Brolo Cigars are only available through retailers. Support your local brick & mortar.

Joshua Stephens | Nov 4, 2025

The Slow Burn: The Gospel According to Tony Stark

Now, I’ve never really been into Marvel movies or comics. Sure, I had friends who collected them. We’d hit the arcade next door, burn through quarters, and then wander over to the comic shop to kill time before the next round of Street Fighter. It wasn’t the stories that hooked me…it was the camaraderie.

That said, there was one game I couldn’t stay away from at the arcade: Marvel Super Heroes. You’d drop in a quarter, grab the joystick, and pick your champion. There were plenty of options…Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, but every time, I chose Tony Stark. Iron Man.

At first, it was superficial. I liked the suit. I liked the sound of those plasma bursts. I liked how clean the animations looked as his repulsers fired from his hands. But over time, I realized something deeper. Tony Stark wasn’t just a superhero. He was human. And his humanity, his pride, his arrogance, and his flaws were what made him relatable.

He wasn’t born special. He wasn’t injected with super serum. He didn’t fall into a vat of radioactive waste or get bitten by a spider. He was a man…smart, broken, and self-assured enough to think he could fix the world by his own power.

Sound familiar?

If you strip away the suit, Tony Stark is a mirror. He’s every man who’s ever believed that if he just works hard enough, grinds long enough, innovates big enough, he can save himself, maybe even save others along the way.

That’s the American dream, right? Be your own man. Build your empire. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

But here’s the catch: the same self-reliance that makes us strong can also make us brittle.

In Iron Man 1, Tony builds the first suit out of desperation. He’s trapped in a cave, wounded, forced to reckon with the sins of his own creation, weapons made by his hands that have caused untold suffering. So he builds something to protect himself.

It’s noble, in a way. Resourceful. Ingenious.

But it’s also the beginning of his prison.

Because after the cave, Tony never stops building. He doesn’t build out of inspiration; he builds out of fear. Fear of losing control.

Fear of failure. Fear of needing anyone else.

And brother, that’s the same lie the enemy sells us every day:

“You’ve got this. You don’t need anyone else.”

For years, I believed that lie.

I thought if I worked hard enough, that if I grinded enough, it would somehow fill the void. But success doesn’t heal the soul. It just gives you fancier distractions.

Tony’s story is the same. He tries to control the chaos around him. He builds armies of suits. He creates Ultron to “protect humanity.” He even signs his name on the Sokovia Accords, thinking he can legislate morality. But behind all that invention is insecurity.

That’s what sin does. Our flesh feels powerful, but our spirit feels painfully alone.

In Proverbs 27:17, it says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

The truth is, Tony Stark doesn’t have iron sharpening him. He is iron…blunt, unrefined, constantly grinding against himself. No accountability. No surrender. No brotherhood.

And when a man isolates himself in the name of “strength,” he becomes his own god.

One of the most haunting lines from Avengers: Age of Ultron is when Tony says, “I don’t want to hear the ‘man who died for nothing’ speech.”

He’s talking about sacrifice. He’s talking about avoiding failure. But what he’s really doing is confessing his fear, the fear of death, the fear of insignificance, the fear that all his striving is for nothing.

We’ve all been there.

There’s a Tony Stark in every man…the version of us that wants to control everything because surrender feels like death.

But here’s the paradox:

In Christ, surrender is life.

When Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), He wasn’t talking about martyrdom; He was talking about dying to the illusion of control.

Tony builds armor to save himself.

Jesus removes it to save the world.

I think about this a lot when I sit down to smoke.

The brotherhood of the leaf has a rhythm to it, one that’s slow, intentional, reflective. It’s not just about cigars; it’s about connection. You learn pretty quickly that no smoke is the same when you share it with brothers who sharpen you.

Tony Stark never had that.

And when he finally found it, in the Avengers, it was messy. Loud. Full of ego clashes and trust issues.

Sound familiar?

That’s the church, man.

Community isn’t clean. Accountability isn’t comfortable. But it’s where growth happens. It’s where the rough edges are refined, where the iron starts to shine.

The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 6:2, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

If Tony Stark had understood that verse, Ultron would’ve never been born.

When we carry our burdens alone, they crush us. When we share them, we find strength, not in self-sufficiency, but in surrender.

Here’s the thing about iron…it’s strong, but it’s not invincible. When exposed to enough heat, it melts.

That’s what happens to Tony. Over time, the fire of his own ambition softens him. You see it in Endgame. The armor’s still there, but the man inside is different. Humbled. Tired. A little wiser.

That’s sanctification, brother.

It’s the process of being refined by fire. Of realizing that strength isn’t found in resistance, but in obedience.

When Tony lays down his life at the end, snapping his fingers to save everyone else, it’s poetic. It’s the first time he does something completely selfless. It’s his version of “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

That’s the beauty of redemption: even the most stubborn hearts can be reshaped in the fire.

In the same way Tony built armor to protect himself, we all do it…emotional armor, spiritual armor, relational armor. We use humor, success, pride, or intellect as shields.

But Ephesians 6 tells us there’s a better kind of armor: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

That armor doesn’t come from self-manufactured metal. It comes from truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the Spirit.

The key difference?

Tony’s armor isolates him.

God’s armor equips us to connect, to fight together.

When I look at the Brolo community, the fellowship of the leaf, the brothers and sisters leaning in over smoke and story, I see the opposite of Tony’s cave. I see people stepping into light. Accountability isn’t glamorous. It’s not Instagram-worthy. It’s usually uncomfortable, awkward, and raw. But that’s where the transformation happens.

When I was at my lowest, I had brothers who didn’t let me stay there. They called me out. They prayed with me. They checked on me. They loved me enough to hold me accountable.

It’s easy to admire Iron Man’s genius, but I’m more interested in his redemption, in the slow burn that turned ego into empathy.

That’s the same fire I feel when I light a cigar with a brother who knows my story, the kind of connection that doesn’t require armor.

Because in the end, iron doesn’t stay iron forever. It gets shaped. It gets sharpened. It gets stronger in the fire.

And so do we.

We all have our suits.

We all have our caves.

We all have moments where we try to play god with our lives.

But thank God for grace.

Grace doesn’t demand perfection; it invites honesty. It asks us to take off the helmet, to be seen, to admit that we can’t save ourselves.

Tony Stark died saving others.

Jesus Christ rose so we could live.

That’s the difference between redemption through self and salvation through surrender.

At Brolo, we Light Up & Lean In because it’s not about the armor. It’s about the fire that refines us, the fellowship that keeps us grounded, accountable, and human.

So, here’s to the brothers who keep you honest.

The ones who tell you when your pride is showing.

The ones who sit in the ashes with you until the smoke clears.

Because iron sharpens iron, and together, we burn brighter.

More from 'The Slow Burn'

The Slow Burn: Kansas City Cigar Festival

Last week, several of the Brolos and I attended the Kansas City Cigar Festival. The festival was Saturday, but we decided to make a weekend out of it. Because apparently a bunch of grown men with an unhealthy amount of cigars can't simply arrive at an event, attend it, and go home like normal people.

We left Dallas around 6-ish Friday morning and pulled into Kansas City around 4:45 that afternoon. In between were gas stations, snacks, questionable decisions, lunch at Bite Me BBQ in Wichita, and a quick stop at Old Town Cigars. Shoutout to Old Town, by the way. They had an awesome selection of boutique cigars, including some of the old-school Metapas from before Foundation rebranded them as Aksum. Those aren't exactly sitting on every shelf anymore.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Shawn arrived at my place a few minutes late and blamed traffic. In his defense, he wasn't lying. 380 in the morning is a complete nightmare. North Texas has grown at a ridiculous pace, and it seems like no amount of construction can keep up. Every road is simultaneously being expanded and somehow getting worse.

We loaded Shawn up and headed to a bougie neighborhood in Prosper to grab Justin. We made it through the gate, pulled up to the house, and there he was...sitting in a camp chair, bags packed, already smoking a cigar.

It was a sight for sore eyes.

Naturally, we immediately started roasting him for not even making it to 6:00 a.m. before lighting one up. His defense was that he was "afraid he would be left out." Justin is the newest cigar smoker in the group, but the man put the first number on the board that weekend. Kudos.

Next up was Mr. Babyface himself, Mark. Picture this: it's roughly 5:30 in the morning and Mark is standing outside next to his truck, bags packed, looking like his parents just told him they were taking him to Disney World. Everybody was ready. And for the next eight hours, we absolutely destroyed my car.

Four men. A few boxes of cigars. Windows cracked. Ash everywhere. I don't think it will ever smell the same again. But that's the price you pay for making memories around something you love.

We put Justin in charge of picking lunch.

This was our first mistake.

The Slow Burn: Maine

A reflection on Maine and the fear, pressure, and freedom that come with finally letting go of something you created.

Heritage: Recently, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about heritage and what that word actually means to me.

It’s an all-encompassing term.

There are the tangible things and the intangible ones. The personal and the cultural. Traditions, values, stories, recipes, land, names, beliefs, habits, and physical objects passed from one generation to the next.

Some things are handed to us intentionally.

Others just arrive.

Building Brolo has me thinking about heritage quite a bit.

The cigar industry, maybe more than most, loves heritage. Many brands benchmark their quality against generational pedigrees, old-world traditions, luxury positioning, or some combination of the three. Families who have worked with tobacco for generations. Names that stretch back a hundred years or more. Stories with roots deep enough to make whatever they're selling today feel connected to something much older.

And there's something beautiful about that.

But where does that leave a kid like me?

I didn't grow up with a mother and father.

There isn't some great family enterprise being handed down to me. I didn't serve in the Armed Forces, and the only time I was involved with law enforcement was usually in the back of a squad car.

What the heck is my heritage?

And if heritage matters so much, how am I supposed to compete with that?

So I started digging.

Not through ancestry records or old family photographs, but through the things that got me here. The memories. The scars. The people. The failures. The things I learned accidentally and the things life taught me, whether I wanted the lesson or not.

I started asking myself:

What makes Brolo, Brolo?

The first image that came to mind wasn't tobacco.

It was a hay bale.

I was probably six or seven years old.

During the summer, my Grandma would drop me off for a week at my birth mother's trailer in East Texas, back behind the Pine Curtain.

Every summer, I dreaded it.

My second stepdad was quite a doozy...a real piece of work. Abusive. Violent. Looking back now, I can see he was probably just an angry boy trapped inside a man's body.

But when you're six, you don't have that kind of perspective.

You just know you're scared.

They lived in the country....or, as East Texans pronounce it, the cunnnn-trrrryyyyyyyy.

The acreage seemed to stretch forever, with a little creek running along the back of the property. My mother worked all day as a nurse, and my stepdad worked as a carpenter, taking odd jobs here and there.

I don't remember him being particularly great at woodworking.

But the man sure knew how to rip a doobie.

Wherever they were, I wasn't.

Most days, I was on my own, traversing the countryside. Climbing hay bales. Jumping hay bales. Falling off hay bales.

And, eventually, crying next to hay bales.

I remember getting hurt out there once.

And I remember being angry with myself for getting hurt.

Scared because I didn't know if I'd be able to survive a sprained ankle, let alone another week unsupervised.

Broken because I was alone and hurting.

And nobody showed up that day to help me.

Although that was the first time I remember feeling it, it certainly wasn't the last.

Those experiences taught me independence.

Eventually, they also taught me control.

If nobody is coming, you learn to handle things yourself. You learn to anticipate problems. You learn not to need much. You learn how to survive.

Useful skills.

Until they're not.

Because somewhere along the way, independence can become isolation. Self-reliance can become control. And learning not to need anyone can leave you desperately wanting someone.

Maybe that's heritage, too.

Not everything passed down comes in a box.

A few weeks ago, I went to the doctor for a regularly scheduled checkup. Somewhere between the blood pressure cuff and the usual questions, she started asking about my family.

Heart disease?

Cancer?

Diabetes?

High blood pressure?

She was trying to understand my family history...to identify the things buried somewhere in my DNA that might eventually become part of my story.

In other words, she wanted to know:

What runs in your family?

It's a clinical question.

But I've thought about it differently ever since. Because a lot more than disease runs in families.

Work ethic runs in families.

Faith runs in families.

Temper runs in families.

Generosity runs in families.

Addiction runs in families.

The way we handle money. The way we argue. The way we love. The way we apologize....or don't. The things we celebrate and the things we refuse to talk about.

Somewhere along the way, all of it becomes inheritance.

We tend to romanticize heritage.

Grandpa's watch. Dad's old truck. Mom's recipe written in her handwriting. The family Bible with names and dates scribbled across pages yellowed by time.

And those things matter.

But heritage has a shadow side, too.

Some things are worth preserving.

Some things are worth restoring.

And some things need to end with us.

My childhood was a lonely one through no fault of my own.

As I got older, I started pursuing people.

At first, probably because I was afraid to be alone.

I was tired of being alone.

I was starving for belonging.

But somewhere in that pursuit, I discovered something much better than simply not being alone.

I found connection.

If this were one of my gospel-centered recovery pieces, this is probably where I'd spend the next thousand words talking about how human beings were created for connection.

And I believe that.

I believe true connection begins vertically...with God...and that healthy relationships with one another are a by-product of that relationship.

But that's another rabbit hole for another day.

Back to connection.

Because that's what Brolo is about.

Not heritage manufactured through some bullshit origin story.

Not luxury for luxury's sake.

Not pretending we've been making cigars since 1873.

Connection.

It's the early-morning text from a friend encouraging you to succeed while simultaneously making light of your many proclivities.

It's the random Tuesday-night HERF where, for whatever reason, the whole crew shows up, and you belly laugh until your face hurts.

It's an early-morning coffee where somebody finally stops saying they're "good" and tells you what's actually going on.

It's spending so much time smoking cigars together that you know your buddy's palate almost as well as your own. You know what he's going to love. You know what he's going to hate. And occasionally, you make a recommendation that he actually likes.

It's getting bombed by one of the Brolo's.

It's seeing the UPS truck turn onto your street....or maybe even chasing it down, and feeling that little dopamine hit because you know there's a box headed your way.

It's knowing that whatever ails you, somebody is rooting for you.

It's complete strangers finding each other in some random corner of Discord or Reddit, sharing a cigar through a screen, and eventually becoming friends in real life.

Those things probably don't sound like heritage.

At least not the way the word is usually sold to us.

There aren't any centuries-old family photographs.

No tobacco fields passed from father to son.

No crest.

No pedigree.

But maybe I've been thinking about heritage all wrong.

Maybe heritage isn't just about where you came from. Maybe it's about what you carry forward.

And maybe the things we weren't given are sometimes the very things we become most determined to give away.

I didn't inherit a great legacy of connection.

So I built my life around finding it.

And now we're building Brolo around giving it away.

Maybe that's my heritage.

Not the kind printed on the inside of a cigar box. Not a family crest, a famous last name, or some romantic story about generations of men who came before me.

It's messier than that.

There's some good in it. There's some bad. There are things I'm proud to carry forward and others I've spent most of my adult life trying to put down.

But all of it got me here.

And I suspect the same is true for you.

What's your heritage?

Not just where your family came from or the traditions you grew up with.

What did you inherit?

What runs in your family?

What did someone teach you without ever sitting you down to teach it?

What wounds shaped you?

What values stuck?

What traditions still matter?

What parts of the people who came before you can you see when you look in the mirror?

And maybe more importantly:

What are you doing with it?

Because at some point, we stop being merely the recipients of heritage.

We become responsible for it.

We decide what gets carried forward.

What gets restored.

What gets rewritten.

And what ends with us.

Heritage isn't just the story of the people who came before you.

It's happening right now.

In the way you raise your kids. The way you love your spouse. The way you treat your friends. The work you put your hands to. The things you make time for. The things you refuse to compromise. The table you build and the people you invite to sit around it.

Whether you realize it or not, you're leaving something behind.

When I think back to that little boy sitting alone in East Texas, hurt and scared and wondering if anybody was going to show up, I can't change his story.

Nobody came that day.

But I can decide what I do with what he gave me.

Maybe that's why showing up matters so much to me now.

Maybe that's why the table matters.

Maybe that's why connection matters.

Maybe that's why Brolo exists in the first place.

So maybe the better question isn't simply:

What's your heritage?

Maybe it's:

What will someone else inherit because you were here?

What impact have you made, or lack thereof?

And maybe that's convicting...if so...that was my intention.

Kaitlyn and I don't make cigars to avoid life. We make cigars to fully embrace it. The good, the bad...the hurt and the wins.

All around a shared smoke.

About This Blog

I wrote this back in 2017 and never published it. I found it again. And reading the words of the man I was has been an uncomfortable experience. This post is a multipart post about shame and where we can find hope. Stay tuned for the next post in the series...

The Slow Burn: Calluses

Some things can only be learned the hard way.

As a writer, I wage a lot of wars against a blinking cursor.

I get caught somewhere between what I want to say and what I think people want to hear. And I’m beginning to believe that’s a dangerous intersection.

The Slow Burn: Currents

The ocean never asked where I wanted to go…it simply carried me. Life works the same way. Left unattended, our faith, health, relationships, and purpose all drift. Currents is a reflection on recognizing when we've wandered and finding the courage to swim back toward what matters most.

The Slow Burn: The Things We Love

Beneath a Nicaraguan moon, hidden behind a mosquito net, tree frogs wage war against my sleep. Their calls echo through the jungle like ladies of the night working a truck stop, each one louder than the last. Halloween Moon Crabs scatter across the ground beneath our cabana. I have to pee...but I'm not getting out of bed. Nature can have this one.

The Slow Burn: Rearview Mirrors

We all have a collection of "if only" moments….roads not taken, mistakes we'd undo, opportunities we missed. But the longer we stare into the rearview mirror, the more likely we are to miss the blessings sitting right in front of us.

The Slow Burn: Pushing The Chips In...Again

I knew a lot of people, but I wasn't truly known by anyone. That realization changed everything. What followed was addiction, recovery, reinvention, and another chance to choose the life we wanted to build.