On Mark Driscoll and My Own Struggles With Manliness/ Bill Sergott
Note from Dan: This is a reposting of Bill's original post on his blog Heresy of the Month.
I'm struggling today. If you have followed this blog, you know that I have been working on anger issues and ADHD stuff. As I am trying to turn away from being anger-driven, I have seen, with painful clarity, how I have wielded anger like a club, destroying all in my path who would dare to attack me. I have also realized, as I've turned away from that approach, that being "Angry/Dangerous Guy" was all based in my insecurity. It was my attempt to stomp my foot and demand to be taken seriously. As I have gotten more defined, releasing anger, I have actually grown in my authority and power. I am taken much more seriously now, then I ever was while demanding it.
All that being said, I am struggling with how to respond to the latest antics of a fellow pastor. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, recently posted on his fan page: “So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you’ve ever personally witnessed?”
Now, Mark Driscoll has a habit of making horrifically misogynistic and bullying statements. He has hundreds of thousands of followers, and is very public. He is often called "The Cussing Pastor", and he refers to himself as a "Street Fighter". He is the angry, tough guy I am working so hard to eradicate in myself. He is unapologetically that. He even tries to sanctify it, by twisting Scripture to say that God wants men to be that way. Here is another quote from his blog:
“I’ve gotta think these guys [David, Paul, John the Baptist] were dudes. Heterosexual, win a fight, punch you in the nose dudes. And the problem in the church today is it’s just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chick-ified church boys. Sixty percent of Christians are chicks. And the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks. I mean, it’s just sad. When you walk in, it’s sea foam green and fuchsia and lemon yellow. The whole architecture is feminine and the preacher is kind of feminine and the music is kind of emotional and feminine and we’re looking around going, ‘How come we’re not innovative?’ It’s because all the innovative dudes are at home watching football.”
“The problem with our churches today is that the lead pastor is some sissy boy who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn’t been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three’s Company whenever Mr. Roper was around.”
“You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we’re all good people. That is a lie…God looks down and says, ‘I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you.’”
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair, who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.”
Driscoll is obviously struggling with his own sexual identity, which is painfully obvious. It makes me feel kind of sorry for him. But I also see problems with his view of marriage and the role of women. This is his response to the Ted Haggard scandal, in which Haggard, a vocal, anti-gay leader of the Association of Evangelicals, was found in a hotel room with a male prostitute:
“Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness ... A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”
Though I do not have this exact quote, he went on to make a reference to his notion that, if Mrs. Haggard had taken care of business in the bedroom, perhaps her husband wouldn't have strayed. Other views of his on women:
“We are not liberals. We are not egalitarian.”
“This is what being a pastor is about, guys. If you can’t handle it, go back to teaching yoga or playing My Little Pony with the other girls.”
“Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up, it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture.”
Driscoll's answer to pornography:
“You need to stop watching porno and crying like a baby afterward and grow up, man. I don’t have time to be your accountability partner, so you need to be a man and nut up and take care of this yourself. A naked lady is good to look at, so get a job, get a wife, ask her to get naked, and look at her instead. All right?”
OK, that's enough. I could go on and on, because there are hundreds more like this. I want to get to my point. I see in him, as an irresponsible, public, Christian leader, everything I am trying to fight in myself.
My gut reaction, if I still let my anger have reign, would be to drive out to Seattle and kick his ass, right on stage, in front of all of these women and men who worship him. He has taken his hatred of women and his own, latent homosexuality, and has projected them onto God. He teaches regularly that "Jesus is a God who hates...". Driscoll is two months older than I am, and he makes me ashamed to be of the same generation of pastor. When it comes to manliness: I am bigger than Driscoll, stronger than Driscoll, and smarter than Driscoll. I want to kick the living crap out of him. He obviously grew up as a jock and a bully, and these tendencies have gone unchecked his whole life. Bullies only become good people, when they bully the wrong person and pay the price for that. He is better suited to selling insurance in some small town and talking about the "glory days" of his "almost high school football state championship" from over 20 years ago, rather than pastoring a church. So, I want to pick a fight with him. I want to be that "wrong person" he chooses to take on. I am no "limp-wristed, fairy pastor". I piss standing up. I can bench-press a house. I am entirely dangerous, and I can chew him up and crap him out. Bring it on, Driscoll. Your days of power are over. I'm about to expose you for what you truly are: a scared, little pansy - a delicate flower trying to sound tough, so no one finds out about you. Time for you to reap your harvest.
OK, so there it is. There is my sin. Am I saying Driscoll doesn't deserve this kind of response? No. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that I am not qualified to judge him. I'm not qualified to punish him. That paragraph above is all in me. That dark crap is in my heart. It is really easy for me to go there, and it is a daily temptation. I know I can physically destroy him, and so there is a strong attractiveness for me to that kind of response. It takes a lot less time than trying to change his heart. It is a lazy response, and it is not loving. This is what I battle with every day. I can rationalize it, and say it's not sin. Afterall, I am going after someone who hurts others. I'm kind of like Dexter. He's a serial killer, right? But, we like him, because he only hunts other serial killers. They all deserve it. Right? I love that show, because it really calls that mentality into question. It never allows you to feel satisfied, like justice has been done. Dexter never feels satisfied. So, am I a sociopathic killer? I don't know, but my Dark Passenger, my desire to control, humiliate, and victimize the predators (and make no mistake, I see Driscoll as a predator - before you get offended, he describes himself that way), is as sinful and horribly wrong as the actions of the fictional Dexter. So, please understand, I do not think any part of that paragraph above represents a valid or healthy response. I'm just putting it out there to be honest about my feelings and who I am. Besides, a lot of these feelings and behaviors on my part expose a deep-seated jealousy. I want to whine and say, "It's not fair that this idiot has a huge church and lots of influence! I deserve it way more than he does! Why do these people always get the success, and good, faithful people wallow in mediocrity?" See, I'm the sinful idiot.
But how do I respond? Driscoll is dangerous. He has even taught that sadomasochism (in marriage - but only if the woman is the submissive) is good for training men to be men. This is a harmful and destructive understanding of masculinity. To be a man is so much more than being tough, angry, and powerful. A real man feels deeply. King David wrote poetry and regularly wept. He stripped naked and danced before the ark of the Lord - obviously not a manly dance, or he would not have been accused of being undignified. Real men should be wise. They should seek an equal partnership with their wives, where both, as Scripture says, "submit unto each other". I lay down my desire for nightly sex, so that I can spend time with my wife in other ways, growing in intimacy with her in all facets of our marriage. I do not, as Driscoll suggests regularly from the pulpit, demand nightly sex from my wife as her "wifely duty". I do not need to project my own self-hatred onto God to somehow justify it. It's not OK to hate myself. It is a mockery of God's creation to do so. God is not a God of hate, but a God of love. That makes God more powerful, not less. Driscoll is just wrong.
I know lots of people who like this guy, and he is distorting Christianity to the point of completely obscuring Jesus. He has come to replace Jesus for people, because he surely isn't representing Jesus or pointing people to Him. The message here is that the Gospel is only good news for the elite, white, male jocks and warriors. In other words, those who were picked first in gym class for dodgeball are also picked first in the Kingdom, and God hates everyone else. The people at the "popular table" in the middle school lunch room keep on winning. Driscoll seeks to set up that kind of dynamic, the middle school lunch room, in all of life. Darwinian "survival of the fittest" is the rule of the day. But this is so counter to the true Gospel, where the upside-down Kingdom is all about the "least of these" and the last being first.
Here's the deal and my core issue: I don't want to indulge my anger. I don't like that in myself. However, I don't know if I can, or should, be silent on issues like this. So, faithful reader, help me. I can't write a letter to him, because I know my anger will leak in. What do I do with my feelings, when issues like this come up? How do I deal with them? What is a normal, non-angry-guy, human response to this stuff? This may seem funny, but I am having to learn how to act as a human being for the first time. Obviously, my sinful response is inappropriate, so what do good, Jesus-following people do? I promise, I am not preaching this from the pulpit, and I didn't intend to attack Driscoll in this post. This isn't about changing him at all. This is about changing me. By including all of those quotes, I want the reader to see, not how awful Driscoll is, but to what I am reacting. What does a normal person do with these feelings I have, that are bordering on the intense, sinful, dominating anger of my past self? Driscoll triggers me. It's not his fault, and he doesn't even know who I am. This is about me learning how to follow Jesus. So, I am sincerely seeking your help.
I look forward to your constructive, loving, and helpful responses. I need to learn how to be a real man, instead of a macho, destructive, insecure pseudo-man.
Note: If you are going to respond by defending Driscoll or calling me a "hypocrite", don't bother. In fact, go away. If Driscoll is right and true, he doesn't need defending, and it will all come out in the wash. Besides, your opinion about Driscoll being right in his theology doesn't matter, and, frankly, it's uninteresting. Relational unity in the Kingdom of God is all about perception and context. If you think someone is dangerously wrong, even if I disagree with you, I would encourage you to confront that. So, I see him as being dangerously wrong, and I am working to figure out how to confront this in love. As far as the hypocrisy charge, it doesn't hold. I have already admitted that I am affected because of my struggle with similar sin. I have admitted my own hypocrisy in this, so your charge will just be redundant. Besides, I have very little investment in your opinion of me. I'm a mess, and I am trying to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I'm in over my head. I don't need you reminding me of that. Any comments along any of these lines will be deleted. They are irrelevant. Thanks!
