Sitting on the sofa with God

The slow descent from love to indifference in The Painted Veil

As screenwriters often do, Roy Nysamer takes some liberties in the 2006 film adaptation of The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham’s story of longing, unrequited love and forgiveness set in 1920's colonial China. Unlike most movie treatments of novels it arguably improves on the source material. It's always a hazard translating well loved and well read authors like Tolkien and Jane Austen into cinema form. Tinkering with Maugham’s work is safer because like William Faulkner, admiration for him rarely translates into people actually reading his books.

Nysamer stays true to the novel's core while overcoming the overly compacted prose and underdeveloped characters. One of those characters is Mother Superior, a French nun who runs an orphanage in a cholera-infested region of China. Mother Superior is seen through most of the book and film as an imposing figure of faith and good works. Toward the end of film Nysamer adds an unexpected nuance as the nun confesses,

I fell in love when I was 17, with God. A foolish girl with romantic notions about the life of a religious. But my love was passionate. Over the years my feelings have changed. He's disappointed me. Ignored me. We've settled into a relationship of peaceful indifference. The old husband and wife who sit side by side on the sofa, but rarely speak. He knows I will never leave him. This is my duty.

If that statement does not achieve at least a flicker of recognition in the typical evangelical Christian (including those who gather in the conservative Presbyterian klatch I live in) it’s likely they’re just not paying attention. Disappointment with God, dashed expectations of the Christian life, ponderous duty and the easy inertia of indifference make up the true north of a large swath of modern Christian experience. The ballast for that observation comes from 27 years of work in ministry and the too often declension of my own heart.

In a recent blog post Erskine College professor William B. Evans notes a theological basis for this in my tradition's "school-text account of salvation" which has "considerable difficulty offering a coherent account of how the ongoing life of Christian nurture, faith, and obedience in the church are relevant to one’s eternal destiny." Or as a friend of mine recently put in an email, "Our spirituality often boils down to...just confess the right things and grind it out for 50 years." There are seasons of life where grinding it out is the best and only thing we can do. And I've long advocated (and still do) the view that obedience to God for dodgy motives is still emphatically preferable to disobedience. But staring down a lifetime of grind tempts many to find alternate ways to cope or run for the escape pod.

In The Painted Veil a man says to his estranged wife, "It was silly of us to look for qualities in each other that we never had." In that moment he realizes that both had latched on to external trappings of a genuine relationship. But without substance they were only temporary solutions and a means of distraction. The cacophony of calls to be grace-driven, more confessional, missional, culture-redeeming, city-transforming, authentic-worshipping, high-church, regulative-principled, faster-growing, radical, community-based, and better behaved all in some way have an umbilical attachment to the gospel and the Christian life. But they are often so much white noise as one is singled out as the magic bullet. Some have the disposition to saddle up and ride one of them through life. Most don't, so they try another one. After falling off so many horses Mother Superior's sofa looks like the best option.

An important pivot in The Painted Veil is the prevailing social attitude attached to divorce. In early 20th Century British culture the option of divorce was severely limited because for men it meant a loss of face and at least a slight disruption in social standing and rhythm. For women it was the terrifying prospect of fending for yourself without a support structure and lifelong alienation from friends and loved ones. For most professing Christians the option of completely abandoning the faith has a similar dynamic. Saving faith may (and, I think, usually does) exist, but any real difference it makes becomes an increasingly distant echo. So much to the point that the grind seems not worth the effort. But there is genuine comfort in the routine of church life, Christian friends, and the sociological familiarity of it all. These are hard to give up when the alternatives are considered. And then there is the usually unspoken terror of admitting that Christianity is possibly wrong, Jesus did not rise from the dead, we are alone in the universe, there is nothing past the grave and, "we are of all people most to be pitied." When we cross into this territory, that sofa of indifference looks like a pretty good option.

"But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead." I believe that. I've staked my life on it. But getting that through pastorally is made more difficult by the church not having the collective confidence to acknowledge that the formulas and confessions we rightly affirm may have less traction in static form. Addressing this can be done while protecting line-in-the-sand corollary issues, even culturally unpopular ones like biblical authority, sexual standards and gender roles. Church history tells us confessional restatement has been done as seismic cultural changes require it. But we act like it's heterodox or just not as important as "getting the job done".

I'm comfortable raising the issue, but confess I'm less so suggesting a solution. That's not laziness (well, some of it may be) but just realizing it's out of my skill-set. To be honest, I'd just be happy that if in my lifetime we could begin to see a shift toward at least approaching this apart from fear and loathing.

At the end of Mother Superior's confession she says, "But when love and duty are one, then grace is within you." That's not as precise as it should be. When the grace of the gospel is fully embraced, love and duty are one. 

And we can get off that sofa.

The PCA, Toxic Cultures and Nickelback

(Caveat Lector - Unlike most things I write here, this is very site-specific to the church/denominational microcosm I live in. I won't make a habit of this.)

Not long ago I found myself in a discussion with another PCA pastor about the future of our denomination.1 I had met him a few hours before at a denominational gathering and we were eating dinner with a group of mutual friends. In a few more hours we would be traveling in different directions. What our conversation lacked in familiarity it made up for in that freedom people have to speak directly without undue concern for bruising a friendship or the need to later over-qualify what was said. During earlier meal-chatter he sized me up (correctly I think) as someone with similar convictions and sympathies about the work of ministry.

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1 Let me register my long-standing ambivalence (not objection) to the term “Teaching Elder”. I get why we use it in the PCA and understand the theological and contextual motives behind it, but “Pastor or “Minister” just seem clearer and more biblically precise terms.

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The conversation soon morphed into the now compulsory talk of growing atrophy in the PCA. The dominant adjective was “toxic”. His word not mine. It’s a punchy, memorable word so I don’t mind using it here. I’m also using it because my dinner-mate did most of the talking at this point and repeated the word often. Toxic became the one-word aphorism that connected all his fears about the current state of the PCA. This toxicity he claimed is a clear and present danger. Specifically a threat to him and the congregation he served. It was ominous and apparently inexorable. So much so it demanded “difficult decisions” be made soon. This was obvious code language for “My church and I may leave the PCA”.

He noted my silence and asked me what I thought.

“I think you’re paranoid.”

When I said that, I’m reasonably confident (though not certain) I was avoiding a personal attack. According to the late Daniel G. Freedman, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, two common traits of paranoid thinking are “reduced data gathering” and “ambiguous social information”.  As I’ve done more than my share of paranoid thinking over the years I know this has the ring of truth.

I had no reason to doubt this man’s sincerity and what seemed an unshakeable belief in his assessment of the PCA. Yet it was striking it was made up entirely of broad generalities, sweeping statements and generous use of argumentum in terrorem. In other words, very little data and a sea of ambiguity.2

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2 This line of argument is common to every ideological wing of every group everywhere including those in the PCA. But I was talking to this man so in this case it belonged to him.

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I pressed him to be specific about the threats in the PCA. “Tell me exactly who or what these threats are and how they would prevent you from fulfilling your ministry now or in the future.”

To be fair, he was quick with an answer. First he listed two disciplinary cases that he saw as evidence of an overly litigious spirit. One involved a presbytery in another part of the country. It was early in the judicial process and the core issue involved had already been adjudicated at the General Assembly level in such a specific way as to clearly protect broad views on the matter. His problem was that the issue was still being contended by sections of our denomination. To be polite I conceded a draw on that one. The other case he cited was widely rumored but didn’t actually exist (and as far as I know still doesn’t). Good. So now I was ahead.

He had one more example. Blogs. He got very specific, rattling off several blogs by name. I could be splitting hairs but one was more of an aggregate news site (that admittedly did have a clear ideological bent.) I was familiar with some but not all of them. Of particular concern to him were those that are sometimes called “discernment blogs” run by men who parlay their internet access and Wordpress account into a soapbox to become self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy. Saying he was concerned is a vast understatement. It was closer to fury. And having read some of these blogs I could begin to understand it.

I like blogs. You’re reading this in one now. Bloggers (including PCA bloggers) run the gamut from the clear and informed to the, well, less so. Discernment bloggers are generally run by men who need a separate category. The Germans have a great word for it, Backpfeifengesicht. Loosely translated, “a face that begs for a punch”. The sum of this is their consistent pattern of seeing objections to their self-aggrandizement, poor manners, personal attacks and loose handling of facts as proof itself of their righteous cause. Many attract a gaggle of sycophants who shout down the comment section-challengers and offer fawning homage to their champions.

All that said, seeing the Backpfeifengesicht Blogs as face value evidence of a toxic culture in the PCA is all stuff and nonsense. You can’t help but see and note their boorishness, but the real problem is how it’s processed.

British author and journalist Oliver Burkeman recently dedicated a column in The Guardian to the issue of dealing with, I’ll paraphrase him, “difficult people”. He used a more vulgar term. Burkeman leaned heavily on the (I’m not kidding) scholarly work of of UC-Irvine professor Aaron James on the phenomena and proper response to these, uh, people who “enrage us out of all proportion to the damage they do.”

The dilemma?

It's hard to resist the temptation to fight on their terms: when you explode in rage at (him) you're really demanding that he recognize your moral status. But that defines you as a supplicant, and an inferior, seeking his approval, thus reinforcing (their) worldview – so don't be shocked if it doesn't work.

It never works and the only real traction these blogs get is the anger directed at them. And in this case it is a dead certainty that this anger is way out of proportion to the damage they do and the actual influenced they have.

The Digital/Internet Age has transformed communication in countless ways. One is the democratization of access. On balance this is a good thing but it comes at a cost. With very little money, talent or common sense just about anyone can publish a book, record an album, fund any fool “project” (I’m looking at you Kickstarter), declare themselves a film critic, become an ordained minister or sell a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary for $28,000. Or start a “discernment blog” and say whatever you want with de facto impunity and zero accountability. That this actually happens can be regretted. But it simply cannot be a reliable barometer of substantive social or cultural trends. Put simply, the exception that proves the rule can now gather as much attention as the rule.

In 2010 a mom in Anaheim Hills, California paid a local production company $4000 to record her 13-year-old daughter sing a stock, pre-written pop song called “Friday” and film an accompanying video. Her little girl, Rebecca Black, couldn’t stay on pitch to save her life so most of her vocals were corrected with a digital process called Auto-Tune. The finished song and video reached a breathtaking calibre of awful. When the video was released on YouTube the negative response was apoplectic. A serious music critic suggested it could be “the worst song ever”. It was lampooned and parodied without mercy. The result? Almost 50 million views on YouTube which alone generated tens of thousands of dollars. When the song hit the Billboard best selling charts in seven different countries it earned even more money. It became a pop-culture phenomena.

To review:

1. The anger and scorn given this song was the oxygen that kept it alive.

2. Rebecca Black was and remains a young woman without any discernible musical talent.

The anger and attention given to the Backpfeifengesicht Blogs also suggests a weird symbiotic relationship. These bloggers flourish via this attention and hostility they generate despite the dispassionate (and to me pretty obvious) view many of these men build illusions of significance for themselves. But I realized that night at the dinner table something else. There is a growing number of people in the circles I travel in that have a strange metaphysical dependence on these bloggers.3 Anger at them helps sustain a reasoning bias that provides an easily accessible explanation for present frustrations (of all sorts) and a justification to avoid the hard slog of empathy, patience, humility, and living in the mess that in ministry and this life Jesus promised they would live in. I know that sounds harsh. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so.

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3 Whether I like it or not, fair or not, accurate or not (and whenever anyone takes notice) I’m generally consigned to the “progressive” stratum of the PCA. I think it may have been those four years doing ministry in the same area code as Tim Keller.

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It’s practically an obligation for younger pastors in the PCA to question the motives of the founders of our denomination. For many it’s self-attesting in the same way Nickelback’s music is considered unlistenable.  I’m certainly not young but I share the uneasiness about much of what is constituent in our short institutional history.4 There is, I believe, a maze of issues tied up to our roots that demand to be unsorted and repented from. But with all that here is a cold, hard truth. Their motivations for separating from their previous denomination were clearer, more compelling and biblically-informed than anything I’ve heard from those complaining of toxic influences, litigious presbyters and evil bloggers. Not even close.

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4 And I do think Nickelback is awful.

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I know men who have left our denomination as a matter of conscience over specific and material theological issues (both left and right). I was grieved to lose them but I understood and respected it. But I’m growing a little weary of men who are selling the church culture/blogger bogeyman card as a legitimate excuse to leave.

I’m not buying.

Fake Trees, Darwinian Leaps and Changing Priorities

For most of my life I’ve been given to statements that reflect a fairly absolute view of the world. Mind you, there are absolutes in life and we do well to state them. I just had the knack of seeing black and white in even the most marginal areas.  I’m spending a lot of time on the downslope of life repenting and recanting most of them. I used to say, “I will never use an artificial Christmas tree.” I said it with the same conviction as a person defending personal honor, the lives of thousands and freedom as we know it.

Well so much for that.

We've put up an artificial tree this year. It helps that there’s been a Darwinian Leap in the fake tree biosphere since I was a kid. My dad brought home an artificial tree in the early 60’s (as a supplement to our very real tree.) It “looked like” a Christmas tree in the same way a frozen TV dinner “looks like” a meal. You know what it’s going for but nobody’s close to being fooled. Not so with current faux-trees. The approximation is a lot closer

There’s another reason. Dawn and I are facing a new season of life. Our three children are all in college/post college emerging adult phase and that means our motivation and energy for some things are changing. And when it comes to all things associated with the an eight foot Douglas Fir in our living room, we just can’t be bothered.

I think I may get part of that impulse from my mom. She raised seven children and when it came to her brood of young grandchildren the vibe was clear. She loved them but she had zero interest in anything resembling a second round of parenting. Been there, done that and now time for something else. Bear hugs, bragging on, and big presents were happily there. Changing diapers, extended babysitting and parental advice were never part of the equation. We didn’t take offense and my kids never did either. In fact they still think Nanna is pretty cool.

When it comes to our walk with God, it’s inevitable that we find ourselves seeing things with different priorities over time. A lot of that is connected to seasons of life. The stage we’re in becomes, understandably, of primary interest to us. Our issues, felt-needs, struggles and hopes are often bound up in in the specifics of these stages.  When we pass through them many of these begin to recede.

Other times it’s simply a case of growing in wisdom (no matter how painfully slow.) The New Testament book of Hebrews is an eloquent and well reasoned argument that genuine spiritual maturity is about changing priorities. For Christians being addressed in the letter it meant moving away from an obsession with forms of the Old Covenant (which was good) with it’s elaborate attention to outward ceremonial requirements and toward embracing the realized work of Christ in the New Covenant (better).  St. Paul speaks of putting “childish things away” and all I have to do is look over sermons I subjected God’s people to early in my ministry to see how necessary that is.

It applies to the visible church as well. Some churches focus on people in particular seasons of life or a particular cultural zeitgeist or popular trend. Others only circle around what Hebrews calls “elementary truths” and never on “solid food which is for the mature.” It may sound harsh but the danger is that, left unchecked,  this trajectory leads to the spiritual version of that frozen TV dinner. I see what you’re trying to do, but it’s falling really short.

The poet Sir Thomas Wyatt wrote, "The eye is the traitor of the heart." Wisdom and growing up is the process of realizing how so much of what we've laid our eyes and hearts on betrays either a passing phase of life or muddle-headed priorities. Hanging on too long to either of those is just a bad idea.

My kids look at our fake tree and see it as a sell-out. I get that. But I see it as something different. Life is changing and I'm looking at things a bit differently. I can only hope that is a reflection of a broader and deeper change in seeing the world around me.

Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.

God wants you dead. Facebook told me so.

Author and social commentator Andrew Potter sizes up Facebook, Twitter and other digital communication and calls them "a sort of social acid, eating away at the boundaries between public and private and eliminating the established norms of discretion, courtesy, and common sense." 

That sounds a bit harsh but most people who are on social media for any length of time have seen those boundaries and norms, at the very least, blurred.

I joined Facebook in 2005. In the social media timeline that was the Cretaceous Period. Since then it's gone from being the exclusive domain of those with ".edu" addresses (which I had because of my work) to what Rebecca MacKinnon calls "Facebookistan". A digital nation. My Facebook "feed" is a goulash of just about every aeon of my life since I was 14. Former students, vocational colleagues, and family members. And there are the friends from my past going back to high school in the Philadelphia area and tracing through my days in South Carolina, Mississippi, Australia, New York City, Georgia and now here in Birmingham.

With that comes the inevitable ideological mishmash. The large middle is matted by Tea Party types, Progressives, 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, Home-Schoolers, Libertarians, Christian Fundamentalists, "Recovering Christian" Atheists, Pro-life/Pro-choice Activists, a Solipsist, and even a self-professed Anarchist. I've always been a bit pleased with myself about that. Hey. Look at all the diversity. 

During the recent election cycle I found some parts of this diversity to be maddening and as close to Potter's description of "social acid" as I've experienced.<sup>1

[1</sup> Fair warning and full disclosure. Moaning about Facebook - including the claim you'll never join it - can be a barely transparent foray into primping self-righteousness. Not unlike those who used to insist they only watched public television. I hope I'm not doing that here. But. I can't be too sure.]

I don't mind snark. I can get really snarky. I've been known to vent anger and cynicism on the interweb. I've bruised feelings with harsh emails and thoughtless twitter posts. I'm not proud of that and I've needed to humble myself more than a few times to repair the damage. Because of this I have a reasonable tolerance for that particular indulgence. What I found beyond depressing leading up to the presidential election was what CNET editor Charles Cooper describes as the "spittle-splashing, eye-popping vitriol" that found its way daily and often on Facebook. It was thoroughly bipartisan and had the unmistakable tone and timbre of those on a mission from God. And this god wants his enemies dead. Because otherwise life as we know it is over. Can't you see that? You can't? You're a moron. Cooper adds, "What's extraordinary here is that names are attached to these screeds, with people proud to stand behind their nastiness."

And with these came the inevitable comments from the like-minded. "Ha ha!", "Love it!", "Totally sharing this!". The embodiment of what University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein calls the "Daily Me", that peculiar social media phenomena where group polarization fossilizes as we only engage in ideological reinforcement. The winds of political doctrine and speech don't blow in this Town Hall. They are shamed and shouted down. This is not a discussion. It's a spider's egg hatching thousands of baby Rush Limbaughs and Bill Mahers. And they're gonna eat their momma. Sunstein argues the Daily Me is bad for democracy. Potter adds,

Democracy is based on the premise that reasonable people can disagree over issues of fundamental importance, from abortion and gay rights to the proper balance between freedom and security. When the mere fact that someone supports the other side becomes evidence that they have been brainwashed, then the truth is you no longer believe in democracy.

So several weeks before the election I got off Facebook. There are other reasons, but this was the main one. I couldn't bear the noise so I left the room. Now that the election is over the winners are happy and the vanquished are left in their despair. I'm back in the room but I know the relative calm is illusory.²  The monster is resting. He's coming back and you know it.

^[2 Why am I back on Facebook? At least two reasons that are shamelessly self-serving: 1. My band is playing a Christmas Show next month and the best way to get people to show up is Facebook. 2. Most of the people who read this blog do so because Facebook points them here. ]


My really conservative friends (Facebook and otherwise) worry that there has been a tectonic shift in American culture toward entitlement. I despair that the really worrying (and deeper) shift is how so much of our political discourse has taken the form of junior high gossip and slander. Nasty political talk has existed in this country since the feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. I'm not a utopian dreamer on this. But do we have to be so proud of being such asshats?

I hope not.

What you don't know about Harvard.

For three years while working at New York University I would take a group of students to a fall conference in Litchfield, CT (a place incommunicably beautiful in the autumn). We were joined by several other schools in the Northeast including a few Ivy League institutions.

Given that many NYU students were (sheesh I hate to say this) Ivy coulda, shoulda wannabes my protective instincts as their campus minister were on full alert. I initially went to these gatherings expecting the Ivy League students to be insufferably rude, pretentious and self-absorbed. And generally speaking they did not disappoint. Except for the Harvard students.

Yep. The Harvard kids. America's (and arguably the world's) greatest university and the Ivy League king of the castle. The rest of the Ivies will take issue with that but they're wrong, and they know it. They're all Harvard coulda, shoulda wannabes. And they know that too.

My wife and I were struck by how engaging, unaffected and generally, well, normal they all were. In the most unselfconscious way possible they routinely avoided huddling together in their own clique. My children were little at the time and generally invisible to even most of my NYU students. But not to the Harvard students. They spoke with them, acted silly with them and clearly cared about them. When we got to know them we learned how - and I can't think of a better word - well-rounded they were. Along with their academic load each of them carried a significant and time consuming cocurricular pursuit - athletic team, a capella singing group, marching band, etc. 

My working theory is that having the luxury of picking anyone they want to, Harvard can easily afford to attract students like this. Of all the people with perfect SAT scores they find the ones most comfortable in their own skin.

Yes, I'm gushing. And yes, I may not have been exposed to a representative sample. And yes, I did see The Social Network and its tableau of profligate life at Harvard. (I also have a parishioner who lived down the hall from Mark Zuckerberg at Kirkland House who will tell you the film, in just about every respect, is nothing more than an entertaining fantasy.) And I'm certainly not motivated by my own college ties. I went to the University of South Carolina. At the time, if you could fog a mirror you got in and it was hard to flunk out (believe me, I tried). Being jealous of or protective of Harvard was just not a category I knew existed. I was too worried where my next beer was coming from and why we couldn't beat Clemson in anything. At least the second part of that last sentence has changed.

Given what I've done for a living most of my adult life I have seen a representative sample of college student amour propre. Twice I've spoken at conferences with students from the University of Virginia. I can think of at least three people I know personally who went there and are really good people. I'm sure there are others. But on balance you will not find a human category more passionately in love with itself than UVA students. In one two-minute conversation I had a young woman correct me twice. No, she was not a freshman but a "first year". And she didn't like the campus, she liked "the grounds". They're not Ivy League but they will tell you (they told me often), "It's harder to get into UVA than an Ivy League school." No it isn't. And quit saying that.

What's prompted all this? The video below. The Harvard baseball team killing time en route to an away game. It's deservedly gone viral. And it tells you all you neet to know about how awesome these kids are. Watch it to the end.

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addendum

May 26, 2012

As Kristen points out in the comments below there is a lot more that makes this video awesome. As of this writing it's approaching ten million views and the players are using its popularity to raise awareness for a charity called Friends of Jaclyn, which helps improve the quality of life for children with pediatric brain tumors. Click here to learn more about it. The Harvard baseball team has "adopted" a five year old boy named Alex who is fighting cancer. Read about it here.

Four Years

(This appeared in the most recent Red Mountain Church Parish Newsletter.)


Four years.


That’s a presidential term, a college education, the average life-span of a mouse, and 32 dog years. It’s also how long I’ve been pastor at Red Mountain Church. I’m calling it a milestone.

A few months into our time here I wrote in the parish newsletter about our first impressions of Birmingham and Red Mountain Church. I commented on how seriously food is taken in this city. I’ve gained 15 pounds since coming here and that’s my excuse. I also named my favorite places to eat. I still like Cantina for Mexican, but I think Flip Burger has overtaken Five Guys in that department. O’Henry’s coffee? Eclipsed by anywhere that sells Primavera. And I’m still looking for that good, local and reasonably priced Italian restaurant. Mafiaoza's in Mountain Brook doesn’t count. It’s good but it’s a chain. And don’t get me started on Davinci's in Homewood.

I also wrote this,

"Easily the most pleasant part about landing in Birmingham is the reality of the Gospel in the people at Red Mountain Church...In the midst of it all I’ve been encouraged and sustained by how faith in Christ is real and makes a difference in our parish."

Still true. Every word.

Some family milestones in the past four years. Grace graduates from Erskine College and now teaching in China. James and Noah making their way out of Homewood High School and in full-scale collegiate mode. And for about nine months we had Matilda, the Italian-Greyhound-from-hell-that-nearly-ruined-our-lives. The last time I checked she was tormenting a family in Georgia. Jeeves, our ill-tempered, dimwitted and now aging cat, was happy to see her go too.

Dawn has made good friends, branched out into the working world and continued to be the glue of our family. She is wise, beautiful and patient. True. Every word.

Me? I still wake up every morning with the vague goal of not completely wrecking Red Mountain Church. Despite what are at times my best efforts to do just that God has done good things here. Not everything we expected or asked for but a real work of grace. I still miss college ministry. Sometimes a lot. But I’m not going back there and I’m as convinced as ever that God wants me at Red Mountain Church.

So then there’s this. I will continue to make awkward movements in the pulpit, drive our church administrator around the bend with my inattention to detail, forget people’s names (“Hey...buddy!”), struggle with my own inconsistencies as I call God’s people to see their own and rest in grace while striving for righteousness.

Thanks for letting me be your pastor. I’m grateful.

Still true. Every word.

Mark Driscoll, Mississippi Sorority Girls and The Mind of God

The odd theological convergence of Mark Driscoll and Hilly Holbrook.

Mark Driscoll is pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. He's also l'enfant terrible of the American evangelical Christian world. His peculiar spray of neo-Calvinism, occasional cussing, faux-now-aging-hipster vibe, and prodigious platform skills have coagulated into what is arguably the most influential movement in conservative Christianity. This includes a mega-church, the now inevitable franchising of "satellite churches", books, blogs, videos, conferences and a legion of devotees and sycophants.


Driscoll also inspires intense and at times unhinged animosity. His detractors provoked by everything from his theological positions to his potty-mouth and even alleged authoritarian practices at Mars Hill Church. I've remained generally agnostic on this issue. In person Driscoll does come off relentlessly smug and it's hard not to see the cult of personality as a constituent part of his expanding empire. Yet his sermons I've managed to listen to in their entirety have been generally helpful. Over the past few years I've gotten to know several young pastors who are, or have been, part of his church-planting "network". They are, to a man, generous and humble. So lacking any evidence to be concerned I haven't been.


That's changed a bit. Recently a friend pointed me to a YouTube video that is a preview of a seven part DVD series from Mars Hill Church called "Real Marriage". This particular clip is a question and answer session with Driscoll and his wife Grace. The question is, "How can a single Christian man best prepare for marriage?". Driscoll has this advice:

“Guys, it’s good to be journaling for your wife someday, praying for her, as Scripture comes to mind, and then using that as a way to have affection and devotion, even though you may have not met her yet...and the day you meet her, and you get to know her and you become engaged to her, to give her that. To say I've loved you before I met you, I've been praying for you and waiting for you." (Emphasis mine)

Some may read this and, apart from the High Cheese, have no problem with it. Others may see where I'm going and think it very, very picayune. Bear with me.


In the Spring of 1998 I spoke at a weekend conference for college students in Mississippi. I was invited by a good friend who was then a campus minister at the University of Mississippi (henceforth "Ole Miss") and most of the 400 or so present were from his campus. He asked me to speak on the issue of guidance and decision making which, as you might guess, is a subject on constant rotation in college ministry. Having watched firsthand the dominant evangelical view of guidance and "God's will" paralyze an entire generation of students I had developed (and still hold) strong contrarian views on the issue.


In 1998 I was, even more than now, needlessly confrontational, self-aggrandizing and tone-deaf. So I began the talks by asking the question, "How many of you in this room have been taught by your parents to pray for your future husband or wife?" I made it clear I was not talking about the notion of a future spouse, but a specific person out there who one day they will be married to.


My conceit in asking the question was simple. I already knew what the response would be. Earlier in the evening I had met a large number of young women from the Ole Miss group. They were sweet, charming and sincere. And sorority girls all. It was also clear they were faithful Christians who wanted to grow and learn in the gospel. So naturally I reduced them to a sociological stereotype and decided on the spot to later expose their vulnerabilities and publicly embarrass them to help me make a point. That's how I rolled.

As hands shot up all over the room the largest, most conspicuous cluster came from this group of young women. Hands went down. I nodded and paused to milk as much from the moment as I could. I then said, "That is a dumb, irreverent prayer. Stop doing that."

"You wanna dance, you gotta pay the band," said Rocky Balboa. I confused cruelty for edgy communication and payment came due immediately and in full. Audible gasps, brimming tears and a roomful of harsh stares. Solomon was right. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. That anger settled in the room like an arctic air mass as I summarily dismissed half the room (and their mothers) as stupid and sub-Christian. I completely lost the room less than two minutes in. No mea culpa was going to rescue this weekend. I plowed on anyway because I had to. But it was miserable for everyone.

Apart from my witless taunting, the worst part of it was I had an important point to make and that window was closed. The notion that there is a specific person out there for the single person to claim, imagine, pray for, journal about or anything else is theologically spurious and encourages a view of the Christian life which is pastorally damaging. 


Hilly Holbrook is the loci of everything shallow in Kathryn Stockett's The Help, set in early 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. A Chi Omega at Ole Miss, she leaves after two years to get married. She neatly fits the worldview one character in the book suggests,  “Isn’t that what you women from Ole Miss major in? Professional husband hunting?"  Hilly and her Junior League friends see marriage as birthright, duty, and the sum off all hopes and dreams. And Stockett is clearly lampooning that mindset. Yet it lives on and otherwise sane and well-meaning Christians not only encourage it but infuse a doctrinal sheen which makes it impervious to biblical scrutiny and common sense.


Among the comments on the YouTube video is this one (copied as is):

"Im a single virgin 25 year old Christian guy and i want to get married. I struggle and have struggled in the past in purity lusting watching porn ect. I think i will start to Journal apologizing for corrupting her image before we met, and i am fighting to honor God and be a good husband one day. Its my desire to walk in purity before we meet so we can share close sacred intimacy together and honor God Together."

I want to weep for this guy. The affect of pornography is real and pernicious. On top of the genuine burden he carries, he's now being tormented by the Ghost of Marriage Yet to Come -- the face of a specific but yet-unseen woman who now hovers over him and is perpetually aggrieved and disapproving.


Then there's this:

"Take his advice! :) I think it’s romantic and thoughtful. I have been (journaling) for my future husband since 2003 (9 years)."

This will seem a lot less romantic if no husband shows up. Not only is that a statistical possibility but one the Scriptures both allow for and give explicit approval of. Instead there is breathtaking presumption (God will give me a spouse) and an off-kilter and overly sentimentalized view of marriage (The spouse God gives me will deliver me from this unfulfilling and prosaic existence). 


And by sentimental I'm thinking of Oscar Wilde's definition, "A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." The thrill of a God-guaranteed future spouse is by necessity a cheap one that promises much and delivers future frustration. Mike Mason in his book The Mystery of Marriage suggests different expectations.

"Marriage is about nakedness, exposure, defenselessness, and the very extremities of intimacy. It is about the simple unadorned truth between two human beings, truth at all levels and at all costs, and it does not care what pain or inconvenience must be endured in order for the habit of truth to take root, to be watered, and to grow into maturity."

The emotions of real-life marriage can indeed be intoxicating. But you earn them. Sometimes at excruciatingly high cost. I think Driscoll and the Mississippi moms mean well. That's not faint praise. But I think they're indulging themselves and others in a view of God and marriage which just adds needless cost in the future. I have another campus minister friend who has probably officiated at a hundred or more weddings of former students. He talks about the "deer in the headlights" look young marrieds get several months in and they realize, well, "S(tuff) just got real." Men often because they finally catch on that their porn-site expectations of sex and the female body are a destructive fantasy they brought into the marriage. But for both there is also the creeping awareness that the road ahead, as Mason puts it, "does not care what pain or inconvenience must be endured in order for the habit of truth to take root." And the habits they developed were watered by this fantasy-land view of God and marriage.


The Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy is both a restatement and explanation of the Law of God. It's also a document of covenant renewal where a particular generation embraces the God of their fathers as their own and the covenant made between God and their fathers as their own. It's long and detailed with covenant blessings, obligations and curses. The covenant renewal is highlighted in chapter 29 which ends with these words: 

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law."

And therein lies the rub. And the reason this view that "God has this person out there for you" is so resilient. And so wrong. And the mother of all manner of dysfunctions as it extends to the paralyzing belief that you need to find those things God will give you which the Bible is silent about . It's just a gussied up version of demanding to know the mind of God, something the polytheistic religions surrounding Israel were obsessed with but the Israelites were warned against. "You will be like God" was the Serpent's lie in the Garden of Eden. "We will know with the certainty of God" is the present rebellion, good intentions or not.


If you watch that video, notice that Driscoll's wife answers first. She's not nearly as polished as her husband. A little nervous. And it kind of strikes me that while she's talking her husband isn't really paying attention. Too bad, because her answer is pretty sensible and biblically consistent.

"Much of marriage is serving and being selfless instead of selfish. so continue to work on your relationship with Jesus...and serve in whatever ways you can find."

Listen to your wife Mark.