A reader has expressed concern over my interpretation of Eldredge’s You Have What It Takes, expressed in my recent article “Imagine Your Children.” Though my article is primarily focused on redemptively engaging the fears and frustration of parenting, not in debating or critiquing Eldredge, below I have offered a clearer interpretation of what I consider to be the weaknesses of Eldredge’s parenting approach.
John Eldredge has some very true and very good things to say about the nature of relationships and some of the essentials of masculinity and femininity. However, where I take issue with him, in particular, is his booklet on fatherhood called You Have What it Takes. In chapter one he clearly makes the point that what every boy asks and needs answered by his father is: “Do I have what it takes?” (p. 3,4). His solution is stated very straightforwardly in chapter three: “I’m going to make fathering very simple: answer your child’s question. Answer, “Yes you have what it takes…” (9). He then extends this same answer to the challenges of parenting in chapter six, where he notes that many father find it hard to affirm their children due to a wound in their past (which I do not disagree with).
My contention, however, is that what fathers and children need most is not affirmation–“you have what it takes.” John Eldredge perceives personal wounds as an obstacle to the primary task of validating their children: “But the fact remains–most fathers find it hard to validate their children because they have a wound in their soul.” In what follows in pages 33-39, Eldredge outlines the steps to healing our personal wounds through Jesus’ heart-restoring ministry: 1) give Jesus permission to heal all your broken places (33) 2) Grieve your loss (34) and 3) “let God love you” (34-37) and 4) “ask God to father you and tell you what he thinks of you.”
While I thoroughly rejoice in Christ’s ability to heal our hearts, I do not believe that Jesus heart-restoring ministry was for the purpose of telling our sons they have what it takes. Eldredge presents men–sons and fathers–as passive, wounded people who are not really responsible for any of their wounds or for how they may have sinfully nursed those wounds throughout their lives. Men often take a very active, often wound-ing path of worldly masculinity. For instance, a child does not receive the affirmation he desires from a father in sports, so he presses onto professional sports in pride, anger and unsportsmanlike like conduct. In so doing, he rips his family apart, breaks rules against using performance-enhancing drugs, polarizes team members, heaps dishonor on the sport, and mocks the Giver of his abilities. These things are not merely the result of a passive, wounded man; they issue from an active, evil, self-promoting, God-belittling, wound-inflicting heart.
Scripture consistently uses active, aggressive wording and imagery to describe the heart of man: engaged in evil deeds (Col 1:21), indulging in the lusts of the flesh (Eph. 2:3), haters of God (Rom 1:30). Before receiving God’s restoring love in Christ, this heart needs to repent, confess sin, and ask God for forgiveness for displacing God from the center of the universe and erecting his own image in God’s place. Eldredge never mentions personal repentance as a step in the healing process. His four steps assume a passive, un-responsible heart that simply needs healing. This is not the whole gospel applied to the whole of the issue. Which is precisely why I state in my article: “To be sure, Eldredge directs the wounded parent to the healing Christ but only to get us back on track in the task of child affirmation.” I recognize that Eldredge points us to Christ but believe he does so incompletely and for the wrong reasons.
In short, Christ did not die to heal passive, wounded hearts in order to release them into man-centered, child affirming parents. Rather, he died to repair the damage done to his glory by God-belittling, man-promoting, sinfully active, wound-inflicting men. Jesus did not die to make us better parents or fathers. He died in order to glorify the riches of his grace for his rebellious people. He died to make worshippers out of wretches. This is what our children need to know. They do not have what it takes. They were born with evil, rebellious hearts, but God in his great grace gave his Son to make us into children who will enjoy and glorify God for God. This is the foundation of fatherhood