Whenever i can, i put everything down and take a walk in the woods to regain my sanity in the peace of nature. I never realised the wonderful significance of this until recently, as its just taken for granted that a little greenery and a breeze helps to clear your head. Where is that a man goes to be at peace? Not just me, but almost all men? They automatically go into the wild, the great outdoors. They don’t sit around talking through their problems or inhabit support groups. And they don’t even realise why.

Because that’s where they came from, and where they belong.

The Bible isn’t a scientific textbook, but its a book i love and adore for its comprehensive narrative about human nature. It’s a spiritual tome comprising thousands of years of human wisdom that illustrates why, not how or when. The story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s fall is there to explain who we are, and why. It tells us about human nature, and helps us to understand the individual natures of men and women. As with all parables and tales, it explains simply what happened in the story and then leaves us to think about it more deeply to arrive at the reasons, implications and wisdom inside.

The story is deceptively simple, but when you start to explore and discuss the detail, it is massively complex. I don’t literally believe Adam and Eve were the first humans implanted on the planet at all, in fact i believe we arrived here through Darwinian evolution and the process of natural selection. For me, that was the mechanism of creation, the perfect design that brought the ecosystem we inhabit into being. The Bible answers the questions of who and why. Like many of the books in it, the story of Adam and Eve is allegorical - it explains who we are in the language that the people of the day understood it in.

We’ve all read and remember the story, but i just want to pick out some chosen bits.

Firstly, Adam was created outside the garden, in the wild. His natural environment and familiar territory was the wild, deadly and deserted wilderness. He was brought into the beautiful garden, not born in it. Eve was made directly from a part of Adam. She was an intrinsic piece of him and he needs her. She was his companion and saviour, but was made in a different place - a place of perfection and beauty which meant that she could never understand the draw of the wild. Eve was the finishing touch of the whole world - the very crown of creation, the most beautiful and wonderful jewel of all eternity. She embodied the beauty, mystery and vulnerability of God.

Most interesting in the whole story is the crux of the drama to unfold - our fall from grace. The serpent held a special hatred of womankind, because she bore the image of the heart of God and gave life. He immediately bypassed Adam and went directly for Eve. The most overlooked and most powerful abstract of the Old Testament is about why Eve chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. Its not the reason you expect, for example her curiosity, but something that all women who followed her suffer with.

Eve succumbed because she was convinced God was hiding something from her and she was being lied to. Her fall was due to insecurity, fear and paranoia. The serpent picked on her worst vulnerability and played to her fears to drive her to know what was being hidden from her. Not even the beauty and splendour of all creation and the immediate prescence of God could convince her otherwise. She was easily deceived, wound up in her fears and as a consequence, ended up desiring to control everything around her.

But Adam’s sin was almost worse - he just stood there next to Eve, elbow to elbow, and did nothing. He didn’t fight or intervene. He denied his own nature and gave into his own paralysis. After his collapse, he hid in shame from giving away his strength. Men will hide behind anything to deny their strength, fearing that something bad will happen if they unleash it. The sad truth is that something bad will happen if they don’t.

Creation is unapologetically wild. We do everything we can every day to minimise and avoid risk. Nature loves to stack up the odds before a great victory is won. Men come alive through exploration and are at home in the wild. We’ve lost track of the nature of a man, what a man’s purpose is, and what a man actually is. Men are designed to be dangerous, fiercesome and wild. Man is strength, woman is beauty.

A man’s strength unleashes a woman’s beauty, and vice versa. His strength allows her to be beautiful, and she finds rest in the shadow of that strength. A woman’s femininity arouses a man’s masculinity. Nature built testosterone into male anatomy for a reason. Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny. A man does not go to a woman to find his strength, he goes to her to offer it. I had to learn this lesson very painfully.

So many women complain about how there do not seem to be any real men left in the world. Well ladies, that’s because you’ve asked them to be women. No man ever dreamt about growing up to be a nice guy, and the favourite word we use with them is “don’t”. If you leave boys alone after taking away their toy weapons, you will consistently see them fashioning weapons out of anything they can find around them.

Women are attracted to the wild man, but as soon as they seduce and obtain him, they set about on a campaign of domestication that ultimately acts to emasculate him. His resistance makes her resent him, but she admires his strength. We put a man in a cage for the same reason we put a lion in a cage - because he is dangerous. But we need men to be dangerous, and to be true to their design. You don’t make anything safe my making it dull, you wield it like a skilled swordsman.

Yes, men also need to be tender. But they need to know when to be strong. Ironically its not a matter of feminine emotional gluttony, more a case of context. Indeed, many girls i know say that the passive behaviour of the men they love often drives them to deliberately start arguments with them, just to stir up that strength because they need and crave it. There are few occasions when you should ever fear a man’s strength or anger - when it is being acted out as unjustified and unwarranted abuse, and when you’re doing something to betray him that would arouse it with good reason.

Masculinity is bestowed from father to son, or through the company of other men. It cannot be learned. Most cultures believe that manhood is attained through ritual and effort. In some African tribes, you are not considered a man until you have killed a lion. By my age 50 years ago, most men had been drilled by national service and killed dozens of others from serving in a war. The nearest we get to that nowadays is a protest march or scrap on the corner of the road outside the pub.

They say every man needs 3 things: a) A battle to fight. A man is fierce, powerful and extremely dangerous. It is his design. There is something fiercesome and wild in the heart of every man. b) An adventure to live. An adventure requires something of us; it puts us to the test, and requires mystery (which is usually too frightening in itself). The trouble is we don’t ever think we’re up to it and so can’t answer our most basic question of whether we are good enough , and c) A beauty to rescue. There is nothing so inspiring to a man as a beautiful woman. Every man dreams of being a hero to the woman he loves, and we take pictures of our gal to keep in our pockets when we are cleaning guns in the trenches.

“The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male… to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes of her own delightfulness.”

C.S. Lewis

Women want to be fought for; to be pursued; to be cherished; to be a priority to someone. They want an adventure to share and be part of; something that is greater than themselves. They want beauty to unveil, truly to be the beauty and to be delighted in. They need to know they are exquisite, exotic and chosen. If a woman is living out their true design they will be valiant, vulnerable and scandalous. They are build to attract and seduce.

Many women hide their beauty in fear or anger, and use it to secure their place in the world - they abuse their power and attack the ones they fear in order to empower themselves. If you don’t wanted to be treated like a sex object, stop acting like one. If you’re obsessed with looks, you’ll be treated as a fake and superficial bimbo. Either way, no man will respect you and every time you’ll be left desolate. If you want to be pursued, you have to let him know he will get their in the end to make him fight. Opening up the jealousy box is a very quick way to see a man’s violently territorial nature in full swing; the key word being “territorial”, which implies ownership of an object. Act like a person, not a thing playing games, and you will be treated as one in return.

You only have to see all the works of art, literature and most dramatically, wars that have been fought for and on behalf of women. Women may live their lives for the men they love, but men worship the female species.

“The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of a man.”

William Blake

But their crucial mistake is that they hesitate in fighting for the one they love - the princess they long to rescue just stays in the tower. Men are designed intrinsically to be heroic and give our lives for another as that is what the world needs, but we fail and ask questions before we risk. Life is a matter of risk, and the risk is what gives the magic of the romance. No woman wakes up definitely not wanting to be swept off their feet, and is it that which man does best. Daring, bold and audacious madness is what snares the girl, and commands her.

And if you are male and reading this think its antiquated, anachronistic crap, (or sexist patriarchal rhetoric) then you’re a pussywhipped metrosexual who desperately needs to get a pair of balls . The nature of masculinity is fiercesome and terrifying, and its meant to be that way. When someone threatens a person you love, an animal attacks you, or you are being shot at in a hostile combat area, you get to feel your animalistic nature and all your intellectualising counts for, and means absolutely nothing. You might even spill your latte, god forbid.

We are born into a world already at war and built to fight it in. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate. Explore, build, conquer. This is a man’s purpose, his mission, and his design. Don’t apologise, make excuses or try to make anyone feel more comfortable - let them feel the weight of who you are. This is what man is.