“I don’t like John Wayne. He always played the same part in every movie.”
Living in Texas at the time, I didn’t realize the magnitude of my opinion. But I found out very quickly.
In small-town Texas, John Wayne was not just some actor of the past; he was a man who exhibited the very ideals of what a Western man should be. He was the ideal cowboy. The ideal of the male gender. And, rumor has it, the ideal candidate for any political position in the state—dead or alive.
As with many, masculinity and manhood were not topics to be discussed here but examples to emulate. And this example was illustrated in all of Wayne’s movies…even if it was the same part played: the strong arm of a sheriff, the strong arm of a military general, the strong arm of a rancher, and even the strong arm of a man now in charge of a little girl who wasn’t his own. (See: True Grit – the only Wayne movie I think I have ever seen in its entirety.)
My point is not to argue the accolades of John Wayne but to get to the heart of what masculinity truly is. Truth be told the generation that views Wayne as the ideal man is slowly dying off only to be replaced with another model.
As with every held ideal of the past, the present generations like to swing the pendulum the other direction. And the ideal of manlihood is certainly no exception.
The model man no longer wears a cowboy hat and boots but skinny jeans and a fedora. No longer riding a horse but an environmental-friendly Prius. And no longer is the ideal modeled by a strong arm but a soft shoulder.
Where once the ideal was encapsulated with traits such as leadership, toughness, and unwavering principles in the face of the cruelest villains. Now the traits being held in manly esteem are compassion, gentleness, and an unlimited love for puppies.
That might be a slight stretch but take the 2020 Presidential Election for an example. Do you remember the characterizations of our choices that year between Republican candidate and incumbent, Donald Trump, and Democratic candidate and current president, Joe Biden? The argument was not typically centered on their diverse policy platforms but on their different personalities.
Donald Trump was characterized as a “quick-triggered, feud-dueling, mean Tweeter.” Whereas Joe Biden was carefully portrayed in contrast as a “soft-spoken, grandfatherly unifier.” These descriptive comparisons are not brought out to argue their accuracy specifically but to explore the underlying point when it comes to the two competing ideals of masculinity behind them.
Are the choices of manlihood in our day-and-age truly between these two—a strong arm and a soft shoulder? The answer, I firmly believe, is no.
As with most black-and-white characterizations, there is a middle ground when it comes to the ideal display of masculinity also. And the answer is it comes with both.
True masculinity is not exemplified fully in either one of these one-dimensional examples. The key to being the ideal man is to being like the fullest example we have of such, and, as with most things, that example is Jesus.
A strong arm without a soft shoulder of compassion might give you strong leadership in a time of war but will also present an unmovable force in a time of peace when compromise is not only desired but sometimes necessary for that peace to endure. On the other hand (or arm), a soft shoulder in the time of peace will give you that compromise necessary to help that time to remain but when it breaks down to conflict there is no decisive leadership to be found.
Obviously, I am over-simplifying and characterizing the very things I argued against earlier, but I hope the point is clear: Jesus was both.
In the time He was faced with a woman caught in adultery in John 8, Jesus mutually displayed both of these. He exhibited a strong arm of decisiveness as He wrote on the ground to dissuade the religious leaders full of arrogance and armed with stones of condemnation. Yet, Jesus followed that strong arm with a soft shoulder as he raised the woman awaiting judgment and pronounced, “Neither do I condemn you, Go and sin no more.”
To wrap it all up, let’s conclude with the obvious: masculinity has very little to do with the external portrayals of where you live, what you wear, or the vehicle you start every morning. True masculinity, better yet godly masculinity, is more about wisdom. Wisdom that understands you need both a strong arm and a soft shoulder. Wisdom that can discern when one is needed and the other is not.
A strong arm is necessary when someone is breaking into your home to attack your family, but that same strong arm falls short when your little girl scrapes her knee learning to ride a bike. It is in both moments that we have a choice to make.
In a society seeking to characterize and label masculinity by one dimensional character or another, choose neither. Instead, choose the One who died young, called out sin, yet had grace on those who admitted its weight.
Choose Jesus. And choose both.
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