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Tony Jones on Mark Driscoll: What came first, the thug or the theology?
This drawing is inspired by the Ouroboros Snake... of the snake eating its own tail.
What came first? The chicken or the egg? What came first? The thug or the theology? I read Tony Jones' thoughts on Mark Driscoll.
Jones has always admired Driscoll, maybe envies him a little, wants the best for him, believes he can be redeemed, and suggests that things can be restored.
What I found most interesting though is that Jones believes the problem with Driscoll is theological.
- He titles his post is "Thoughts about Mark Driscoll"
- He talks about the "heady" days of publishing and speaking.
- He dismisses his disturbing personality traits by his use of the word "sure".
- He says it isn't a moral issue (evil) but that he is passionate.
- He says more than once that Driscoll is "extremely smart" or "brilliant".
- He suggests that he will "see" (as in "think"?) his way out of this.
- He writes that Driscoll has just embraced a toxic version of theology.
- He hopes that Driscoll will turn away from this toxic theology.
- He concludes therefore that Driscoll is not the problem, but his theology.
But my question is‚ What came first? The thug or the theology?
That is, did Driscoll become the focus of concern because of his theology? Or was it because of his behavior?
I'm concerned that Jones' post reflects the refusal of the church to understand spiritual abuse. It neglects the pathology of its abusive leaders. I don't think this is being fair to the victims or the perpetrators of spiritual abuse. People are victims of not just a bad theology, but a pathological cruelty.
I don't think Driscoll's theology made this happen. Driscoll "embraced" his toxic version of theology because it aligned with his moral compass. It fit his personality. It worked for him to achieve his goals. Then it manifested the worst in him. Then he continued to develop his toxic theology in order to make more room for his pathological behavior. Mars Hill Church too.
Jones' sentence, "It could have happened to any of us." is true, because I believe we all participate in this dynamic. Theology is our creation. It is a reflection of our drives and desires.
Then, not satisfied to only be the product of our drives and desires, it also becomes the producer of them. Theology is a vicious cycle of our desperate need to understand and control our universe.
Step into this cycle at any point and you can see that we are both the root and fruit of our theology and pathology.
And yes, it spins out of control by manifesting itself in toxic, controlling, and abusive behavior. Nothing can be done about bad theology because of free thought and speech.
But we can do something when this manifests itself in bad behavior. Cruel theology is a nuisance. Cruel behavior is unacceptable.
When Driscoll thinks bully to his people, we can say please stop. But when he actually bullies people, we can step in and say you will stop now!
I don't think this is a theological issue. I think it is a pathological one. Not just for Driscoll and Jones, but for the entire church.
If we would be healed, our theology would take care of itself.
1079 comments
I want to note that philosophicalpastor is someone who helped me understand and begin to recover from the personal and family trauma caused by working with/for/under an NPD church leader — PP has been a long-distance friend for many years now.
Julie, yeah, I recognized a fellow traveler. ;-)
Lydia, if you are also sometimes Purple, hi lady! Re the test results, I know right? Sheesh! I haven’t known Emergents to devalue psychology as some Evangelicals do. Am I wrong on that? The testing used in the field is very very good.
People have told me, often, that I should stop the hyperbole regarding my father because he was never tested and I’m no professional. But Julie has it in hand, clear as day, and it is evaded as-if-not-there. Fascinating!
This isn’t as much a miserable divorce problem (or in my case, a too-common child-abuse problem) as it is a community problem. It comes from an inability to face facts about who we humans are.
And they are rotten facts to face, requiring courage. It sets awry our ideas of moral agency. It requires us to divide sins into categories, and treat them variously. It demands that we carefully track the individual heart to the communal heart, and back. If we aren’t careful, it can cause us to revert to primal ideas of demonization.
We need to understand these disorders better. We need to learn some different things about relationships and community. We need our theology to take account of it, with clarity—-they aren’t just “wolves” and that’s that.
If we simply learn our lesson, “run not walk” while casting behind us an effervescent hope that it will now stop because so many of us have learned it the hard way, it will keep happening. It spreads, so now we have a national problem and it is both inside/outside the church. How I wish I were being merely hyperbolic!
@Lydia I agree with you it is a really big deal that Julie can be sure of the diagnosis. In my situation, we had court-ordered psych evals and my ex had his results and the custody eval immediately “sealed” — the only thing I got was a marriage counselor warning me I was dealing with a dangerous person and to “be very careful.” LOL…as if I didn’t know this. The problem was that NO ONE ELSE seemed to “get” how destructive this person was in the marriage, and for years afterward.
I wrote Julie this morning and she asked if I could share the first part so here it is: I have some friends, a married couple, who I re-connected with during that time (we met at a local “cohort” when “cohorts” were one of the new things the emerging movement thing was organizing). Our re-connection is not important but what I wanted to tell you is that when I told the wife about this thread, and that “Tony Jones’ ex-wife is telling her story…I guess they got divorced?…” (I hadn’t been around emergent long enough even to follow that, but my friends stuck with it for years) my friend said ( FIRST THING out of her mouth!) “Ya, I heard she was bat-shit crazy.” My mouth dropped. I told her "O my God…that is exactly what she is talking about on this blog. How would you know that? " And my friend told me she basically just heard it. Like it had become some kind of thing people just said to one another. They hadn’t met either of youI want to say here I completely understand how this works, because it happened to me, too. It doesn’t need to be a “conspiracy” or an elaborate plan where everyone is on board with being out to get you. The lies that were perpetuated in my case could be said to be the result of my ex getting an idea started and then simply letting the natural propensity for people to gossip, to draw their own conclusions, to never actually call me or talk to me and ask me if I’m okay and what is going on and instead just take other people’s word-on-the-street as gospel, etc etc. It is actually not very hard to perpetuate character defamation… we see it all the time in politics. All it takes is for someone to start a rumor and then never do a thing to correct it or stop it and in fact to foster it wherever it serves the purpose it was started for.
Unfortunately, there are more people on the planet who just want to talk ABOUT others than there are people who want to talk WITH and AMONG others….which is just what a Narcissist needs to survive. It’s sad to me that more people don’t go by the adage: “what a person says about ‘someone else’ says far more about the person than about the ‘someone else.’” When someone tells me an unfavorable thing about someone else, particularly when it is someone I don’t really know very well, it is my practice to ask them WHY they are telling me this! If a single guy tells you (with that sad feel-sorry-for-me look in his eyes) that his ex was “bat shit crazy” — RUN and DON’T LOOK BACK!There was a time when Kathy Sierra was the best example of what I once called The Generous Web. She was taken out by trolls in a manner not dissimilar to what Julie and others in this conversation have experienced. Read http://cl.ly/3Q2g3x3u2P2W Trouble at the Koolaid Point .
A quote from it:
“You must be stopped. And if they cannot stop you, they can at least ruin your quality of life. A standard goal, in troll culture, I soon learned, is to cause “personal ruin”. They aren’t all trolls, though. Some of those who seek to stop and/or ruin you are misguided/misinformed but well-intended. They actually believe in a cause…”
I’m so impressed by the courage women have shown by telling their stories here.
Anne Lamott wrote, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
I applaud you all. I applaud the men too.
Anita Sarkeesian writes on her blog Feminist Frequency. She critiques misogyny in our culture, especially in the gaming world. At a recent talk she gave, she closed by saying this sentence:
“One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they tell you about their experiences.”
It’s been an honor for me to provide a space where people, mostly women it seems, can share their experiences, be heard, and even be believed.
I want to thank everyone who has honored this space not only by sharing, but also by listening and believing.