Bro-masculinity is running the country. Jesus had a different idea.

Last night I sat in a circle with potential Connection Group leaders. We passed a talking piece. We listened. No interrupting. No fixing. Just presence. At one point I asked: If you could guide a group to explore anything, what would it be? One man said he wanted to understand what it actually means to be a man, in a culture soaked in what gets called toxic masculinity.

I do too.

While we’re asking that question in circles, an answer is being modeled in the halls of power. It goes something like this: a man is tough, combative, dominance-oriented, physically intimidating, and allergic to nuance. He does not apologize. He does not feel things, or if he does, he expresses them through aggression. It’s not okay to cry, but it’s okay to punch a hole in the wall.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your government.

The Department of War (He really wanted that name)

Secretary Hegspeth has been clear about his approach to wars in general and in the Iran War in particular:  no “politically correct wars,” no restraint, no nuance. “No quarter, no mercy.” Which sounds less like a Pentagon briefing and more like a line cut from a Braveheart sequel. Legal experts note that “no quarter” has a precise meaning in international law — it means take no prisoners, and that threatening it may itself constitute a war crime. The Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual prohibits it. Does Hegseth see that manual as part of the problem.

And then came the videos.

Actual military strikes on Iran, edited together with clips from Call of Duty, Top Gun, Braveheart, and Grand Theft Auto. A real explosion labeled “WASTED” — the term GTA uses for a kill. The montage ended with audio from Mortal Kombat: “Flawless victory.” The caption: “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY.”

This was posted less than a week after an airstrike killed more than 170 people at an Iranian girls’ school, mostly children, and one day after the Pentagon named American soldiers killed in the same conflict. Ben Stiller demanded the White House remove a clip from his film Tropic Thunder — a satire about the absurdity of war movies, writing simply: “War is not a movie.”

I get strong leadership. But when real lives are edited like entertainment, when death gets a GTA sound effect, we should pause long enough to ask: Is this strength? Or is this performance? Because there is a difference between being decisive and needing everything to feel like a win on a screen.

The Senate as Fight Club

Then there is Markwayne Mullin — Senator from Oklahoma, former MMA fighter, and now Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security. In 2023, during a Senate hearing, Mullin challenged Teamsters president Sean O’Brien to a fight. Mid-hearing. He stood up, removed his wedding ring, and said: “You want to run your mouth? We can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.” Senator Bernie Sanders, serving as committee chair and the only adult apparently in the room, interrupted: “No. No. Sit down. You are a United States Senator.”

This week at his confirmation hearing, Rand Paul confronted Mullin — not on policy, but on character. He asked, essentially: Can you show restraint? Reflection? Accountability? Mullin’s answer was unambiguous: “I’m not apologizing. If I have something to say, I’ll say it to your face. I won’t back down from a challenge.”

That exchange names the question underneath all of this. Is strength the ability to hold your ground, or the wisdom to know when to soften it? Because those are two very different kinds of power.

What Jesus Actually Looked Like

Here’s what troubles me, not just as a citizen, but as someone trying to follow Christ.

This version of masculinity has made deep inroads in American Christianity. There is an entire industry of books, conferences, and ministries built on the idea that the church has produced too many soft men,  that Jesus needs to be recovered as a warrior-king, and that what men really need is permission to be aggressive, dominant, and unapologetically hard.

What gets lost in that reclamation project is almost everything about the actual Jesus of the Gospels.

The one who wept at a tomb. Who stopped to notice a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years, when everyone else had walked past her for a decade. Who said the meek, not the aggressive, the meek, would inherit the earth. Who, when Peter drew a sword in the garden and took off a man’s ear, didn’t say “nice swing.” He said put it away, and then healed the ear.

That Jesus was not soft. He overturned tables, confronted religious leaders to their faces, and walked toward Jerusalem knowing exactly what waited for him. But his power never needed to prove itself. It never postured. It never performed.

He knelt down and washed feet. No flex. Just presence.

At its core, the bro-masculine model isn’t about strength, it’s about proving strength. And that distinction matters enormously. Because the louder the need to prove it, the more likely something underneath doesn’t feel secure. Real strength can say I don’t know. It can admit I was wrong. It can choose patience over posturing. It doesn’t need to win the room. It knows how to hold it.

Which sounds a lot less like the loudest voices in Washington, and a lot more like Jesus.

So What Does a Man Look Like?

This is the question the man in my group was asking. It deserves better than what Washington is currently modeling.

A man can be physically strong and emotionally available. Competitive and also kind. Able to hold a position under pressure and also change his mind when he’s wrong. Able to protect people without dominating them. Angry about injustice without turning every room into a cage match or every war into a content strategy.

What are watching right now? Is it strength. Or is it the elaborate performance of strength by men who are afraid that without the performance, no one will take them seriously?  The tattoos, the challenge tweets, the renamed departments, the Mortal Kombat soundtracks over real missile strikes — these are not the marks of security. They are the markings of men who have confused domination with dignity.

The good news, for those of us who follow a man who refused to come down from a cross to prove he could, is that there is another way.

It’s harder. It’s less photogenic. It doesn’t go viral.

But it’s actual strength. And in the long run, as Jesus had a habit of demonstrating, it wins.

— The Rev

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Phillip is the founding pastor of The Venues, a progressive faith community. He writes weekly at “Random Thoughts from the Rev.”