8 – 13 – 18 Love = Super Manly (3 minutes)

One of the things I’ve observed here in Ethiopia that I love about their culture is the prevalence of physical affection. Shaking hands is not just for introductions, nearly every time you see someone you make physical contact with them. A person you know is never just something you see, you feel them every time you interact.

Men who are closer will shake hands then lean in and bump their shoulders together. It looks a little strange at first, but it’s so much more affectionate than a handshake. Partly because it takes longer, partly because you can shake someone’s hand with your faces four feet apart, but you brush ears if you’re bumping shoulders.

When men are walking together they are hanging all over each other. Holding hands, an arm around a shoulder, one holding another’s wrist. It’s a bit shocking to see at first, especially coming from America, the no-touch zone.

It’s been refreshing for me seeing this culture, as I’ve always been touchy. My mom would say that my primary love language is physical affection, for anyone familiar with the five love languages.

I don’t know if it’s because of homophobia, or individualism, or that we are a settler nation and therefore not sharing in a culture as strongly as someplace like Ethiopia, but this kind of physical affection between men is somewhat taboo, or at least perceived as effeminate.

It’s a small thing, what does it matter that men rarely hug in the US? I confess it may not matter if you subscribe to Cartesian Dualism, that we’re just souls inside bodies. I think maybe fewer of us really believe that than we think though. If we did, all physical affection is meaningless. To kiss your lover or child is nothing more than to press the husk that contains your soul against the husk that contains their soul. More like making two robots touch than expressing love. (I stole that but I couldn’t find the original author.)

But if you believe that we are our bodies and our souls in a kind of mysterious union that I’m not theologically educated enough to explain, we see that what we do with our bodies matters. (Just google theology of the body if you’re intrigued by that idea.) So I think that the reluctance that I see among male friends to speak tender words to each other, to bare their hearts to each other, to tell their dearest friends that they love them is thoroughly intertwined with this reluctance to engage in physical affection.

If you’re Christian then your pinnacle of masculinity must be Christ. Now granted Jesus lived in a very different culture than us, but he’s kissing everybody in the Gospels! His words and actions towards those he loves express his affection in a way that is so vulnerable and confident that it indicts me in the coolness I treat my loved ones with.

And his greatest act of love, the greatest expression of his affection for us is intensely physical. He undergoes scourging, crucifixion, and death as an expression of his love. How many times does he show that he loves us? In the healings, in the teachings, in direct expressions of that sentiment? But what sticks with us, what is the symbol that most sums up what our faith is all about? It is what he did with his body, not his words.

Perhaps this is simply the biased reasoning of someone who’s made people uncomfortable with his “hugginess” before and been scolded by elementary and middle school teachers to keep my hands to myself. But if you believe as I do that we are our bodies and that physical affection matters I enjoin you when you next see those you consider your brothers and sisters to “greet one another with a holy kiss.”

Okay, that might freak them out. But give somebody a hug and tell them you love them, preferably someone you know.