Here’s a fascinating article, which I’ll post in full ( in two sections ) due to the intensity of this thread - and the need to reflect on what we are on about :
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mark Driscoll ?
How do you solve a problem like Mark Driscoll? Is he a darling, a demon, a lamb? He’d out pester any pest; drive a hornet from it’s nest. He could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl. He is gentle; he is wild. He’s a riddle; he’s a child. He’s a headache. He’s an angel. He’s a…
Never mind. Forgive me for the introduction. Just a couple of days ago my mother-in-law and I were discussing The Sound of Music and somehow this came to mind. I post it with apologies to Maria Julie Andrews. May she sing forever.
Yesterday I posted a review of Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Jesus. Were I to summarize the review I’d say that I was “hesitantly positive” towards it. I liked 99.9% of it but was troubled by a couple of mis-steps that I judged to be quite serious. These involved Driscoll’s use of phrases that I’d consider inappropriate. If you’d like to know more, you can read the review.
The review generated quite a reaction. The post quickly generated almost 70 comments before I realized the discussion was really not progressing and I opted to close it down. I was not surprised at the reaction. Love him or hate him, everyone has an opinion about Mark Driscoll. As has been proven when I’ve written about his other books, writing reviews is a lose-lose proposition. Some will react with anger that I even saw fit to mention the phrases that troubled me while others will react with disgust that, despite those things, I did not condemn the book and its author. Of course there were many who appreciated and I received some kind emails from people, many of whom known and love Driscoll, thanking me for taking a balanced approach. I hope the review communicated both my respect for him and this book and my hesitance based on his occasional use of rough language.
So how are we to think about Mark Driscoll? I’ve had to work through this in my mind and I thought I’d share just a few of the things that have rattled around my brain in the past years, weeks, months, days. I do this not to convince you but rather to explain why I could dislike certain references within Driscoll’s work, and yet not allow that to form the basis of a blanket condemnation of the book, the man, and his ministry. Maybe (and hopefully) this will explain to you why I reviewed the book as I did.
HE’S A REAL GUY
Not too long after I started blogging, I wrote a review that, in retrospect, may have been too harsh and perhaps even unfair (you may know of the author but have probably not read the book). As I read through that review today, I sometimes feel a twinge of conscience. Other times I feel that it was a legitimate criticism. In either case, several months after writing the review I had the opportunity to meet the author and was rather surprised to see that he was a real man. He wasn’t some cleverly programmed computer who just happened to write a book, but a real guy with a wife and kids and friends and family. Somehow that hadn’t occurred to me. It came as a shock and I believe it changed the way I review books and the way I address other people on this site.
Mark Driscoll may have a larger-than-life personality, but he is still a real guy who not only offends others but is no doubt offended by them. I’m sure his bravado on the stage is matched by times of sober reflection in private. We need to be certain that in our critiques we do not say things that we’d never say to him face-to-face and that we do not treat him as a guy that, since he is so remote from us, is somehow less human than we are. It’s an obvious point, I know, but in this depersonalized online world it’s worth reminding ourselves of it quite often.
This should go without saying, but I think it is sometimes easy to forget that people with big personalities are still people. Driscoll is a guy who, at the end of the day, goes home to a family not too different than yours or mine. He has children who love and and a wife, who, if she’s anything like mine, probably takes criticism of him harder than he does. He’s a real guy. Maybe he even cries at the end of chick flicks. Probably not. But he’s still a real guy.
MAJOR ON THE MAJORS
Last weekend I had the privilege of spending a fair bit of time with D.A. Carson and he said something about Driscoll that I found interesting and meaningful. Because he has said this to others, I don’t think I’m violating any kind of trust in mentioning it. There is no doubt that people have had difficulty knowing what to do with Driscoll and knowing how to think about him. But Carson said he finds it helpful to look not just at where Driscoll is, but at the trajectory he is on. I took that to mean that if we look at where he has come from and then plot a course by where he is now, we’ll see that he is growing and maturing as a Christian and that he is continually emphasizing better and more biblical theology. We are all works in progress. This is not to say that we should hope that Mark Driscoll grows up to become John MacArthur or R.C. Sproul. Rather, it simply means that it is sometimes wise to look at the wider picture.
When we look to that wider picture we see that Driscoll clearly believes in and teaches the gospel. He has proven that he has a very good grasp on Christian doctrine and that he is no theological light-weight. He has proven that he’s unashamed to preach the gospel in contexts adamantly opposed to it. Thus any of our criticisms of him are dealing with, at best, secondary matters. This is an important matter of perspective.
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