You're listening to the Hard Men Podcast, reclaiming biblical masculinity in a world of softness.

Well welcome to the Hard Man Podcast. I am your host Eric Kahn. It has been a hot minute since we've had a podcast, so I appreciate everyone's patience and I think that

you'll be excited for this episode. In this episode I want to talk about one of the

core struggles that lies at the heart of masculinity.

And that is the tension between a longing for adventure, for warfare, for exploration of the vast world out there on the one hand and the desire for

home place and family on the other. I'm calling this the tension between wildness and rootedness and I believe it's at the

core and heart of many men's struggles. So on the first hand it's very obvious that men are hardwired for

wildness. Without epic battles and arduous journeys, without daunting adventures,

men easily grow stagnant, they grow bored and they grow listless.

And so from the time they are boys, manly souls cry out for dangerous daunting situations in which to

test themselves. There is a need to wrestle with the wildness, things that John

Muir and Teddy Roosevelt or perhaps the old man in the

old man in the sea, those were the things they were doing and then they came

out victorious on the other side. They were men tested and proven true and in the

heart of men there is a desire for this kind of test which can only happen in

wildness and in adventure.

Now in the biblical record God had a way of raising up his chosen men from the wilderness.

As men like David and Moses, Abraham and Jacob, and even Jesus Christ himself, well they all went to the

mountain. They went to the wild places with the wild beasts, and they wrestled with those

wild places and beasts and conquered.

Through these experiences they were transformed in character,

in their tenacity and in their endurance.

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