Popular Posts
-
In 2008 I preached this sermon on Dating. I was then a single man and about a month later I put this into practice and started dating Ell...
-
I've just finished my first ever full blown exegetical sermon series. I decided to tackle Hebrews over eight weeks. You can listen t... -
I think there are two mistakes we can make as Christians as we seek to be missionaries or evangelists in our world today. The first...
...Or the last 3 minutes... In a kind of maybe sort of way...
ReplyDeleteHow much are you still listening to MD these days?
If I had a sermon feed, I would be looking for:
- Non-anecdotal use of the Bible
- Something applicable to AU
- Modelling a self-critical masculinity
A.
I thought he kinda admitted at the start that he was gonna use the passage anecdotally. i.e. "Commentators skip this verse... I am passionate about men" - Therefore I'm gonna talk about him.
ReplyDeleteI'm not actually listening to anyone apart from Ridley preachers and HTD preachers at the moment.
Going all old-school and trying to spend more time reading books!
Let me rewrite that first line: I thought he kinda admitted at the start that he was gonna use the passage anecdotally. i.e. "Commentators skip this verse... I am passionate about men" - Therefore I'm gonna talk about what this verse says about men even though no one thinks it does.
ReplyDeleteEven with the excuse - how irresponsible! As if it's OK to use the Bible for your own hobbyhorses because you say that's what you're going to do?!
ReplyDeleteBut I was interested in the cultural application of his notion of manhood. The whole get a job, get married, have kids things - does that mean Jesus wasn't a real man? or Paul?
And also, what about cultures where identity goes beyond the nuclear family? I was watching Oprah yesterday and she was interviewing the two biggest Bollywood stars who are married to each other and live with the guy's parents, because that's normal in their culture. I wondered to what extent Driscoll's concept of a man is defined by his culture (or Christian heritage) and how much by the Bible.
That said, I liked the not evil but dumb thing. I thought that was helpful - but the whole sermon should have been presented that way, as 'Mark's thoughts', not 'Scripture is God-breathed'.
T
Yeah, I agree that the excuse at the start doesn't make it a good one. I don't even think he meant to say that he was gonna do that, because as you say the sermon was presented in a this is what the Bible says kinda way.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it wasn't all bad. But the whole men must do this and do is to my mind completely cultural Christianity and doesn't make allowances for things like the Proverbs 31 wife nor as you say manhood and womanhood in Christian Indian culture.
I thought it pretty obvious that he was speaking specifically to the men, sorry, 'guys' of his church, not universally. He clearly wasn't criticising living with parents beyond boyhood, or studying for many years, or singleness on principle, but he saw that the guys in his church were basically failing to act responsibly. Maybe if the church wasn't full of guys who say they want to get married but sit around playing xbox at 30, as Driscoll suggests, then you would have heard a different message.
ReplyDeleteI can see why people have problems with his condescending tone, but I think it can be a good way to communicate with guys. It actually sounds pretty close to how Jesus spoke to the guys he taught:
"O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" (Matt 17:17)
These words, like Driscoll's, aren't those of a complaining boy, but a man angry that guys for whom he has responsibility aren't living out what they have accepted as true.
That said, I think there might be a reason commentators skim over that verse, and I don't think Driscoll should have injected so much new meaning into the verse just as a pretext to say what he wanted to say.
What a hypocrite - wailing against consumerism then paying people out for not buying into the house, car, wife and 2.4 kids that HE (*not* the bible - by MD's own admission he is importing his own opinions) has decreed are requirements for being a godly man.
ReplyDeleteI had been meaning to watch this ages ago and only just got onto it.... It's a bit dangerous! Mark doesn't really talk about the Bible at all in this, which is quite dodgy for a sermon. Especially from someone held in such high regard by his followers that he should probably be guarding against the cult of personality.
ReplyDeleteHis 5-fold approach to manhood (finish school; leave home; get a job; get a woman; spawn) is I think over-simplified and provides only one way to be a man (as Tamie pointed out above). I have just been reading "Just Do Something" and author Kevin de Young makes the same five-fold argument for discerning God's will. It's easy, God wants you to do those things (for the record, I am enjoying that book overall).
But there is more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to be a man. For that matter there's a fair few ways to be a woman! I think Christians (both male AND female) do need to be responsible, but to put such a limiting boundary on how to achieve this is stifling at best and legalistic at worst. I also didn't really appreciate his "spin around, pick a woman" approach to finding a wife. Surely there's gotta be more than a bible and a pulse in that??
Really, to excuse his rant as expository preaching is pretty bad - if Mark wanted to have a rant about that stuff then that's fine, but he probably should've done it under a different banner.