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

Well, welcome to the Hard Man Podcast. I am your host Eric Khan, and in today's

episode I'm going to be reviewing John Eldridge's book Wild at Heart.

Now I get a lot of questions about this book,

especially in regard to the Hard Men Podcast,

because it does deal with masculinity, feminization in the church, and a lot of the themes that we talk about in this show.

And the book is subtitle, Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul, and it was first published in 2001 and then again in 2010 with a revised and expanded edition

in which John Eldridge attempts to clean up some of the objections that were raised after the first printing.

Now the book made it to the New York Times Best Seller list and has been very popular among many men within the church.

In the book Eldridge attempts to do really two main things.

First he points to the problem within the church.

This problem is he says is why men are so neutered, lifeless, and apathetic.

And then second, he presents his solution.

So we're going to delve into those two areas. he presents his solution.

So we're going to delve into those two areas in just a minute and I'm going to examine them in depth. But the first thing I want to do is to address John Eldridge's critics.

So first of all, while some people received it well,

including Chuck Swindle, who called it, quote, the best most insightful book I have read in at least the last five years, Eldridge's book also drew a lot of ire from both egalitarian and then more

conservative constituencies within the church and within the culture.

Now it's not all that surprising that Eldridge's book has drawn its fair share of haters,

especially in our gender-neutered society.

On the one hand, you had the haters, the leftist feminist types, who disliked the book because

it called men back to what they called outdated traditional

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