Muppet Theology [Daniel]
When I was young, probably my single favorite movie was 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper. It still holds a very special place in my heart. My favorite scene is the part when the Muppets are planning their scheme to break into the Mallory Gallery and stop the theives from stealing the Baseball Diamond. At one point, all the Muppets are talking at once, advancing their own theories, discussing, bantering, clamoring for attention - the noise gets to a level where Kermit the Frog yells “QUIET!”
Everyone stops talking except Janice (the lead guitar player of Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem), who is caught mid-sentence. “…So I said, ‘Look, mother! It’s my life, oo-kaay? So if I want to live on the beach and walk around naked…’ [She realizes everyone else is staring at her] Oh.”
I finished reading Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives Monday night. It was a really enjoyable read, overall. I’ve always liked the “point/counterpoint”-style books, where I get to peek into the minds of various people, and see how people with different worldviews approach a problem. I like the atmosphere of mutual respect, admiration, and “agree-to-disagree” that authors generally provide for one another.
Such was definitely the case with this book. The authors, ranging from “conservative” to “liberal”, mainline to evangelical, and a host of other cultural and spiritual differences (although more than one stated his/her dislike for such labels), found common ground in discussing missional, incarnational theology in a postmodern world, and freely expressed their concerns without chasing rabbit-trails, resorting to ad hominem attacks, mischaracterizations, or bad faith arguments.
This goes for all the authors, that is, except Mark Driscoll. John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, and Karen Ward seem to be having a really productive exchange - challenging each other, presenting new perspectives, discussing ways of “being” in the world, the role of Christianity and Christians, how to relate to unbelievers and people of different faiths, etc. - and then Mark would come in, guns blazing, blasting someone for not espousing his version of orthodoxy. Mark has always been a big fan of “man’s man” metaphors - I imagine he pictures himself as William Wallace in Braveheart: “I’m going to pick a fight.”
At first, this made me really mad (see, for example, my earlier post) - I wanted to yell at Mark for being unfair, for using logical fallacies, for nitpicking abstract theological “issues” (penal substitutionary atonement, eternal literal hell, plenary biblical infallibility) and ignoring the real substance of the other authors’ statements about collaborative theology, the importance of community, incarnational ministry, and the realities of living in a post-Christian, pluralistic society. After continuing to read it, though, I stopped being mad/offended. I realized the dynamic of what was going on in this discussion: Mark Driscoll was simply not having the same conversation that everyone else was. He wasn’t absorbing what the others were saying in order to respond thoughtfully; he was in full battle mode, looking for errors to expose. It stopped being a tragedy, and turned into a farce. Any admission by him of missional living, or of the centrality of praxis in the life of a church/Christian, was absolutely tangential to “theology” in the abstract. He made it abundantly clear that that was his topic, and he wasn’t going to be sidetracked by what anyone else was saying.
As the book went on, I took him less and less seriously. He was so far afield from the conversation everyone else was having, he may as well have been saying “…So I said, ‘Look, mother! It’s my life, oo-kaay? So if I want to live on the beach and walk around naked…’ ”
Mark Driscoll as Janice the Muppet.
I thought I was pretty clever coming up with “muppet theology”, so I googled it. Yes! Only two prior hits!
“Gonzo, Divine King of the Muppets, Most Benevolent, Guardian of the Blue, Patron of Frilly Head-Antennae” - oh my…
(BTW, it doesn’t work in Firefox - IE Tab that sucker).
I think Mark knows what he’s doing. He has known the the other authors for years. He knew what he was writing, and why he was writing it. Because people really think that issues such as the penal substitutionary atonement are only “abstract” issues. In his community such issues are not abstract, not far away. We may not always agree with what he said, but Mark Driscoll will be remembered in this book, not Karen Ward (what did she say again?), funny, huh?
Bye
Danny
Daniel, thanks for your thoughts on the book. I would encourage us all to not think that we can guess people’s motives.
Mark drives me as crazy as anyone, but I can’t even begin to suggest another motivation other than what is willing to offer up.
So, I need to believe that Mark is trying to be faithful and in someway this kind of behavior is appropriate to him - as much as it baffles me.
Or, I guess the other option is that Danny might be on to something. That people would write in a book like this not to be helpful, or honest or even faithful but to be remembered and to extend a brand.
I guess there are other options as well, but between those two let’s hope that Danny is not actually telling the truth on this one.
Thanks for your comments.
Danny,
Like Doug, I hope you’re wrong. Assuming that Driscoll said what he did out of a desire to be remembered - to increase his notoriety - seems an even more egregious motive than simply “not getting it”.
I don’t know what axe you have to grind with Karen Ward, but I thought that she brought a very valuable perspective to the table - as a woman, as a person of color, as a minister in two mainline denominations, as someone who wanted her “voice” in the conversation to be representative, not just of herself, but of her entire community. Personally, I’ll remember that far longer than I’ll remember the tired Systematic Theology textbook writing of Driscoll.
Doug,
Thanks for stopping by - I’m flattered. You’re right to say that it’s not useful to presume bad faith and project motivations onto others, but over the last year or so, Mark has proven over and over that he’s more interested in scoring points than in playing nice. He says inflammatory things - and when called on it, either cries “persecution” or issues a vague “clarification” (always, of course, stopping short of actually apologizing). When he begins his “critique” of Karen’s chapter with Reasons Why Women Shouldn’t Be Leaders [and thus, why her content is invalid by its very existence], or of your chapter with a rabbit-trail argument about the source of an illustrative quote showing Why {source} Is Actually A Liberal and Thus You Must Be Too, I find it really hard to continue to try to take him seriously. As someone living in his city, I have really mixed feelings - embarrassment at how Christianity is being portrayed combined with a vague feeling of responsibility to do something about it. I’m starting by being willing to speak out against it. (Incidentally, it looks like Bill Hybels is too.)
There are folks who just can’t have a conversation unless they control it.
I dunno if Mark is one of them, but the spammers in your comments section certainly are.