Real Men Don’t Cry?
I’m sure most of us grew up hearing something like “real men don’t cry” or maybe more harsh words like “quit being such a crybaby” when a boy was guilty of shedding a tear or two. In baseball if you got hit by a pitch the words from the dugout were usually “don’t rub it.” It was basically an encouragement to suck it up and move on without showing any signs of weakness. I am not certain where the concept of men not showing emotion started but I know where you do not find it. Scripture has several moments recorded where men cry and I would challenge anyone who dared call any of them weak.
Joseph was 17 years old when sold into slavery by his own brothers (Genesis 37:2). He was thirty when he became second in command in Egypt (41:46). So for 13 years he rode quite a physical and emotional rollercoaster. He was hated, sold, lied about, and forgotten about. It was upwards of 25 years between the time his brothers sold him and when they came into his presence for help. Yet seeing them and caring for them caused Joseph to weep on several occasions (42:24; 43:30; 45:2; 45:14-15; 46:29; 50:1; 50:1). Joseph was a tough man with a tender heart.
David, as a young man, fought a giant that no other man in Israel would face (1 Samuel 17). He would become a great man of war, defeating for years the various enemies of Israel and successfully winning the most aggressive game of hide-and-go-seek against King Saul who sought to kill him on several occasions. So much of a man of war was he, that when his faithful heart sought to build a house for the Lord, he was turned down because of the amount of blood he had spilled (1 Chronicles 22:8). David was as tough a soldier as you would ever meet. And yet, when he and his men discovered their wives and children had been kidnapped by the enemy they “wept until there was no strength in them to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4). He wept for days when his son was sick and dying (2 Samuel 12:16-22). He wept again when run out of Jerusalem by his son Absalom (15:30) and when that same son was killed in battle (18:33). David was a tough man with a tender heart.
Then there was our Lord, Jesus Christ. Don’t let the “meek and lowly” description of Matthew 11:28-30 fool you. Jesus was raised by a carpenter. He knew hard labor. At some point he also came to the realization that He was God’s Son and that He and the Father in Heaven were one (John 10:30-38). This meant that He was responsible for the Creation of the world and the sustaining of it (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:16-17). He walked everywhere he went. He dealt with physical and verbal persecution throughout all of his time on earth. And he eventually died one of the most cruel deaths a person could endure. But when His friend Lazarus died, Jesus wept (John 11:35). When He approached the city of Jerusalem a week before his crucifixion He “wept for it” (Luke 19:41). And in the garden, just before His arrest, He wept and was in agony over what He would suffer (Hebrews 5:7-9). Jesus was a tough man with a tender heart.
Being tough and having a tender heart are not mutually exclusive. Understandably, hard times often make us jaded and leave it more difficult to show our emotions. But emotions are not weakness. God gave us emotions as a part of coping, healing, and even connecting with others. Three of the toughest men in Scripture also had tender hearts that could be touched. It is ok for you to have that kind of heart too.
Ben