the last shall be first ...

Just when you thought nothing more worth reading could be said about the guy in Ballard's teaching on Song of Songs up comes a late blooming flower of wisdom written by David Hegg.

Here is a quote:

For any interested in my take, here it is: My biggest problem is with Driscoll's exegesis of Song of Solomon. He makes the text say stuff that the author doesn't say. The book is filled with mystery and nuance, but Driscoll insists that the author is speaking in graphic terms. What the book describes with art and beauty and literary restraint, Driscoll describes in undressed language. He simply does not teach the book the way it was written.

Secondly, I too agree that Driscoll's method of communication was simply wrong. One of the necessities in biblical preaching is to fit the means of communication to the message being communicated. As I tried to explain in a previous post (Nobility, Approachability, and the Vitality of Truth), MacLuhan was correct in challenging us to understand that "the medium is the message." By choosing the low road in terms of language in order to be what he considers "real", Driscoll has actually drained the nobility, mystery, and sanctity out of marital intimacy in the Biblical book (Song of Solomon) where marital intimacy is most nobly, honorably, and reverently described.

The Right of Private Judgment & Totalitarian Mega Churches

In the mid '70s I heard Peter Toon a church historian form the UK give a lecture series on The Right of Private Judgment and the Reformation. Toon focused on the rights and responsibilities of private judgment. What some people are calling the "New Calvinism" has a deeply ironic twist in that it is being promoted by Papal Pastors at totalitarian Mega Churches where the right of private judgment has been taken away. The head pastor has replaced the Pope and his interpretation of the scriptures has been put above criticism. Anyone who dares to openly question his teaching is ostracized or removed from membership.

Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle is a case in point. Driscoll's exegesis is generally pretty loose. He assumes that his audience is too ignorant to see this. He supports his questionable teachings on sexual ethics, marriage & family, gender roles, and many other popular themes with highly dubious exegetical tactics. He would be blasted out of the room if he presented these readings in a scholarly forum. But at Mars Hill Church his teaching is above criticism. If you are a member of HIS church you do not question HIS teaching.

This is a very common scenario at mega churches. These fellows are not capable of dealing with dissent. When they step into the pulpit they are infallible. They may not claim this in so many words but their policy of repressing dissent carries a subtext of infallibility.



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Who Does Mark Driscoll Hate the Most?

Who Does Mark Driscoll Hate the Most?

Why do I want to push the stop button when I am listening to a web cast of Driscoll preaching? Well, quite frankly, I get the felling that I am being attacked by someone who hates people like me. I don't get it. I am not gay. I am not fat. I don't vote democrat (or republican). I don't have an inferiority complex. I don't do kiddie porn. I never was a 'hippie'. What is it about people like me that Driscoll hates. The answer is simple: The 1960's, the people who were part of the cultural revolution.

When I first met Driscoll he was clerking in a bookstore in Greenwood (North Seattle). I had heard about him. He makes a lot of noise. I knew his father-in-law very well when I was in my teens and 20s but I was long gone when Mark became a regular visitor in that household. When Driscoll came back from college and started doing "street talk" on the radio I would tune in now and then and listen. I noted right away that Driscoll was a generation bigot. He hated 'hippies' with a passion. I suppose this has something to do with growing up blue collar in Seattle which is a northern clone of San Francisco. The war between the hard hats and the flower generation was still in progress when Driscoll was born into the world of hard hats. In the end the hard hats lost the war. The flower children and the neo-pagans took over the culture and nowhere is that more evident than in Seattle. So Driscoll hates what he calls 'hippies' because his people lost the war and now he would like to put the culture back where it was in 1955 and it just isn't going to happen.

Driscoll seems to have adopted the notion that the hard hat world view is somehow connected with Jesus. This is so silly it hardly deserves refutation. Jesus didn't join a union, watch football, drink bud, have a dragon tattooed on his biceps, wasn't a carpenter, didn't have a job, took his disciples away from their jobs ... and generally caused a social disruption where ever he went. Jesus was the antithesis of Mark Driscoll's model of "true manhood".


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