Is Mark Driscoll Really All That Crazy?

 Mark Driscoll, the Reformed theological wunderkind and Mars-Hill Church pastor extraordinaire “sees things”…and directly from Jesus!

If you are not familiar with Driscoll he is conservative and Reformed theologically but contemporary in his delivery.  He wears jeans and sweatshirts behind the pulpit (and the occasional Mickey Mouse t-shirt as you can see in the video). Once a self-identified member of the Emerging Church movement, Driscoll left the movement because of “growing theological differences”[1] with some of the movement’s leaders. Currently he is more identified with Reformed pastors looking to keep the church relevant in today’s culture such as John Piper, Tim Keller, and D.A. Carson.[2] 

Despite his conservative, evangelical credentials Driscoll is not without critics from his own team.   Driscoll’s penchant for delivering racy sermons has led some evangelicals to accuse Driscoll of being guilty of “the pornification of the pulpit”[3] and inspired John MacArthur to rebut Driscoll’s exposition of the Song of Solomon with a series of articles entitled “The Raping of Solomon’s Song”[4].  Says MacArthur, “Apparently the shortest route to relevance in church ministry right now is for the pastor to talk about sex in garishly explicit terms during the Sunday morning service.”[5]

Driscoll’s new revelation from the pulpit will do little silence his critics from inside of Christendom and only increase the skepticism and cynicism of the mind control and scare tactics of fundamentalist evangelical preachers from those of us on the outside.  In a recent sermon Driscoll says that he “sees things”.  Pedophilia from decades past, wife beatings, sexual escapades, rapes, baby dedications to Satan; Driscoll has seen it all. Like he has “a TV right here, and (he’s) seeing it,” Driscoll’s visions appear to him as if God has implanted a virtual Law and Order: SVU before his very eyes.

In one instance Driscoll informs a congregant of sexual abuse they suffered as an infant.  The victim of course had no recollection of this.  When Driscoll encourages the victim to confront the perpetrator—the victim’s grandfather—the grandfather says, “Yeah, I did it, but how did you know.  You were only like one or two years old.”  Why Pastor Mark told me, says the victim.

In another instance Driscoll has a premonition of a woman being beaten by her husband.  When Driscoll confronts the husband in the wife’s presence he tell the perpetrator that his wife didn’t rat him out, it was Jesus!

Not only are Driscoll’s visions predominantly sexual in nature but he goes even further by implying that he not only knows the deeds of the perpetrators but their thoughts as well.  For example, in recounting the sexual affair one purported counselee Driscoll says:

Satan has a foothold in your life because you never told your husband about that really tall blond guy that you met at the bar, and then you went back to the hotel, and you laid on your back, and you undressed yourself and he laid on top of you and you had sex with him snuggled up with him for a while.  And deep down in your heart—even though you had just met him—you desired because, secretly, he is the fantasy body type.  I said, “You remember that place.  It was that cheap hotel with that certain color bed spread.  You had sex with the light on because you weren’t ashamed because you wanted him to see you and you wanted to see him...”

Whoa!  This is not your grandmother’s sermon!

Only behind the confines of a pulpit in front of his unsuspecting flock could Driscoll get away with such shenanigans.  In any other venue, Driscoll’s claims would be about as credible as Sylvia Brown on the Montel Williams Show.          

There is no shortage of criticism of Driscoll from his own conservative, evangelical community.  One site accuses him embracing “New Calvinism, which itself appears to be a postmodern form of Calvinism embracing both Reformation theology and the spurious spirituality of Counter Reformation Roman Catholicism”[6]  Please, say it isn’t so.   Well known apologist Frank Turek skewers Driscoll in an open letter for, among other things comparing cessationists (like him) to the deism of the likes of Thomas Jefferson.  Those are fighting words.

I doubt Mark Driscoll could prove any of his claims, and I doubt he would even try.  I’m sure the privacy of the “victims” or some other disclaimer would serve as cover for his rouse.  What I find most interesting is not that people think Driscoll is nothing more than a charlatan, because they don’t.  In fact most of Driscoll’s critics are not the skeptics. From what I can tell, the skeptics don’t care.  Driscoll’s critics are his own fellow Christians who object to his antics on theological grounds.  Yet don’t his critics see the ridiculousness of their own ways? 

Driscoll can know the sins of one’s past? Ridiculous!  That God is up there somewhere keeping tabs?  Totally believable.  Driscoll hears Jesus telling him things?  What a heretic! That Paul heard Jesus on the road to Damascus?  Of course!  Driscoll has visions of crimes being committed like Superman? Nah!  That Jesus will come back flying in the sky like Superman to kick ass?  That’s going to happen!

I’ve always found it interesting that many believer believe in the supernatural when it is either in the very distant past or it is promised in the far off future.  But when confronted with the supernatural in the present the events are either explained away as theological aberrations or exposed as blatant frauds (al la Benny Hinn).    

---

[1] Mark Driscoll. “Why I left the Emerging Church” Criswell Theological Review. N.S. Spring 2006, p. 87-93. http://bobfranquiz.typepad.com/bobfranquizcom/files/32_apastoralperspectiveontheemergentchurchdriscoll.PDF

[2] Mark Driscoll." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 16 August, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Driscoll

[3] http://defendingcontending.com/2009/04/17/john-macarthur-on-mark-driscoll-part-2/

[4] ibid

[5] John MacArthur. “The Rape of Solomon’s Song, Part 1”. http://defendingcontending.com/2009/04/17/john-macarthur-on-mark-driscoll-part-2/

[6] http://apprising.org/2011/08/09/mark-driscoll-has-personal-revelations-from-jesus/

My Story Part 1: The Early Years

How did I come to have the faith that I eventually rejected? In short, it came from my mother.

Shortly after my mother and father married my mother began attending a local Baptist church in the small town in which I was born. This fact, even more than my father’s alcoholism, would be a constant point of tension in my youth. My father's entire extended family where I grew up were of the Catholic persuasion, my grandparents being very devout. Most of the town was Catholic (including nearly all of my school classmates) and I was even baptized as an infant at one of the local Catholic parishes.

Nevertheless as she took me to church every Sunday I quickly adopted the faith of my mother and the Second Baptist Church on Herman Avenue. I learned bible stories, sang songs, memorized bible verses by singing them, sang in the children’s choir, went to vacation bible school during the summer and even went to extra religious education during the school year.

When it came to doctrine and salvation Second Baptist spread the old time gospel. Ecumenicalism was not “in” at the time. You better have Jesus as your savior or hell was where you were headed when you died. Witnessing or “sharing my faith” took on a sense of urgency especially for me since most of my family, being Catholic, was headed straight for an eternity of eternal constant torment. Every time an extended family member passed away (and I have a lot of extended family members) I could not help but experience a brief moment of horror as I imagined how they must feel, thinking moments before they died that they would at least have some relief from the pains of this world only to wake up to a fiery torment.

I would have to say that the belief in hell was the first seed of doubt to be planted in my young brain. For my father who had no religious persuasion (as far as I could tell) he found the idea of hell particularly awful. “How could you believe in a God who would send someone to hell who never heard about your religion?” he would ask me. I had no answer except that my father’s life was so wrecked by alcoholism and “sin” that I had a hard time believing I could glean any meaningful metaphysical insights from him. Nevertheless I could not help but be disturbed at the thought—when I did think about it—that people that I loved, that loved me, cared for me, bought me birthday presents and came to my baseball games were on their way to an eternity of punishment. I believed it was true, because the Bible said so, but in so believing I had also planted the first seed of doubt about my faith.