On Polemics, Mark Driscoll, and the Salvation of the World

If you don't understand this, or at least don't have a strong opinion about this,
 then I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND, PLEASE.

I love the church. I love ministry, and I'm sold out on giving my entire life, resources, and talent to cooperate in its mission from here on out. Now, that doesn't mean I always like "church" in the sense of that regular religious practice of going to a local community worship gathering, navigating its bureaucracy, or processing any number of things that strikes a chord or a nerve related to music, preaching style, or theology. No, the vision is more dynamic than that, amplified, even widescreen in proportions. I serve in an interdenominational parachurch ministry, which means that I serve in partnership and interdependence with the Church universal. I take this notion of Church seriously, so much in fact, that I make it my business to engage and support dialogue across an unfortunately segmented and disjointed entity that sometimes looks little like the growing, related, and mutual organism that the term "Body" so justly describes. Yet it is here that I most often run into trouble, and this weekend I ran into a conversation between multiple members of my own movement, some of them my close friends, which quickly escalated into a heated, no-holds-barred-for-the-sake-of-integrity polemic feud.

I call it a feud to imply the nature of the conversation. It occurs within our movement, where I have often experienced deep camaraderie, cooperation, and humility when it comes to our diverse and disparate backgrounds in religious tradition. Within a family this kind of conflict can be healthy, nurturing, and can provide a gut check when it comes to our assumptions and the way that our opinions affect one another. At the same time, family conflict can open deep wounds, cultivate mistrust, and drive people so far apart that they forget their ability to have an authentic conversation. When I look at the Church as a whole, especially the evangelical church in North America, I see that this kind of interaction is normative and even to be expected in any group of people meeting across tradition's lines. When we expand the scope to include the apostolic churches (my own Roman church included), the divisions grow wider, the dialogue more scarce, and the perspectives verging on mutual unintelligibility. In fact, I don't believe that most of this conversation even presupposes that we are relating to each other as members of the same family, instead resorting to heated rhetoric to proselytize a particular flavor of the message. Is this message even the Gospel? This is the church at its most historically weak and ugliest, and I feel sick to my stomach when I'm drawn into these places.

The conversation itself began over the video below, presented at a convention of various pastors and church leaders in the North American evangelical church. The presenter of this segment, Mark Driscoll, is himself a divisive figure, at least within our own movement. I began to feel sour when I saw his name pop up on my social media feed because I knew that our opinions would surface themselves in no time, and an inevitable "flame" of responses would ensue.

Now, to be sure, I was not feeling this way because of Driscoll himself, per se. It was merely the fact that I knew that we would find ourselves in a reductionistic argument that made me so sad. To be sure, I have some serious issues with Driscoll's teaching in general. But to be fair to him, and honor our relationship as fellow servants in God's Kingdom, I'll only mention the relevant content in the video itself. His theology here is not the issue, say what you will, but the way he presents the information. First, he assumes that the prevailing framework of Christian leadership should only be influenced by people of the last 50 years. Those people are all white men. While these men are no doubt influential and contribute a great deal to our Church (Stott, Packer, Schaeffer, Graham), it is too narrow of a definition to be of any use. What about the great ministers of the Holiness movement John Wesley inaugurated? What about the warm dialogue and fierce defense of orthodox Christianity championed by G.K. Chesterton, a Roman Catholic? What about the prophetic call to justice that began with Wilberforce yet was sustained by Dr. King, Desmond Tutu, and prominent majority world (read nonwhite) leaders? Driscoll continues his teaching with a dismissive and irreverent treatment of those strains of evangelicalism that do not conform to his own views, adding for humor that this represents a mindset "like Jesus" for humor, but it only comes across as arrogant and pugilistic.

Yet it was an issue that was briefly touched upon that provided the biggest storm of criticism among my community: that of Driscoll's widely acknowledged view of women in ministry. Put succinctly, Driscoll belongs to the category of complementarians holding that only men should hold pastoral and authoritative positions in church. This is usually contrasted with the term egalitarian, which maintains no such distinctions should be made. Yes, there is a fair amount of complexity to the discussion, when discussion is even present. Still, even my complementarian friends have admitted that Driscoll's popular rhetoric is paternalistic at best, and at worst, verges on oppressive. This article provides another perspective from a woman. If you want a comprehensive treatment, I suggest Sarah Sumner's excellent book, Men and Women in the Church, published, of course, by IVP.

I'll leave my commentary on women in ministry at that, simply because I believe that women should be leading us men in that conversation. Yes, I know that may align me with some folks on one "side" or another of the issue. But for me, this is the problem.

We are so good at defending, parsing, and manipulating these issues that they can cease to maintain any relationship with the Church's original vision at all, rendering them meaningless. Still, we find ourselves cynically carrying on, defending our opinions when they cease to mean anything in their original context. Every good business knows that any product, policy, or money spent outside of the purpose and vision of that company is simply wasteful, and thus should be eliminated (Remember clear Coke?). Please hear me out: I do believe that decisions on women leading in ministry, homosexuality, and credal statements are important to our mission. Yet it is how we relate with each other that defines our identity as a Body. What does it say about a married couple who refuses to sit down at the table and talk? Is the relationship beyond repair? A particularly sour taste in this conversation came when one colleague reminded us of a former colleague who wrote about his perceptions of our organization's flaws in an editorial blog a few years ago. This is the kind of sad rhetoric that does not do anything to advance a conversation between two parties, whether or not they are wrong or right. To drive his point home, he explicitly states that he cannot partner with Roman Catholics in gospel ministry, ironically because he thinks to do so would compromise his ability to preach the "true" gospel. The table remains empty.

Fortunately, we have a Good Shepherd to lead us, even in times when the flock ventures far from the pasture. Jesus assures us that we are never far from his persistent, pursuant grasp. His redemption is at hand, radiantly overcoming our ego's rebellion by the power of his love. In some conversations I have been challenged to articulate a firm understanding of atonement in regards to salvation. I cannot offer one that stays true to my heart, because I know that salvation is impossible to articulate, describe, or affirm without the cosmic reality of Jesus' death and resurrection. I say again, it is not an idea about how he did it, but the eternal reality of this love that effects our redemption from sin. Apart from the open arms of Christ, which include all of humanity within them, such dialogue is impossible. The reality is expressed in an attitude that allows pain, defeat, and suffering to be necessary teachers to strip us of our own desires to shape our destiny. See, we were never supposed to be the ones saving ourselves, and dare I say to even describe the mechanisms of such salvation. Hiding behind a punitive defense of who is in and who is out, who is right and who is wrong, is egoism at its strongest, a kind of contemporary tribalism that is pervasive among us. And yes, Driscoll is right when he talks about this in the video, even if he fails at modeling a clear way to move forward. To press the issue deeper, these are issues of our taking hold of conscious power, and are expressed at the micro scale through polemic arguments. At the macro scale, these are the dangerous mechanisms that keep people in power and others subjugated. Historically, this has meant that white, male, northern-hemisphere people have kept the world running on their terms. Today it means that these same people inherit the privileges built into that system. As Richard Rohr says, this positioning gives us control but rarely compassion or wisdom. And are these not the very essential tools we trade for use as followers of Jesus? If our Beloved shows his victory over our sin while spread naked on a cross, what should that show about us? It means we rush into the breach without letting our opinions change for one second how we love the other. If this were true, the Church would have a radically different reputation among our usual "others", particularly the gay community, divorced women, those who have had abortions...the list goes on.

I love how Pope Francis describes his frustration with his own church's progress in this area. He refreshingly urges us to recapture the truly good news that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.

If you have some time, you should read his whole interview as published in America magazine recently. Notice, if you will, how he maintains a completely orthodox relationship to the dogma of his own church, yet communicates the vision of the church's ministry with such passion, humility, and sincerity.

I think Francis offers a challenge to all church leaders the world over. For once, the world is actually listening to what we, as Christians, have to say. Will we respond with Jesus, or our own arguments?