Well, I've finished reading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. I've linked to some of the bad reviews on Amazon which says better than I could some of the problems with it. I read it because it was recommended to me by my brother, but it is not my cup of tea.

However, I did find as I read it that there were occasional points where I didn't want to argue with the author. In particular, as he wraps up the book he writes about how men should live now that he's helped them discover their masculinity (oh, please!), with God's help, of course. Among the things he wrote, he talked about how men (I keep wanting to write "people," but of course Mr. Eldredge is writing primarily to men, real men, men who are actually Wild at Heart, even if they hadn't realized it before) should live full and exciting lives, lives filled with love for others (especially for their extremely feminine wives whose greatest joy is to be beautiful for their oh so masculine husbands). While I found his gender sterotyping offensive and simplistic, it struck me that Bishop Spong wants people to lead full lives where they love wastefully. Coming from completely different world views and understandings of God, scripture, and people, both of these authors wound up giving very similar advice about how people should live their lives. It was startling to find this similarity between these two very different authors. Maybe my brother and I can find common ground yet.