Mark Driscoll is a jerk

Avdat reader Bob W calls me out:

Mark Driscoll has preached hundreds of hours of sermons and it's a bit unfair to pin him down based on 2 or 3 sentences taken out of context. When you've listened to 7 or 8 complete sermons and then have a good feel of where he stands, come back and give an honest opinion. Until then, it seems like you may be scratching an itch.

Fair enough.  I begin by reading all of Driscoll's answers in the Relevant Magazine interview from which the "2 or 3 sentences" were lifted.  Judging from the first Q and A, I don't think I've taken anything out of context:

What trends in church and worship styles do you see? Are they positive or negative?

Mark Driscoll: I’ll be happy when we have more than just prom songs to Jesus sung by some effeminate guy on an acoustic guitar offered as mainstream worship music. Right now most worship music is still coming from the top down through such things as Christian radio and record labels. But the trend today in a lot of churches is writing your own music to reflect your culture and community, and I pray this trend of music from the bottom up continues.

This guy is a jerk.  A homophobic jerk.  Great--the guy who was giving swirlies in the locker room to the computer geeks and tuba players has grown up to run a megachurch in Seattle, and has defined sanctification as conformity to his own weird, hyper-masculine standards.

Does Driscoll know that 30% of teen suicides are attributable to young people struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity?  Does he care?  Such casual nastiness gives ecclesiastical sanction to acts of violence.  Whether that would give someone like Driscoll pause is a question I can't answer yet.  Maybe the study series on Ruth and Nehemiah will enlighten me.

In the meantime, Driscoll still seems like a whacked out guy at the center of a personality cult, who inspires his minions not with calls to take up a cross, but with calls to lift up the girly men of the world in a group wedgie. 

Again I say, put your money where your mouth is.  There are at least ten Army Recruiting offices in metro Seattle.  I hear they need chaplains in Iraq.

Comments

[Elliot]

Well, to be charitable, I'll imagine he's being purposely provocative and that there's more to him than this macho-Christianity schtick. But still, such remarks are utterly nauseating. I liked the list you posted earlier on what makes a man "manly" - responsibility, conscience, moral fibre, humility, self-sacrifice. Not this chest-beating steroid-infused stuff. Driscoll comes across as a two-bit villain in a martial arts movie - the evil sensei from The Karate Kid, foaming at the mouth and screaming "Mercy is for the weak!"