I'll try real hard not to make this post just one big rant against Mark Driscoll. The 41-year-old Seattle-based televangelist is a moronic neo-conservative just like everybody else in his chosen line of work, but his new book, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, co-authored by his wife, is a surprisingly moderate text.
Well, "moderate" for a neo-conservative, anyway.
There are a lot of chapters in the book, but it's not like I was gonna read the whole thing, so I only read the one titled "Can We _______?"
It's the chapter that other, even less moderate pastors are calling "a recipe for marital disaster," because what the Driscolls have done is they have assembled a list of various sex acts and then perused the Bible to see if they're permissible in a marriage. The reason so many other pastors are upset is because their interpretation is surprisingly accommodating to sexual taboos.
I thought this would be an easy rant, but for the most part, the Driscolls have assembled a moderate's take on sexual preferences (within a heterosexual marriage). But don't worry -- the rant is coming.
Driscoll says that there are no explicit Biblical bans on oral sex, masturbation, role playing, cosmetic surgery, or cyber sex, and that in some instances, it's downright encouraged.
He says that references to the pleasures of oral sex are encoded in such verses as Song of Songs, Chapter 2 Verse 3: "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."
I'm not one to speculate on what that verse is actually talking about, but the fact that an evangelical is interpreting it in such a liberal-minded way is, dare I say it, downright encouraging, if you observe typical evangelical behavior and cower in fear like I do.
I thought I had Driscoll stumped when I came to the sub-section on anal sex. I thought he'd be all against it, even within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, but wouldn't you know it, even then, he acknowledged no Biblical ban on the practice -- he even noted that the male G-spot is located in the lower intestine, and that husbands are free to explore with their wives if they wish.
Again, I'm not saying that Real Marriage is a wise book, or even a helpful one. All I'm saying is that it's surprisingly moderate for the work of an evangelical Christian. Because once he gets to birth control and the purposes of sex within marriage, he's all neo-conservative.
None of Driscoll's book applies to unmarried heterosexual relationships, or homosexual relationships of any kind, because both of those, he says, are categorically evil. The purpose of marriage, he states, is to reproduce, and that life invariably begins at conception. You can imagine how that futzes with his take on birth control.
"Nonabortive" methods, such as condoms and the pill, he says, are ok, just so long as the couple eventually tries, presumably at least once, to have a child. If the purpose is to remain childless for life, then suddenly the use of even nonabortive contraception is wrong. "Abortive" methods, such as the morning-after pill, or RU-486, are always wrong, all the time.
But if we wanted the rant to begin much sooner, we'd say that there's something categorically creepy about finding pleasing, nonharmful, mutually consensual things to do with your spouse and then comb the Bible for references to it, just in case it's "against God's will."
Like I said, this text is surprisingly moderate for an evangelical Christian work, but evangelical it is, nonetheless.
--Serge
Post-Script: You guys got this post in lieu of a rant concerning the recent controversies regarding health care providers and their obligations to pay for contraception. If you wanted that rant, all you need to know is that Rick Santorum is an idiot, and if life really began at conception then we'd be writing death-certificates for every embryo that failed to implant in the uterine wall. Also, Rick Santorum is an idiot.
There are a lot of chapters in the book, but it's not like I was gonna read the whole thing, so I only read the one titled "Can We _______?"
It's the chapter that other, even less moderate pastors are calling "a recipe for marital disaster," because what the Driscolls have done is they have assembled a list of various sex acts and then perused the Bible to see if they're permissible in a marriage. The reason so many other pastors are upset is because their interpretation is surprisingly accommodating to sexual taboos.
I thought this would be an easy rant, but for the most part, the Driscolls have assembled a moderate's take on sexual preferences (within a heterosexual marriage). But don't worry -- the rant is coming.
Driscoll says that there are no explicit Biblical bans on oral sex, masturbation, role playing, cosmetic surgery, or cyber sex, and that in some instances, it's downright encouraged.
He says that references to the pleasures of oral sex are encoded in such verses as Song of Songs, Chapter 2 Verse 3: "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."
I'm not one to speculate on what that verse is actually talking about, but the fact that an evangelical is interpreting it in such a liberal-minded way is, dare I say it, downright encouraging, if you observe typical evangelical behavior and cower in fear like I do.
I thought I had Driscoll stumped when I came to the sub-section on anal sex. I thought he'd be all against it, even within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, but wouldn't you know it, even then, he acknowledged no Biblical ban on the practice -- he even noted that the male G-spot is located in the lower intestine, and that husbands are free to explore with their wives if they wish.
Again, I'm not saying that Real Marriage is a wise book, or even a helpful one. All I'm saying is that it's surprisingly moderate for the work of an evangelical Christian. Because once he gets to birth control and the purposes of sex within marriage, he's all neo-conservative.
None of Driscoll's book applies to unmarried heterosexual relationships, or homosexual relationships of any kind, because both of those, he says, are categorically evil. The purpose of marriage, he states, is to reproduce, and that life invariably begins at conception. You can imagine how that futzes with his take on birth control.
"Nonabortive" methods, such as condoms and the pill, he says, are ok, just so long as the couple eventually tries, presumably at least once, to have a child. If the purpose is to remain childless for life, then suddenly the use of even nonabortive contraception is wrong. "Abortive" methods, such as the morning-after pill, or RU-486, are always wrong, all the time.
But if we wanted the rant to begin much sooner, we'd say that there's something categorically creepy about finding pleasing, nonharmful, mutually consensual things to do with your spouse and then comb the Bible for references to it, just in case it's "against God's will."
Like I said, this text is surprisingly moderate for an evangelical Christian work, but evangelical it is, nonetheless.
--Serge
Post-Script: You guys got this post in lieu of a rant concerning the recent controversies regarding health care providers and their obligations to pay for contraception. If you wanted that rant, all you need to know is that Rick Santorum is an idiot, and if life really began at conception then we'd be writing death-certificates for every embryo that failed to implant in the uterine wall. Also, Rick Santorum is an idiot.
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