Pastor Mark, who seems to
get his understanding of gender from a James Belushi sitcom rather than the
bible set in its correct context, speaks about Esther in a way that you may
well struggle to recognise if you have ever read the seventeenth book of the Old
Testament.
According to Mark; Esther is
one of ‘only two books of the Bible in
which the human hero is in fact a heroine’. We better not mention Mary the
mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalene in case we are mistaken in thinking that
their actions of complying with the will of God in bringing about the
incarnation or being the first witness to the resurrection were in any way
significant.
According to Mark; ‘Today,
her story would be, a beautiful young woman living in a major city allows men to
cater to her needs, undergoes lots of beauty treatment to look her best, and
lands a really rich guy whom she meets on The Bachelor and wows with an amazing
night in bed.’
Really? You have read the
book of Esther and that is what it made you think!
In light of this episode and
the many others that have emerged from the lips and keyboard of Pastor Driscoll
I feel the need to issue a warning about his influence on your sons.
My wife, Beverley (we have
four daughters together), is writing one in a similar vein aimed at the danger
caused to having such nonsense influence your daughters. (Here)
1) According to Mark; he
couldn’t worship a guy he could beat up. He presents this notion to convince us
that Jesus wasn’t some ‘hippie, diaper,halo Christ’.
Such playground
argumentation leaves little room for the broad sense of what it is to be a man.
Being male is not represented by either one personality type nor a set of culturally
loaded activity markers aimed at ensuring ‘real’ men like hunting, fighting,
and motorbike riding.
If you want your sons to be
truly who they are meant to be, and not try to conform to someone else’s
stereotype then keep them away from Mar Driscoll.
2) According to Mark; women
who are caught up in a male dominated system are to be blamed and not
emancipated. He presumes that Esther had the same type of choices that someone
in a twenty-first century, western democracy might have.
Whenever people in general,
and women in particular, are abused there is a tendency within the prevailing
system to blame the victims. Mark is guilty of this here.
If you want your sons to
value and respect women then keep them away from Mark Driscoll.
These two factors alone lead
me to believe that Mark Driscoll’s teaching is dangerous for our sons (and
daughters).
The first suggests the
broad, and completely mistaken, strokes with which he paints Jesus. There is no
sense of context, nuance, or depth to what he does. He takes his own limited
view of maleness and projects this upon Jesus to conclude that he must be made
in Mark’s own image.
The second suggest that we
can view the exploitation of women in a conditional way. His focus on Esther as
being complicit in the circumstances of her inclusion in a male dominated
system suggests that context means nothing. He reads the story and feels no
horror about the shameful way that women are treated but projects his
twenty-first century context onto her to condemn her behaviour. (it saddens me
that some key leaders fail to call Mark out on such behaviour - I guess we all
have a constituency)
So again I advise you to
keep your sons away from Mark Driscoll’s teaching.
And if you don’t; then keep
your sons away from my daughters.
1 comment:
Love what you are doing with the blog man!
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