary and left to the discretion of the one who applies it.

One other thing I want to bring up is that, whereas Apollonian is nearly always about light and structure, Dionysian can be about either chaos and somewhat negative, or about freedom from restriction and even tyranny and this is always good. I've seen some people claim that anarchy is good, and it appears that what those people want is freedom from oppression.

Dionysian is also portrayed as nature loving, peace loving, all happy and dancing out in the forest with garlands on their heads. This is also viewed, generally, as positive. But just as much, it can be viewed as negative. I guess what I'm saying is that is it a bit mixed up. Apollonian/Dionysian can be viewed as, order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structure/freestyle or any other number of things. And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these things don't have to be viewed as anything more than description or light categorizing. But these thought processes are not a foundation on which to build doctrine. And this is what I'm wanting to deal with a bit in future posts.

Order/Chaos vs Yin/Yang

There are both differences and similarities between Apollonian/Dionysian and Yin/Yang. They both deal with opposing forces and are methods of trying to explain how this world works.

But the differences are bigger than the similarities, in my opinion.

First of all, the definition or concept of Apollonian/Dionysian is far more squishy than Yin/Yang. Whereas Apollonian/Dionysian can work in harmony, it often doesn't. Yin/Yang always does.


Second, in Yin/Yang, Yang is seen as active and Yin is seen as passive. But in Apollonian/Dionysian, neither is passive, both are very active forces.

The reason I bring this up is because our culture is influenced by both and they may overlap, but they are not the same. In my opinion, Yin/Yang is the more honest and steady of the two with very specific and stable definitions.

But even so, my main point of going down this road is to point out that these are HUMAN constructs and thought patterns. They are systems created by flawed humans to help them deal with a fallen world. They are not biblical. They are shifting sands offering no solid foothold.

Though we can acknowledge the thought patterns and even appreciate art and music concerning the human condition that use these elements to paint a picture, as Christians, we are not to place our trust in these elements.

We have a solid Rock, Jesus Christ, on which to built our spiritual home. All other ground is sinking sand.

Knowing this and seeing the Apollonian and Dionysian infiltrate church thinking is what has prompted me to bring this to the attention of others which is what I hope to do in the next few weeks.


(Link to Wikipedia for definition of Yin/Yang just FYI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang