The Devil you know is better than the Daniel Johnston you don't know

I had a Daniel Johnston moment the other evening.  To remind you:  I laughed all the way through The Devil and Daniel Johnston until I learned that the movie wasn't a mockumentary, that the fawning critics who loved Johnston's hopelessly bad music weren't actors.  They really liked the stuff!  Then I was appalled and amazed as such pseudo-sophistication and sycophantic posturing.

So, the moment came while reading this quote on Halden's blog, Inhabitatio Dei:

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 pride 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. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity. [Italics added]

And I'm laughing all the way through it.  Aren't you laughing?  I mean, this is so ridiculously over-the-top that it's got to be an Onion article, right?

And then it occurs to me:  No.  This Mark Driscoll guy is actually a minister of the gospel with some standing in some Christian quarters.  And suddenly I'm confused and appalled, as I always am when people slip into unconscious self-parody.

I suppose Mark Driscoll is one of those manly Christians, about whom I've already expressed my opinion.  But to briefly reiterate, if Driscoll wants to embody a more martial Christianity, then he should pay a visit to the local Army recruiter's office.  There is a war on, you know.  Paintball and tattoos don't give you a leg up on the product and decaf lads.

As I said in Halden's comment thread, nervousness over the feminization of Christianity is nothing new.  Driscoll's just scratching that itch with the crude language and explicit imagery of the 21st century. 

But hasn't the feminization of Christianity been a problem since the beginning?  I mean, doesn't it go back to the women's testimony of the resurrection, and how it fell on the male disciples' deaf ears? 

Maybe the problem isn't that the Church is too feminine.  Maybe the problem is with the men.

I'm a mainliner, born and bred.  And Evangelicalism still looks just as whacked to me as it's always looked.  There is no kind of petri dish for growing every Religious Bizarro World virus you can imagine like Evangelicalism.  Maybe the Russian Orthodox Church can hang with them in the idolatrous nationalism category, but combine that with the cults of personality, the shameless hucksterism, the horrible architecture that intentionally apes the worst aspects of American suburbia, the style over theological and liturgical substance--and you've got a Superbug.

But I'll have to grant that gay bishops and swapping out our traditional body and blood ritual for a mucus ritual must look equally bizarre from the other side.  I guess the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. 

Comments

[Lee]

There may be something to be said for a critique of the liberal/pomo/emergent Jesus - not that I'm too familiar with that wing of evangelicalism, but it wouldn't surprise me. After all, it would just be another variation on the liberal, humanist Jesus identified by Albert Schweizer as the reflection we're prone to see at the bottom of the historical well. But why in the world you'd want to replace it with this Driscoll guy's idea of "masculinity" is far beyond me. I'd like to think Jesus is much stranger than any of that.

[Bob W]

I laughed too. I think Mark is a great teacher and he made me laugh with this description of Jesus. A good teacher will (at times) get his point across with humor.

What did you think about Mark's sermon on Grace 2-months ago? How about the 6 part walk through the book of Ruth? What was your take on his 24 part series on Nehemiah?

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.

We both know that we could take a sentence or two from Christs ministry (completely out of context) and make him look like something he was not. That's not honest evaluation.