Right before I turned 25, I was in Malawi, and the terrorist group Boko Haram had just taken 300 girls from a school in Nigeria. I was so mad about what had happened that I decided I was going to go there and find a way to help. I went on a run one day, to try and blow off some steam. A few miles in, something hit me. God spoke to me; it wasn’t an audible booming voice, but it might as well have been a megaphone the way it resonated in my mind and heart.

I have always loved stories and have studied storytelling for years. As a kid, I read about men who lived incredible adventures and longed to discover the adventure that I would live. I wanted to be one of those great men who stood up to injustice, dared to explore the unknown, challenged the impossible, built an empire, or discovered some secret wisdom. As I got older, I sometimes feared there would be no great adventure for me. I refused, however, to accept ordinary. I didn’t want the white picket fence house, a nice car, and a normal job. The last thing I wanted was ordinary, uneventful. I wanted my life to be a great story. 

I have never been good at doing what I am supposed to do. Because of that, I have caught a lot of flak over the years from the “keepers of order.” It seems that most people want a clear outline of how they are expected to behave, the more detail the better. If you give me a list of things to do I will struggle, but if you give me an objective to achieve, I come alive. In my early 20’s I found myself face-to-face with one of the most confusing concepts surrounding spiritual life. 

The greatest battle each of us must face is the battle to defeat ourselves. The world we have been baked in our entire lives tells us that we deserve to have what we want when we want it. The average person is hit with 5-10K marketing messages a day. Most of them we don’t even notice because of how many are coming at us, we have developed selective attention. So marketers work harder and harder to make us notice theirs amidst the sea of ads floating past our subconscious every day. And yet many of them do work, and most of them are telling us what we want to hear. Some version of the same old lie that we have been drawn to for all of human history. “You deserve to have what you want when you want it.”

As people who live in the information age, we are used to being able to find answers to almost any questions we have. Finding these answers has gotten infinitely easier over just the last 50 years. My parents had libraries and encyclopedias when they were in high school, and now we have AI in our pockets searching the far reaches of human knowledge and providing us with almost instant answers in a format of our choosing. Rewind the clock of human civilization a couple of hundred years, and access to books and libraries was unthinkable for most people. In a relatively short period of time, we have experienced an overwhelming surge in our access to information. We want clear answers to every question we have, and we want it right now. The problem with this expectation is that it predisposes us to be unable to find the answers to the most important questions in our lives.

Larry Mills is a mentor of mine and a master at asking challenging questions that lead to deep thinking and changed lives. When people come to him with their frustrations and challenges, he often asks, “Is this situation life-threatening or ego-threatening?” It turns out most challenges we face in life are not life-threatening. Usually, when we are frustrated, disappointed, angry, or let down, it is because our ego is threatened. This simple but profound question has led me to see that most of what I see as suffering is really just the suffering and discomfort of my pride and ego. 

A year and a half ago, I began studying male initiation because I wanted to understand how I could be intentional about raising my boys. Since then, I have read lots of books, talked to lots of people, and begun writing what I have learned into a simple and applicable model to guide how I raise my boys. Here is an overview of what I learned and some of the most important principles. 

Every person experiences wounding, some have the courage to heal. 

Part of the myth of the strong man is the belief that a man is not weak, and therefore, he doesn’t need to heal spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I believe that everyone needs healing because everyone has been hurt. Some are small wounds, like things said to you that led you to feel shame and insecurity. Others are massive wounds that come from what other people have done to you and how it made you view yourself. Whether our wounds are large or small, they perpetuate lies in our minds that keep us from who we were created to be and the relationship with God we were made for. 

Sixteen years ago, I began praying some courageous prayers. At the time, I didn’t really have an idea where they would take me or what they would require of me. Looking back, I can see how God has answered those prayers, even if His answers and mine looked very different. I think we all need to be willing to pray prayers that make us very uncomfortable. 

Every society is built on stories that tell people who they are, where they come from, and what to expect from life. Most of the stories our modern culture is built on are lies. Some are fictional works of art, and others are true stories that have been retold through our modern worldview and lost their deeper meaning. Kids and young adults now grow up on a diet of almost all fictional stories that celebrate the superhero, the genius, the explorer, and the warrior. Most of our modern cultural stories center around a main character, a hero who must overcome all odds to defeat some evil and protect something good. 

In this note I explore the narrative structure that has captivated human hearts and minds for all of recorded history, the monomyth.