Divine Disdain: Revisiting Mark Driscoll this Election Cycle

I once felt very drawn to the movement that is popularly referred to as neo-Calvinism. The most accurate way to explain the attraction would probably be that the harshness of it felt authentic. I'd never liked myself very much, was fairly certain God didn't like me (the feeling was sort of mutual), and thought an ideology which affirmed my utter worthlessness and depravity must have the answers. It was as if a fitting narrative framework could resolve this strange, anxious relationship I'd had with God my entire life. Also, I'd never seen the kind of passionate preaching that is the trademark of the movement's leadership before. As someone easily affected by emotion, I thought that what I was hearing really resonated. No one can make you feel quite as terrified of your own well-deserved damnation as a Calvinist, or as eager to accept an escape route.

But as I branched out from the TULIP-ish gospel that is at the center of the movement's evangelism and began to review its other teachings, I found red flags. And they weren't flags that were just kind of sitting there waiting to be noticed by the astute protagonist of an Aesop fable - they were enormous. One of them was Mark Driscoll (of whom I've written previously in my post on Brock Turner and the Christian ideal of hypermasculinity).¹ The thing is, it's easy to write off Driscoll as a fringe preacher. Yes, you have to deliberately ignore the fact that he pastored one of the largest mega churches in the U.S., and that even after his spectacular fall from grace he possesses enough clout in the evangelical community to start another one (housed, appropriately, in Phoenix). But the excuse that one disgraced preacher is not representative of reformed theology could still be construed as reasonable.

So I started to seek out more normative reformed preachers. Among these, John Piper emerged as the father of the neo-Calvinist movement seen today. My introduction came via the accolades heaped upon him by Paul Washer (whom I still decently respect) as an exegetical genius. But I soon picked up that Piper also happens to be a leading proponent of complementarianism, which, by its least destructive definition, is the idea that men and women have different social roles ordained for them by God. I happen to disagree with this premise on its own, but its extensions are all the more damning. In one notorious interview, Piper goes to great lengths to explain why women cannot have jobs which involve "directives toward men", because "to the degree that a woman’s influence over a man, guidance of a man, leadership of a man, is personal and a directive, it will generally offend a man’s good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order." Then there was the hypothetical he posed wherein a couple is attacked, and Piper exhorts the woman with a blackbelt to step aside so that her untrained male companion can defend them both (and presumably his man card). But he really gets to the heart of the matter in another interview when he explains that even though a woman cannot teach him the Bible, it's okay to read a woman's writings, because in the latter instance, he can't see her.

Well, okay. So Piper is classically sexist. It's not exactly a secret that heteronormative gender roles are of deep concern to conservative Christians (one might argue their primary concern). But, given Piper's anxious policing of gender boundaries, one would assume following the revelations that Pastor Driscoll was having pornographic "visions" of his congregants' sexual sins, calling women "penis homes", and instructing them to perform fellatio on their husbands as some sort of scriptural penance, Piper would be the first to distance himself and his movement. As it turns out, that's not quite what happened.

Shortly after the Mars Hill debacle, Piper was interviewed by Norm Funk of Westside Church in Vancouver, British Columbia. Norm opens the interview by observing that Vancouver is not far from Seattle and the Mars Hill community, and then poses the following question:

I'm... wanting you to speak into those individuals' lives where coming out of what's happened over the last year has really impacted them. Called into question the church, leadership, does it work, can we trust it. People throwing even theological leanings under the bus because they equate it with the individual. Can you comment and encourage those individuals who have been impacted in that way?

Prior to viewing this clip, I would have confidently predicted John's pat apologies: That Mark does not represent all Christians, that his behavior was not Christ-like, that his teachings were not aligned with the Gospel, and so on. I began to recognize how badly I'd misjudged the situation when I saw John's initial response was to laugh, and offer an inappropriately rosy "I hope so!". He immediately slipped into a wistful reminiscence about Mark's gift of preaching, specifically this really great sermon he heard one time: "And I got home and I wrote him," he recalls, "and I said, 'That's the best thing I've ever heard on this.' Maybe I didn't say that. I just said it was very, very good. That was how I felt about Mark Driscoll."

He then launches a four-point defense of Mark:

• What happened at Mars Hill happens all the time. Notably, he places equal blame for this on lay people and pastors alike, even though lay people are not the topic of discussion here: "Christians are failing. Lay people, and pastors, are failing. Every day... we are letting Jesus down regularly." The corollary is that we shouldn't judge Mark's "deficits": "We should be penitent people and be slow to judge and go 'You got a log in your eye.' Jesus says 'No, you got a log in your eye, you need to be careful to get the log out before you take the speck out.'"

• God likes to use people with "motives and attitudes that are defective" to preach the truth. "One way to process Mars Hill or any other ministry... where there's defect [is] to say 'God is unbelievably merciful, to use you and me with our defects to speak Gospel truth.'"

• You're an idiot if you walk away from any of the following (in this order): Jesus, reformed theology, complementarianism, or the church. "To walk away from Jesus because Jesus' representatives are failures, is to make an absurd choice." Also, if you walk away from the church it's the same thing as walking away from Jesus. Because, "Jesus founded the church, I didn't... There are a lot of young evangelicals who are cool, hip, and leftward-leaning who think they can substitute organized - organized something, for organized church... Start a biblical church. And that means listening to your master and his word and his apostles."

• The Mars Hill fiasco was a "tactical defeat" for Mark, evangelicalism, reformed theology, and complementarianism. And the Gospel. God allowed a "colossal, Satanic victory" on purpose, because sovereignty. "God must be the kind of general over his army," he says, "that willingly accepts tactical defeats for strategic victories."

When it was all over, I felt a little disoriented. I don't know if it was Piper's odd style of nonverbal communication (which I've since learned people often have strong reactions to), or how glibly he seemed to treat the question, or the odd sense of betrayal I felt when I realized that, instead of offering encouragement to burned Mars Hill church members, he was defending Mark Driscoll. I mean, I didn't feel warm and fuzzy about Piper before I watched the video, so I had no reason to feel deceived in any way. And yet, I did. After reflecting on John's monologue, I understood that my emotional response had less to do with the fact of the defense itself, but rather the statements implied in the defense about the character of God. They were strong Calvinist sentiments, and they made me deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

Specifically:

1. What happened at Mars Hill happens all the time.

Implicit in this defense is the assertion that what happened at Mars Hill really isn't so bad. It's an acceptance of the hypocrisy and authoritarianism which characterized Mark's leadership, and the debacle to which it led, with the fatalism characteristic of dogmatic predestinarians: Things like this have always happened, and will continue to happen, until Jesus comes back (and destroys all except 144,000 of us with a violent fury). But the bewildering incongruity with this logic is that Mark was literally standing in front of millions of people and claiming to represent Christ. He was responsible for teaching and shepherding them, and ended up doing violence to both their understanding of God and what it means to follow Him. Waving your hand at this as something we should just expect to happen demonstrates such an apathetic passivism, it almost completely deflates the idea of trusting any person or body who claims to represent Jesus. Worse than that, it's cowardly. Because it allows the leadership, and John Piper specifically, to shirk any responsibility for derailing what was a painfully obvious runaway train. This wasn't a Sun Myung Moon who took his toys home and started his own brand of Christian. Mars Hill was firmly entrenched in well-established reformed circles, none of which made a move to circumscribe its pastor. And even when Mars Hill congregants reached out to the leadership of those circles (including John Piper) for help, they were coolly ignored. Considering this, it's all the more insulting for Piper to admonish the very people Mark hurt to be "a penitent people" (for what I can't imagine), and slow to judge the man who stood in strident judgment over them, passionately proclaiming that, "God objectively, personally, hates you."

Anemic as John's argument is, however, it fits perfectly within a Calvinist framework. The "T" in TULIP stands for a doctrine known as "total depravity", and it is as dismal and evocative of Black Death flagellants as it sounds. (It also integral to the other four points comprising the "five-point Calvinism" represented by TULIP, thus meriting its premier position in the acronym.) Total depravity teaches that man is born so hopelessly wicked, so grossly mired in sin, that he is simply unable to do anything good. Ever. To put it in Calvin's words: "The will is so utterly vitiated and corrupted in every part as to produce nothing but evil." It imparts a horrific impression of the world rivaling the post-apocalyptic dystopiascape of a Tim LaHaye fever dream, and whatever we might construe as "good" is simply God condescending to grace us with that which we will never deserve in order to glorify himself. In the midst of this devastation, Mars Hill is par for the course. Its ruination makes sense, and we should not be surprised when it happens again, because we can't do any better. The cue that Piper is invoking this doctrine is his weak attempt to spread the blame around - to, like, everyone - in his defense that "lay people and pastors are letting Jesus down every day". In other words, if you're angry at Mark, take a look in the mirror because by virtue of breathing, you're just as bad.

2. God likes to use people with "motives and attitudes that are defective" to preach the truth.

In other words, even though Mark did terrible and awful things in the name of God, what he preached wasn't wrong. I think this is pretty solid evidence that evangelicals have stretched sola scriptura to untenable extremes. I'll try to explain what I mean by that: One of the first things John said in response to the interview question was to praise a sermon Mark gave (on the authority of Scripture no less, but that's secondary to my point). For John, and reformed Christians like him, it's the sermons, the teachings, the expositions of the Bible, that matter most. Anything extra-biblical, including your actions, comes second. And this also explains why the reformed community is so intractable on relatively trivial points of doctrine: Defending the inerrancy of the Bible is the most important thing. The exegetical gymnastics needed to force a semblance of internal coherence are regarded as a test of fellowship, or worse, and we end up presented with the same uncompromising logic which asserts if you reject a seven, 24-hour day creation, you're rejecting Jesus Christ. By laboring this point, John is basically exhorting his listeners to focus their attention on the Mark Driscoll "show", and away from the man behind the curtain.

While I might absolutely agree that no one is perfect and we shouldn't expect them to be, I cannot emphasize enough how heavily Driscoll's abusive machismo influenced his sermons and teachings. This wasn't a matter of one slip-up, or several. This was the matter of a persona, which was endorsed by Piper and others because its acerbity complemented the rigor of the Calvinist doctrine he expounded. I think Piper gets it backwards when he concedes that Mark had "defective motives and attitudes" which didn't get in the way a correct theology: I think Mark possessed innate motives and attitudes that led to the type of fire-and-brimstone sermonizing which resonates so deeply with the Calvinist depiction of God.

I'll argue that much of John's defense here rests on the Calvinist idea of "unconditional election". Unconditional election teaches that God looked ahead into the future and deliberately chose some of us to save some from among the great unwashed masses of totally depraved people he created -- through no choice of their own, or effort on their part. (The counterpoint to this of course is that he chose not to save others, through no choice of their own, or effort on their part.) This explanation of salvation is directly related to the doctrine of total depravity: namely, because we cannot do good on our own, we cannot choose God on our own. So God in his "goodness" reaches down and chooses some, damning everyone else to eternal conscious torment™. With delight (more on this later). John obviously believes Mark to be one of the chosen because God used him to preach correctly, which is the most important thing and apparent litmus test. It would also explain his eagerness to look past Mark's rather atrocious behavior, because to criticize Mark directly instead of generalizing about our mutual defects and fallen humanity would be to bring reproach on God's elect, i.e., his Church, which (as I discuss below) is never to be disrespected. 

3. You're an idiot if you walk away from any of the following (in this order): Jesus, reformed theology, complementarianism, or the church.

Because there's nothing quite like victim-blaming. To deride as stupid the choice many people made, a choice borne of devastation and trauma, to walk away from the institution which scarred them, is abusive in the most despicable way. The same should be said of deriding their choice to walk away from the deity so falsely represented to them. It rather affirms that choice. Piper goes on to praise Jesus as perfect, "the one person who is not defective", etc. But it is critically telling that he never says a word about God's love. He never says a word about how Jesus differs from Mark's portrayal of him, or Mars Hill's identification as his body. He just ridicules the idea that anyone would reject this simon-pure being. Or reformed theology, or complementariansim. The tone deaf indifference he exhibits towards the suffering of the people he insults, just so he can extol the virtues of Jesus and his pet doctrines (which seem to be given equal weight from this vantage point), is staggering. Instead of using the softball opportunity to reach out in love to the people whom Driscoll hurt, Piper chooses instead to close ranks with him. Remember that time Piper (with trademark chuckle) enjoined women to endure physical abuse and being "smacked" around by their husbands for a season? Apparently the same goes for spiritual abuse in your church.

I would be remiss if I also failed to address his emphatic declaration that walking away from the church is the same thing as walking away from Jesus. Piper betrays his intentions here when he attacks the idea of ecclesiastical variation among the "cool, hip, and leftward-leaning", warning would-be church planters that they must listen to their "master and his word and his apostles". I am wary of this exhortation because since the second of these is Piper's professed forte and the latter arguably encompasses Piper, et. al.², it sounds eerily similar to "listen to me and Jesus". This suspicion is reinforced by his surprisingly dogmatic admonishment to stick with reformed theology, and even more specifically, complementarianism. Now, based on John's prior endorsement of Driscoll and Mars Hill, we can assume that both were at some point very close to what he considers the ideal of a biblical church. Piper, then, is entreating his listeners stick to the original model (which is also his model), even in the causatum of its spectacular implosion, because, extraordinarily, he finds no fault in either the structure of the church or, as previously discussed, the teachings of its pastor. Just the people who would desire to leave it.

This scorched earth boundary maintenance of defining "church" seems to me to accurately reflect the harsh and uncompromising Jupiter glorified by Calvinism. A god who designed a fallen world populated by creatures so flawed they are powerless to reach out to him, and yet, still holds them accountable for their ignorance and inherent imperfections is a god who definitely wouldn't care that you got your feelings hurt in church.

4. The Mars Hill fiasco was a "tactical defeat" for (in this order): Mark, evangelicalism, reformed theology, and complementarianism. And the Gospel.

To say this is my favorite defense would reveal more delight in de(con)structing this whole interview than I'm ready to admit to. But I must say it's the most problematic, for Piper specifically and Calvinism in general.

Calvinism has this glaring problem in its understanding of God's "goodness" (and here we must indulge a brief foray into moral relativism and agree to use the term very, very loosely -- because it is arrogant of depraved mortals to assume our definition of what's "good" is the same as God's [that is the actual argument]). Calvinists believe in the total, absolute, supreme sovereignty of God, over everything. Sovereignty means not just that God knows things are going to happen, or that He allows them to happen -- God actively ordains they will happen. The difference is crucial. So God didn't just know that Mars Hill would go down in flames, or step back and allow it to burn - he planned it and rendered it certain. Mark was just kind of an ill-fated pawn.

According to Piper (who once gave a sermon titled "Don't Waste Your Cancer"), God did this because it gave him pleasure and brought him glory, which is the end game for everything. Including the Holocaust, famines in Africa, killer tornadoes (no surprise there), and every gut-wrenching experience you've ever had that made you question God's existence. It was his pleasure (again, that is the word that's employed) to ordain all those things, and bring glory to himself through them.³ But let's step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture. To believe, as Calvinists do, that everything is planned and rendered certain by God, then the Fall of Adam and Eve was God's design. We talk about the saving power of Jesus a lot, but in the Calvinist narrative, God delighted in planning the debut of sin and death in the first place. To predestine the damnation of so many of us to eternal conscious torment™ was his pleasure. Moral relativism indeed.

It is within this theological framework that John asserts God's will for Mars Hill to be a "tactical defeat". In other words, God wrote the script for Mark's vulgar and ruinous performance, acted in His name, in order to orchestrate some larger, forthcoming victory. What does that say about God's character? Well, if it were anyone else, we would describe this behavior as psychopathic. Specifically, it is manipulative and volatile, and displays a stunning lack of empathy in its prophecy of Machiavellian vindication. Remember, God allowed a "colossal Satanic victory" not just over Mark, but over the people for whom Mark was responsible. The very people whom John is now chastising for even thinking of walking away. I imagine a Calvinist might warn me I'm standing in dangerous judgment over an infinite Creator whom I cannot possibly fathom. But is this impenetrable Olympian the god revealed in any part of the Bible? If God is so unknowable, why attempt a scripture in the first place? Why would God stoop to distill Himself in fragile human words? More importantly, why would a deity whose chief concern is self-glorification humble himself in the form of weak human flesh? This is, to me, one of the most precious truths of the Gospel. And Calvinism tramples it underfoot in a mad rush to preserve the dominion of its militant "general" at all costs.


What's the bigger point?

In my reading of this exchange, each defense John mounts of Mark evinces the same core reaction: "What he did doesn't bother me." It doesn't bother me because I expect this kind of thing in a fallen world. It doesn't bother me because Mark's preaching was doctrinally sound. It doesn't bother me because Jesus is still perfect. It doesn't bother me because my sovereign God ordained it. And I've argued that this reaction is consistent with the core doctrines of Calvinism. However, there's an underlying feeling here I've neglected to touch on, a feeling which could alternatively describe John Piper, or John Piper's God. A feeling which ties together John's arguments, the theology upon which his arguments are based, and the shrugging, chuckling, laissez faire insouciance towards Mark's behavior which Piper displays throughout the interview. It's disdain. Disdain for the human element of the Mars Hill tragedy which threatens to sully Piper's cosmic Christ, a man touched by the Midas finger of God and forever impervious to mortal tears and inquisitions. A disdain which scorns the sheer banality of the situation and belittles its victims, while excusing its instigator and lauding the divine orchestrator to whom the whole affair must be attributed. And indeed, this resonates well with the Calvinist framework that holds such a low view of humanity, phrases like "total depravity" and "limited atonement" have become foundational to its theological vocabulary.

I subtitled this post "Revisiting Mark Driscoll this Election Cycle", and I recognize it took me quite a word count to get around to my reasons. But here they are: Piper's stunningly blasé response to not only a charlatan wreaking havoc in the church, but his own oblivious support of said charlatan, are mirrored, I would submit, by the untroubled and heedless support of a vast swath of the evangelical electorate for the presidency of Donald Trump. I see it in the resigned admittance that Donald Trump is a deeply flawed candidate, and yet, the best hope we have for our ruin of a country (1). In the pivot that his party's platform is aligned with the conservative values of the Christian voting bloc, even though Trump himself is a poor, one might say defective, mouthpiece for it (2). In the "Hail Mary" rationalization that Jesus is still Jesus (and still coming soon), no matter who gets elected (3). And finally, in the pretext, nay prophecies, that Trump has been chosen by God (4).

And what is the powerful motivation underlying such justifications? What is driving Christian support of a candidate whose life is unabashedly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus? It's difficult to miss in the black smog of vitriolic rhetoric rising from the Trump campaign like so much air pollution. Disdain. Disdain for the poor, disdain for the disabled, disdain for the immigrants, the foreigners, the unbelievers, the women, the people who don't look like me, the people who don't think like me. And stunningly, this rhetoric is being endorsed by pastors and laypeople whose professed aim is to not disdain anyone. The cognitive dissonance is enormous; but we've been practicing. Roger Olson once wrote that "if strong, five-point Calvinism is true, then God is monstrous and barely distinguishable from the devil. The only difference in character is that the devil wants everyone to go to hell and God only wants some, many, to go to hell." And yet, the same people who adhere to strong, five-point Calvinism will not hesitate to affirm that their god is love, that their god is what love looks like. For the elect.

Look at John Piper's depiction of God, then look at Trump. Look again. Trump inspires infatuation by affirming his base are "real Americans"; the Calvinist god inspires "love" by affirming the status of the elect as "true Christians", the sheep hand-picked from among goats. Everyone not like you is expendable. The well-deserved suffering of the Other is not your concern. In a fallen world, these things are expected. Jesus is still Jesus. And besides, God ordained it.

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¹I doubt much needs to be said about why Mark is horrible and scary, but if you have been living under a rock for the past decade or so these are a good place to start (1, 2, 3).
²If these weren't contemporary "apostles", it would be redundant to specify them since the record of the historical apostles is already contained in the aforementioned "word".
³This idea has led to some rather strenuous theological acrobatics in service of preserving a god who is is "good" in any relatable human sense. Witness, for example, God's two "wills":