Written by Braeden Holmstrom
I always dreaded whenever my youth camp would split between boys’ and girls’ activities. Usually, it was something like wilderness training for the boys and crocheting for the girls. The problem was, I would rather crochet than chop wood.
This dynamic never truly went away as I got older. While I have since gotten into cars, trains, and hockey, my interest in less traditionally masculine pursuits hasn’t dwindled.
The messaging surrounding many Christian men’s conferences carry the same problems for me now as a grown man. Many advertise axe throwing, spear throwing, or football. Others advertise professional athletes as speakers or invoke a heartily cowboy aesthetic.
Some men appreciate these things. But these activities leave me—and no doubt other men less interested in competitive physical activities—feeling alienated and left out.
The style and tone of these conference advertisements are shaped, in part, by the stories our culture tells about masculinity. Such stories shape our cultures to quite an extent. Thinkers such as Percy Shelley (the husband of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) have gone so far as to say that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
We can use British society as an example, which has baked into it many myths and ideas in the Arthurian legends, Beowulf, Shakespearean dramas, and more recent stories like The Lord of the Rings. These stories have shaped the language and ideas people use to interact. Shakespeare alone has contributed 1,700 words to the English language, and each of them carries cultural associations.
Our ideas of masculinity are shaped by such stories. Sometimes these are healthy and wise—take Uncle Iroh from Avatar, for instance. As a former military commander of a tyrannical army, he chooses to lay down the sword of conquest to help work towards peace. Along the way, he counsels the younger generation of protagonists (and antagonists) towards a better future.
But others are less helpful. Though he is beloved for his wily charm, Indiana Jones doesn’t stand as much of a moral paragon. In Raiders of the Lost Ark he restarts a relationship with Marion that ended ten years prior. Marion is 25 in that film, while Jones is a decade older. You can do the math on that—it’s not a pleasant picture. This pedophilic relationship is mentioned in the film, but its severity is undercut by the framing of Jones’ behaviour towards young girls as more of a quirk than a serious crime.
Many young men have found that the cultural narratives they grew up with have failed them. The statistics are depressing and often quoted, but they’re worth hearing again. As American journalist Christine Emba wrote in a widely shared piece in the Washington Post, men account for three out of four “deaths of despair” (death by suicide, alcohol, or drug overdose).
Emba points to numerous points of data showing that young men in particular are not okay. In the midst of their struggles many have turned to online gurus like Andrew Tate who prop up a vision of masculinity that looks more like Caesar than Christ.
Amid this pain and toxic messaging, we as members of the Church have an opportunity to tell better stories about what it means to be a man. To do that we need to change our attitudes about what it means to be a storyteller. Storytellers don’t just create entertainment; they help people frame who they want to be.
Storytellers don’t just create entertainment; they help people frame who they want to be.
I want to be like Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings. I love Sam as a character because he is thoroughly masculine in a way I can relate to. He is a pudgy, tiny gardener who enjoys taking care of plants and making food more than fighting. All the while he is presented as a figure whose character is to be emulated.
His courage and support for his friend are unflinching, even to the edge of death. At the heart of Samwise is the same kind of spirit we also see in a character like Aragorn, the wandering warrior king. But Sam’s heart is depicted without a crown or a sword. He is gentle and humble, but he is courageous too. Sam has a heart like Christ’s.
This is the kind of storytelling the Church can offer—stories of all kinds of men whose characters show us a little about what it looks like to imitate Christ. “Imitate me as I imitate Christ,” Paul said. And so, let us be storytellers who see beyond the outer layers—the cowboy hats or gardening gloves—and reveal Christ’s character in the stories we tell.
Braeden Holmstrom is a writer working out of Killam, Alta. He is passionate about storytelling, faith, and learning. You can find more of his work on his blog.