WASHINGTON
Care2
by Robin Marty
September 9, 2014
Mega church pastor Mark Driscoll has made headlines this week in the wake of an announcement that a number of his churches will be closing down. Driscoll has been well-known for his incendiary comments about Christianity, patriarchy, homosexuality and Biblical morality, but the most recent revelation — that he once referred to women as “penis homes” — has left a number of people wondering how a person like Driscoll could have had enough followers to fill one church, much less a series of them.
Sadly, his metaphor (“Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.”), was penned in 2001. Here are four more recent and just as problematic quotes from Pastor Driscoll.
1) “‘Serve‘ your husband.“ How do you show your love and obedience to God? According to Driscoll, oral sex on your husband does the trick. “I said, ‘You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, “Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife. She says, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.’” Of course, there’s no mention of a husband serving his wife with anything in return.
2) “I would not have married her.“ Driscoll is a happily married man. Possibly. But in his own book he outs his own wife’s “sin” of being a victim of sexual abuse, blaming her for hiding her secret and allowing them to have really bad sex because of it. “My previously free and fun girlfriend was suddenly my frigid and fearful wife. She did not undress in front of me, required the lights to be off on the rare occasions we were intimate, checked out during sex, and experienced a lot of physical discomfort because she was tense… One night, as we approached the birth of our first child, Ashley, and the launch of our church, I had a dream in which I saw some things that shook me to my core. I saw in painful detail Grace sinning sexually during a senior trip she took after high school when we had just started dating. It was so clear it was like watching a film — something I cannot really explain but the kind of revelation I sometimes receive. I awoke, threw up, and spent the rest of the night sitting on our couch, praying, hoping it was untrue, and waiting for her to wake up so I could ask her. I asked her if it was true, fearing the answer. Yes, she confessed, it was. Grace started weeping and trying to apologize for lying to me, but I honestly don’t remember the details of the conversation, as I was shell-shocked. Had I known about this sin, I would not have married her.”
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