The Deadliest Legacy of the Marlboro Man is Not Cigarettes (or the mustache)

The Marlboro Man concept was the brainchild of ad exec Leo Burnett, born out of Philip Morris Co.'s need to reposition Marlboro from a ladies cigarette ("mild as May") to one that men wouldn't be embarrassed to enjoy.

Leo struck gold. The cowboy in red took Marlboro from the bottom (less than 1% U.S. market share in 1954) and made Marlboro the #1 tobacco brand in the world by 1972.

Apart from his success pedaling tobacco, the Marlboro Man stands as perhaps the most iconic image of rugged manliness in American history (Look at that mustache!). The same cool customer who single-handedly turned girly cigarettes into manly ones also demonstrated to American males that true men go it alone. True grit. Real men do not need any help from anyone. Real men say, "Just give me my horse, my Stetson, my mustache, and my dangly cigarette, and get out of my way."

Alas, though, it turns out that that dangly cigarette and his carton of friends will literally kill you. And so will going it alone.

Men were made for community, but we have this deeply-embedded impulse to join every two-year-old on earth in screaming, "I can do it by myself!" And we can do most things by ourselves: we dress ourselves, we shave our own faces, some of us can ride horses by ourselves, and a select few can even do our own taxes. But we cannot overcome the very real enemies that are constantly at work to undo us.

The apostle Peter (arguably one of the manliest men in history) issues a grave warning to us men about going it alone. Peter explains, "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8). Peter likens the devil to a lion because, like a lion, he hunts and devours by separating the individual from their community. So once you find yourself cruising around on your horse like the Marlboro Man, it doesn't matter how much you can bench press or whether you have your bolt action repeating rifle at your side, you are about to go down. Hard.

Isolation is so effective as a weapon against men because of the other enemy at work in our lives: us. We know that we are not OK. We are ashamed of things we have thought and things we have said and things we have done. Especially the things that no one else knows about. And we are afraid that if we get too close to other men, they will find those things out about us. So we hang our heads and follow the lion into the darkness and away from our community where he will kill us.

And it's not just the guilt and shame. There is something evil at work in our very flesh that works to undo us. The apostle Paul knew this enemy well. In great anguish he laments, "but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand....Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:14-24)

Enemies without and enemies within. We are surrounded. We come to our senses alone in the darkness, and we realize that we don't want to die! Panic surges through our veins. Our eyes dart franticly back and forth as sweat pours down our faces and our hearts beat out of our chests. I am a guilty man...will someone come and help me?

Good news men, we have a Redeemer. All of those thoughts, words, and deeds of which we are ashamed are evidence that we were enemies of God deserving his wrath. But God sent his son Jesus Christ to bear this wrath in full measure in his own body all the way to death on our behalf. We have been reconciled to God. We no longer have to fear condemnation. (i.e. you can stop wandering into the darkness for fear of being found out. We already know that you are a tragic mess.)

One day we will shed these bodies of death, and God will give us new bodies that don't wear out or work evil. And until that day comes, God enlists us, his sons, to keep watch with one another in the darkness. And so we go...moving as a unit through the night until the dawn comes. Praying for one another, shining the light of the Gospel into one another's lives, confessing our sins to one another, crying with one another, reminding one another that we won't always be like this, spurring one another on to more intense war against these enemies of ours, and celebrating victories of God in our midst...and putting out one another's dangly cigarettes and turning in our Stetsons in exchange for real, life-giving masculinity.

What John has to say about the Oklahoma thrill killers

Last month three Oklahoma teens targeted a random male jogger to murder. One of the teens explained, "We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody." Boys out for a taste of adventure.

Their explanation is terrifying because we cannot do anything to protect ourselves from similar horrors. It's one thing when we hear of a scorned spouse murdering their unfaithful partner's paramour in the heat of passion or a mafioso murdering the man who ratted out his boss, but it's quite another when a murderer's given motive is boredom. I can avoid extramarital affairs and organized crime, but I cannot prevent someone from feeling bored. As Alfred explained to Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, "...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

But what if these teens were looking for something logical?

This murder reveals several things that these young men believe to be true about themselves and the world around them. Things like:
Human life has no inherent value or worth.
Their own lives have no inherent value or worth.

There is no eternal, omnipotent, perfect God who will one day judge the earth and set everything right.
No one loves them.
No one cares about their own pain.
No one has an explanation for their own pain.
No one needs them.
They have no purpose.
They have no future.

It is easy to believe these things when all that you see and experience lines up with them. I can only imagine the ways in which these lies have been reinforced in the lives of these young men over the years. These men are villains to be sure, deserving of the law's wrath. But they are also victims. 

The lies are not a human invention, they are peddled by an Enemy of God to a world that is desperately sick and to our own rebellious and ignorant hearts. They are designed to undo and end us. And they are effective. Apart from God's grace, we cannot even tell good from evil anymore. As John tells us in his Gospel, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made theough him, yet the world did not know him." 

But God, rightful King over all creation, was not content to sit back and watch what would be the epic tragedy of human history unfold. No, John tells us, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth....And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace." 

God ripped through the fabric of this world in order to rescue his people and vanquish the Enemy. And since that time, he has captained a rebel force at work in the world - an underground movement - to depose the Enemy and see the rightful King return to his throne. This King is gathering people to himself and mounting his attack against the imposter, the one who enslaves mankind in order to commit grave evil like this senseless murder.

So where is he? Has the movement failed? Has the rightful King fallen? Or fallen asleep? 

He is always at work, though often unseen. John was given a sneak preview of the coming victory, and he tells us what those united with the true King will one day experience. This is what he saw:

"I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' 

And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'"