As I became more familiar with Scripture, I learned about two different words that do a far better job of summarizing how a man should live. These are: “work” and “keep.” Taken together, these two words serve as a summary of the Bible’s mandate for masculine behavior.

I come from a cavalry family, as in horse soldiers…

Suffice it to say that I possess a fair amount of cavalry paraphernalia. In fact, I am writing this at a desk beneath a print of a horse cavalryman firing from his saddle.

Of all the great cavalry movies, none holds a dearer place in my heart than John Wayne’s classic, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon… When I was a young armored cav officer, I not only watched this movie roughly a thousand times but absorbed much of its ethos.

Anyone who has seen this movie can tell you that Captain Briddles’ approach to manliness can be summed up in two words: Never apologize! Over and over again, he grills his hapless lieutenants, always with the same emphasis: “Never apologize, Mister!” I am afraid that I took this counsel a bit too much to heart, with the result that my early 20s were a little more obnoxious than they needed to be.

When I became a Christian, however, I learned that not every manly saying in John Wayne movies should be adopted. “Never apologize” may sound great in theory, but in practice it can combine with a man’s sin nature to make him overbearing and arrogant.

Richard D. Phillips is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as Senior Minister of the historic Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, S.C.
Read More: http://byfaithonline.com/page/ordinary-life/the-masculine-mandate-cultivating-and-protecting-the-essence-of-biblical-masculinity

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]