John Eldredge - Killing Lions: A Guide Through the Trials Young Men Face

2014 by John Eldredge and Samuel Eldredge

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

The names and identifying characteristics of some individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-0-529-11691-8 (IE)

ISBN: 978-1-400-20671-1 (eBook)

Cataloging-in-Publication Data available through the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-1-4002-0670-4

14 15 16 17 18 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Susie, for believing in me before I did.

Sam

To Sam, Blaine, and Luke, who have cut apath for the young men traveling with them andcoming hard after them. You are the real deal.

Dad

And to the young men whose lives havehelped to shape this book, and to the youngmen whose lives this book will shape.

John and Sam

Contents

Add to this that he was partly a young man of our timethat is, honest by nature, demanding the truth, seeking it and believing in it, and in that belief demanding immediate participation in it with all the strength of his soul; demanding an immediate deed, with an unfailing desire to sacrifice everything for this deed, even life. Although, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplishsuch sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them.

Fyodor Dostoevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov

In the summer of 2012 I found myself one year out of college and suddenly facing a host of questions. When I left the mountains of Colorado for the beaches of California to pursue a college education, I did it without much forethought. I liked the warmer weather, the campus was beautiful, and I needed to get out from under the guy I had been in my parents home. Most of my decisions in those years were made impulsively. Do I like what it has to offer? Okay, Ill do it.

Then I graduated. After the first few months of elation that freedom and being on your own can bring, I found myself floundering. I had jumped into the deep end of the pool that is life in your twenties, and it felt like I was treading water and getting nowhere. Life was getting more complicated by the week, and my ability to choose the right direction for myself was falling apart. Truth is, I was taking on water.

Like most of the young men I know, I want to be self-sufficient. I want to struggle for my own direction and step out in pursuit of my dreams. I want to know it all and never ask for help. This is how most of the guys I know approach young manhoodon their own, never asking for help, wandering through these years, and pretending they are doing better than they really are.

Maybe my fuel ran out faster. Maybe I knew I didnt have to go it alone if I didnt want to. Whatever the reason, I stopped one day and asked my dad if we could talk about how things were going for me. What followed were weekly phone calls where we would dive in to my struggles and seek answers togetherconversations not all men get but, I think, all of us desperately want. This book is a result of those conversations, an opportunity for us to flesh out the process for your benefit.

The story ebbs and flows in and out of the college years, searching for meaningful work, pursuing a young woman, getting married, and chasing my dreams. None of this is fabricatedthe questions are real, the doubts are real, the answers are real. The interaction between father and son is real.

I recently read an article about a young Maasai man who came to the United States to pursue his masters degree and then a doctoral degree. Before arriving in the Western world, the young warrior had killed a lion in order to protect his village and their cattle. This practice is deep in their traditionthat young men must face and defeat a lion with a spear, should it attack their livestock. He had been badly wounded, as one would expect, but after slaying the predator he was regarded as a hero and a leader. I cant imagine any university final or job interview being very daunting for a man with lion scars across his chest.

There was something about that story that spoke to the deep places in my soulsomething about having faced a great challenge, one in which victory was far from certain, yet conquering it, that makes me wonder. If I had prevailed through my own great trial, would I walk taller or carry a greater confidence into this uncertain future? I cant help but think: if I had taken down a lion, life wouldnt feel like Im heading out into the bush with only an iPhone at my side.

And so we offer this book as a confession, an invitation, and a manifesto for a generation.

It is my confession, because I hope that in telling my story you might find you are asking the same questions. It is our invitation to journey with us, to be the son who receives fathering or to be the father who learns what must be spoken to his son. It is a manifesto for the generation that is rising up and knows not how to begin the lion hunt or what face our lions are hiding behind. We believe that with a little help you can be the man you long to bethe man the world needs you to be.

Sam Eldredge
Minneapolis, Minnesota

As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. Im an adventurer, looking for treasure, he said to himself.

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I dont think I told you just how pathetic my first job was. Probably because I was embarrassed.

I was twenty-two years old, the ink still wet on my college diplomafrom a prestigious West Coast school, I might addand I had joined the workforce as a professional... errand runner. Some large companies employ people in positions known as rabbits. (Somehow I get the feeling these folks forgo the business cards.) I found my job on Craigslist under the title Runner and thought to myself, I go running.

Its not that my job was particularly demanding; in fact it was the mind-numbing triviality that I found so disheartening. To give you an example of an average days list for the (very) wealthy family that signed the checks: