Or throw up, after which you would, I hope, fall on your knees weeping.
The hyper-masculine, hyper-masculinist “pastor” of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, who spoke at Doug Wilson’s 2011 “Grace Agenda” conference, has raised knuckle-dragging to a homiletic art form with his crude language, scatological humor, and sickening references to what a “bad day it’s gonna be” when he gets to Heaven and Jesus tries to “love” him as described in an allegorical reading of the Bible’s Song of Solomon.
Here’s just a taste — and just a little one, because I’m not only a nice person, but utterly sickened that this man has influence over any vertebrate more intelligent than a gerbil:
Driscoll insists that “real men” stay away from Christian churches because they portray Christ as a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ.” Whereas, the sage and sober Mr. Driscoll adds, the Apostle Paul, John the Baptist, and especially Jesus were “dudes.” As in, “heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes.” This tower of testosterone, who once said he couldn’t worship a Savior he could beat up, calls ours an “Ultimate Fighting Jesus,” the kind “real” men can deal with. (From Christianity Today’s “A Jesus For Real Men.”)
And it’s men who, as “heads” of their households, who have made Dricoll’s church a mega-enterprise and who follow him unwaveringly, lest he use his “spiritual gift” of “discernment” to reveal to them and others details of their past sins.
He can do that. Because he’s Mark Driscoll.
Real Christian men — and women — can do something, however, that ol’ Mark can’t: They can run like bloody hell from anything he touches, and they ought to. Because the denizens of “bloody hell” are far more pleased with Driscoll than the King of Heaven is, and a Jesus fashioned in this thug’s image is an impotent, withered substitute for the One who represents God to us and us to God — the same God whose very Being is as represented in women as it is in men. “For there is no mediator between God and mankind than the human one, Jesus Christ.”
It wasn’t being a “dude,” or even being a man, that made Christ Savior. The Greek here assures us that it was his human nature and his Godhood — not his burly shoulders, calloused hands, well-muscled thighs, or anything else — that makes him our mediator.
When the meek inherit the earth, though, perhaps they’ll take pity on the pitiful Mr. Driscoll and offer him . . . oh, I don’t know . . . maybe a corner of an old, beat-down gym in which to seek repentance.
Here’s a good review of the potty-mouthed preacher’s latest book:
Mark Driscoll is to biblical wisdom as Richard Simmons is to cage fighting.
Comment by Anonymous — January 8, 2013 @ 5:49 am