Heroic Masculinity
A Story of Two Men Named Bob and One Lost Little Girl
Last week I read an article in The Atlantic (which you can find here) about heroic masculinity, which is the opposite of that term we’ve become all too familiar with -- toxic masculinity. The article underscored the reality that men are, overall, physically stronger, faster, and larger than women and then asked the penetrating question: will they use that strength to protect or to harm others?
Toxic masculinity forces women to protect themselves (and their children) from emotional, spiritual, and physical male violence. The author of the article, a woman, explored the idea that our society’s inflammatory reaction to toxic masculinity has caused us to treat our boys and men as if their personhood is poisoned. She ends the article with this question: “What if we understood that boys are born into a destiny, not a pathology?”
I immediately thought of two men who used their strength and influence to protect me in ways that altered the course of my life – the two Brother Bobs.
Two Brother Bobs
Around my third-grade year, my siblings and I began attending a rural Southern Baptist church regularly, by way of a “church bus” that would wind through our neighborhood picking up kids for weekly services. My parents made sure we were on that bus every week, even though our family didn’t attend church together. I never asked my parents why they sent us off with these people, but I presume the thinking was: if it gets them out of our hair and exposed to the Good Book all at the same time, everybody wins!
I’m a typical Gen X’er in the sense that I am at once proud of how my free-range childhood shaped me, while also being a bit of a helicopter parent myself. In other words, I’m too neurotic to allow my kids to hop on a bus with strangers and attend weekly religious education without my involvement. But I’m sure glad my parents gave that gift to me. It was on that bus and in those weekly gatherings that my inner light was turned on and I became aware of God.
I was the kind of girl many parents warned their children against – weird, emotionally unstable, a liar, and a troublemaker. And those were just my obvious external drawbacks. If they could have seen the swirling black hole of confusion and darkness in my own heart, they would have protected their children from me like I was a leper!
I had a perpetual head full of lice and, eventually, a fused left hip that put me in crutches and a wheelchair and that left me with a gnarly limp. I wore the same clothes almost daily and had no concept of the importance of personal grooming. I’m painting you this picture of Little Amber (who I fiercely love, by the way) simply to point out that I was easy pickin’s for the wrong kind of man. I was vulnerable, lonely, confused, and broken – the qualities predators can sniff out a mile away.
The leaders of this “church bus” ministry were two men, both named Bob. And since this was a Southern Baptist operation, every man was called Brother and every woman called Sister. Therefore, these two men were both known as Brother Bob and, somehow, that worked for us all. They showed up every single week, warm and non-anxious, welcoming smiles on their faces. They seemed genuinely curious about my life, my concerns, and even my opinions. They coaxed these things out of me with kind questions and deep listening. They taught me about the Bible and Jesus and spoke of His love for me and displayed confident optimism for my future that I eventually learned to call hope. They believed in God-in-me when I didn’t have the slightest notion how to do so myself. It was infectious, this kind of leadership. And I was surely infected by this hope, this good news, this mystifying love!
They were gentle mentors, and the first people who taught me that I had an important voice. In fact, they wouldn’t let me get away with quietly hiding. They invited me to speak, to read Scripture aloud, to express my own biblical interpretations and insights. They even taught me hymns and invited me to sing a solo in front of their congregation on Sunday morning!
Me – a lice-headed, limping, liar!
Because of them, I can tell you that heroic men were the ones who first put a microphone in my hand and stood proudly to the side cheering me on. I’ll never forget that Sunday morning as long as I live. I was knee-wobbly nervous, my voice all aquiver, and longing to run straight out of that church. But I was also excited, honored, and somehow felt more connected to the people in that church than I’d ever felt before. Not much has changed about any of that, to this day! But I now know that I felt connected because I was invited to contribute. When I was being mentored and cheered on by the Brother Bobs, I felt like I was a person that mattered.
A self.
A soul.
They Built a Strong Foundation
I was shocked in years to come when I began to hear a gospel that emphasized sin, death, and judgement because all I had known of the Jesus-Way was high beauty, unearned grace, and a life of light and adventure so much better than the life of darkness I lived in every day. I was deeply confused, and then wounded, when I heard that women and girls were meant for subordination and that our voices – our selves – were deemed dangerous by some.
Religious conditioning did threaten to undo all that good work the Brother Bobs did in my life, but it didn’t prevail. Those heroic men laid too firm a foundation of love, joy, hope, beauty, and kindness. Their integrity, honor, acceptance, and openness were the nutrients that nourished the seeds of Christ in my little heart. Their strength was complemented by their gentleness. Their consistency was coupled with care for those weaker and more vulnerable.
Yes, women can and do display those qualities in the world and, therefore, they aren’t uniquely masculine qualities.
Yet, the Brother Bobs gave me all these gifts in their uniquely masculine way. They could have used their strength and influence, their time and energy, to build wealth, accumulate power, make connections with important people, and make names for themselves in the big world. Ministering to a bunch of little nobodies was not going to garner them prestige or bolster their egos.
They could have used their strength and influence to harm me in any number of ways – they had the ability and the access to harm my body, mind, and soul.
They could have chosen pathology.
Instead, they chose alignment with their destiny. They showed me what spiritual fatherhood and brotherhood is meant to be – trustworthy, curious, kind, strong, consistent, confident, protective, and nurturing. And that heroic masculinity changed the course of my life. My inner light only grew brighter. My little voice only grew stronger, surer, and braver. My love for Christ and faith in God’s goodness only grew broader and sturdier.
My faith tradition teaches that we will be rewarded in the presence of God for the beautiful work we do on this earth. I’m not sure what that will look like, but I know the Brother Bobs will be richly rewarded for what they did for a lost little girl so long ago.
Everything I am is attributable to the love and faithfulness of God. And if my life were a map and we traced God’s work in me back to the beginning, we’d find at the head of the trail a “cloud of witnesses,” including two masculine heroes, two spiritual fathers, two strong and good protectors who drove a church bus every week, making sure the kids in their little corner of the world found out the best news of all – they aren’t nobodies. They are God’s beloved ones.
