Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
Brett,
I think you’re reading a bit too much here from a single visit to Mars Hill. For the record, I don’t go there…I live in LA. I’m also single, 25-year-old guy, so I’m coming from a similar position as you, but I do listen to his podcasts on occasion. I’ve listened to a few of these on the Song of Solomon series.
“…it makes no attempt to articulate a cogent and Christian sexual ethic for singles” – quite simply, Driscoll would say: don’t have it! That’s his “sexual ethic” for singles.
“…we get more scandalous and visceral images of sex in a church service than we do from a week’s worth of MTV?” This is pure exaggeration and simplistic. Listen to a few of his sermons from that series. Then actually watch MTV for a week. What is truly more “scandalous” – discussing sex as described in the Bible…or being bombarded all week by its cheapened version that is all over our modern culture?
And to be honest, why does it surprise & upset you that Driscoll “talk[s] about sex so frankly and frequently” at Mars Hill during your one visit while they study the Song of Solomon? He takes months to study Scripture in depth (http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/sermons), it seems like you just caught him during an understandably sex-focused study.
The Church has ignored discussing sex in the public sphere for a very long time, and we’re paying the price….Christians & non-Christians alike are both struggling with sexual sin immensely.
I don’t mean to be argumentative, I’ve enjoyed your blog for quite some time Brett, but this post seems to be reading much further into Driscoll than warranted.
Thanks for the comment Aaron, and thanks for reading.
I may have caught Driscoll in a particularly sex-charged day, but I’m only reading in to it what I heard with my own ears, twice (I visited two of Mars Hill’s campuses that Sunday and heard Driscoll’s sermon twice). And this church visit wasn’t my only experience with Driscoll; I’ve followed him for years, read his stuff, listened to his sermons and agreed with quite a lot of what he said.
And you are right: of course, Driscoll would (rightfully) say to singles, don’t have sex! But “a cogent and Christian sexual ethic for singles” has to go beyond having it or not having it. Yes, we can agree that sex outside of marriage is forbidden. But we are still sexual beings, and there are still questions about how we deal with that fact that are not being addressed.
Driscoll is sort of like a Dad taking a van full of children to Disneyland, and making one of the kids stay in the van all day. Unless he takes the whole van of children to a place where they can all get out and play, or stays in the van in solidarity with the kid, or offers a viable alternative wherein the kid’s natural energy can be healthily channeled, even within the confines of the claustrophobic van, he’s unfortunately not being the most responsible dad he can be.
Here’s the lovely Ariah Fine on Driscoll:
http://blog.iamnotashamed.net/2009/01/26/driscoll-who-would-jesus-dehumanize-your-mother/
Reading this reminded me of a time I went to a large church in Maryland with a friend and his family.
I was single at the time, no girlfriend, no prospects and I was sitting next to my friend’s 12-year-old sister when the pastor started talking about how men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots.
I pretty much tuned him out after that and watched as the pre-teen beside me rolled her eyes and twiddled her thumbs.
The message pretty much seemed to be that you won’t reach your full potential as a Christian until you are married. That was what I read, fairly or unfairly, into Driscoll’s comment about encouraging members to get married and enjoy each other.
Perhaps there is a relationship between this sort of teaching and the high divorce rate among evangelicals? When you’re encouraged by pastors and Christian mentors to rush to the altar so you can have sex and be fully accepted into the church body it’s no wonder people who have known each other for three months are so quick to tie the knot.
That said, for what it’s worth I don’t feel any more accepted into the church now that I’m married. Now, I just feel pressure to start having kids as soon as possible.
Obviously I’m in the minority here, but I don’t believe Pastor Driscoll’s discussions are appropriate from a biblical context. The fact that he is answering questions that his parisioners have is good but should take place in a private, face-to-face, and confidential setting. Not on a stage, via anonymous text message, in front of a congregation. Why would Paul caution against women wearing immodest apparel in 1 Timothy 2 if he was totally fine with a pastor telling his congregation about his wife’s sexual prowess and their home-made sex tapes. This is the kind of world-accomodating behavior that Paul would condemn as lasciviousness, in my opinion. It compromises Driscoll’s ministry by rooting it in the flesh and it’s preoccupation with flesh-driven hungers.
“For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.” – 1 John 2:16.
My question is: Does Driscoll go further than the physical with his sermons on sex?
Granted, the church has, for too long, neglected the fact that we are embodied beings with good desires of the flesh. And thank God, someone is talking about the Song of Solomon as what it really is–a glorying in those desires in such a way that brings glory to God. But there is no glory in sex if there is no intimacy, humility, and surrender in it. It is an incomplete joy without physical pleasure, but it is also an incomplete joy without emotional union and spiritual vulnerability. What does Driscoll say about that inter-spiritual (not just inter-physical) aspect of the sexual experience?
“The body is the greatest gift a wife can give.” Please tell me there was a tremendous amount of mitigating context surrounding this statement…
Awkward title, great book: “Getting Serious About Getting Married”. Debunks the whole ‘gift of singleness’ thing.
It seems that, following this ABC interview and from what Brett and others have heard of Mark Driscoll’s sermons, it seems like there are two sides to the coin here. Sure he has dared to go where most pastors would blush. Its good to see a church talking freely about sex. A lot of secret sexual sin is fueled by the code of secrecy and hush hush. Sex is a beautiful in the confines of married, true. It is a very powerful way that God has given married couples to really connect with each other, be intimate and be vulnerable with each other.
But I have to admit, listening to the interview (and if any of the testimonials are anything to go by), I almost felt like I was playing a video game and was given strategies for Level 10 when in fact I’m only at Level 3. In other words, and in my opinion, that kind of sex talk should have been for the probable 30% of those who hear these sermons who have built a deep foundation in their marriage of love and respect and intimacy with each other. Whether he was right to “brag” about what goes on in his bedroom could go either side of the field, but a lot of young couples that hear such are not ready to hear it, not because of immaturity, but because they are yet to reach that point even in marriage where the added sizzle is just that-something to add to the strong foundation that is already there, and not the goal. We live in a world where sex is idolized and worshipped. This is the same culture that encourages a lot of pleasure in whatever shape and form, but, as Kendra pointed out, very little in the way of emotional and spiritual connection.
Of the percentage of Christian men that view porn, most are married men who should be enjoying this toe-curling sex that is being advocated. Am I against it? Perish the thought. I’m 21, single and know no doubt that I will get married one day. Certainly husband and wife should enjoy sex and be adventurous. But my only concern is that beyond that sexual element, I hope that Driscoll is teaching the value of commitment and intimacy in order to balance out the surge of testosterone and estrogen levels that are raised during such sermons. Fine if one is married, but if you are single, you are highly likely to, as someone said, tie the knot very quickly and get jiggy with it. I only hope that when the dust settles and all is quiet, there is a solid foundation of intimate knowing and loving the person to return to.
Becky— Driscoll seems to have a fairly low view of women. I can’t say for certain, but I doubt that there was much in the way of mitigating context.
This whole idea of mega-church sex series makes me wonder: how many people choose to attend Mars Hill or other church “sex series” as a bizarre form of a dating service? If you get a few hundred single people in the same room and start talking explicitly about sex, then repeat this for a few months….
The question that comes up next is, is this okay? Related to Kendra’s question, is talking over and over again about only the physical aspects of human sexuality with hundreds of singles healthy? I like Brett’s kid-in-the-van example; it seems like this would just be more frustrating than helpful.
You didn’t happen to run into our fellow LAFSC alum Robin didja? She met her husband there, if I remember right, and they both go there. I have no idea how much Driscoll’s sermons influenced their courtship or marriage. But she’s having a baby in April :)
This does seem a little over-the-top from the way you describe it. I’m all for frank and open discussion about sex in church. But for Driscoll to bring his wife out on stage and talk about their sex life in front of singles…isn’t kind or loving.
I’m working on a series of articles about sex education, and it’s got me thinking about who’s responsible for teaching young people and singles about sex. Pastors definitely have part of the responsibility, and I’d rather they be TOO open than too closed-mouthed. But I’m not sure how to know when the line has been crossed.
Thanks for calling me “lovely” Tim.
Great post Brett. I agree, one of the areas we always seem to get wrong is talking about stuff like sex and marriage and the rest. Churches preach to kids that sex is about as terrible and sinful as it gets, and then guys like Driscoll and others amp it up so much that it alienates a whole group of people (people like Jesus: single). It’s hard to find a church that has a good balance.
I will say that Efrem Smith, at Sanctuary Covenant Church here in Minneapolis had a good sermon on it once. But don’t ask me to try and dig through the archives and find it.
I do not want to “bust your bubble” , nor will I continue to read of your pertostuous writings…..first off, re claim and study further your herementuitical interpestaioons much further and more deeply in your bible , find a much more pronounced meaning in the delightnesses of the book of “The King of Solomons descriptive fate of love in the book found in the “Song of Solomon”–is NOT “a strip tease” or loose metopher in small matters at all—rather a poet of discriptive love foreboding for his beloved, or a sister he pursues as a genuine charm…..wrong my friend you are , and quiet dumb. “Rahab”
Brett! I came across this post linked from another site and thought you had some insightful things to say (the whole Christian culture obsession with marriage is problematic, I agree) and then realized that this is your blog. Good to be reading your writing again now that I’m not involved with Relevant so much. I’ll be back. :-)
Sex is great, and a marital blessing with which one wishes to be blessed as often as possible. But…ah…isn’t it an aspect of marital intimacy? And if you’re trumpeting what a great lay your wife is to your whole congregation, how exactly is that intimate?
I know it’s all part of Driscoll’s schtick, and it works for him. But c’mon.
thanks for this article!
“What are we singles supposed to do with our sexual frustration when we get more scandalous and visceral images of sex in a church service than we do from a week’s worth of MTV?”
i like that last sentence very much. the church and christianity needs to be an incredible source of beauty and peace.
we need to respond to God’s love by exuding all things beautiful; full of grace, humility, and peace.
things that do not exude grace, humility, and peace:
– gimmicks
– treating sexuality with a cavalier attitude
– believing that a woman’s body is the best thing she can offer
Brave of you to tackle this subject… three posts! Impressive. :)
On the subject of singleness: I recommend Laura Smit’s book Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love. I have to confess I didn’t read the whole thing – I mostly bought it for the appendix, which is an open letter to the church about the treatment of single people. It helped me understand some of the problems it causes when the church treats singles as second-class Christians. I’ve been anywhere from frustrated to outraged about this, over the years, and it was so helpful to find someone who’d written about it intelligently and passionately.
I tried Mars Hill once, when I lived in Seattle, and after talking to a friend who’d gone there for six months, decided I didn’t need to try it again. Too one-person-centric for me.
And yeah, “The body is the greatest gift a wife can give” …wow. Just, wow. I’m not sure any context could justify that.
IT A PITTY THAT WE ARE LEAVING IN THE END TIME………..