Throw Back Thursday

 I did a short series back in 2012 called "Sex, Drugs, and Mark Driscoll". It was a four part series pointing out that Mark Driscoll got away with a lot of stuff because he was, what I referred to as, a Rock Star Preacher.

The reason I'm re-posting this today is because I think it is relevant to the conversation about men blaming women while giving men a pass.

Anyway, here it is reprinted. If you would like to read it in it's original form, go here "Sex, Drugs, and Mark Driscoll, pt 3". It would be worth it to read the comments under it including a late comment (over a year later) correcting some misinformation that I had concerning the story.

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Sex, Drugs, and Mark Driscoll, pt 3

Rock and roll, by nature, is misogynistic. Anyone is free to disagree with me on this one but it is my overview observation of many years.

The rock and roll mentality or attitude has creeped in among Christians and is also misogynistic. I'll start by telling a true story.

I used to frequent another blog and the blog owner, we'll call him Fred (not his real name) was a Christian, religious-right kind of guy. He had just read Steven Tyler's biography. (Steven Tyler fans, just relax. My story is more about the blog reaction than Tyler himself.)

Steve Tyler, for those who don't know (which is about three of you, right? The rest have seen him on American Idol), is a Rock Star. He was/is part of the band, Aerosmith.

Apparently, according Fred, Tyler had a 14 year old girlfriend. He took over guardianship from her parents. This girl ended up pregnant and her parents determined that she was too young to carry, birth, and care for this baby so they took her in, against Tyler's wishes, and she had an abortion. This really upset Tyler and bothers him to this day.

Fred used this story to wax on concerning how horrible abortions were, and how horrible it is for fathers who have no rights concerning abortion, which, invariably led to how horrible feminists were and on a lesser level, how horrible modern American women were.

Fred and his male commenters felt so sorry for Tyler and the terrible pain he went through as a father with no rights over the child he sired. They blamed feminism, abortion, and Fred also blamed girls for being smitten with celebrity figures and her parents for not training her better.

Now, people, understand. I'm just as pro-life as your average conservative Christian (I no longer associate with the Religious Right. They are just plain crazy. But I am conservative in many ways.)

Anyway, I'm just as pro-life as the next conservative you might meet on the street. But I'm not stupid. That fourteen year old girl did not get pregnant because she or feminists are evil or because her parents did a thing of two wrong in parenting her.

That girl got pregnant because of the "Rock Star" mentality. If 30 something Joe Schmo down the street had started wooing the fourteen year old, you can bet the parents would have laid down the law. Why? Because there was nothing in it for them. It was the parents that were smitten by Tyler's Rock Star status. Otherwise why would they have ever signed over guardianship to him?

And what the heck was Tyler doing with a fourteen year old girlfriend, anyway? My guess is that she was a model and that's how they met. But that's my guess. Anyway, Fact: Tyler getting a fourteen year old pregnant was statutory rape. If Joe Schmo had done it, he most likely would have gone to jail and would be on the sex offenders list to this day. But not Steven Tyler. Why? Because he's a Rock Star, and Rock Stars can get away with things your average Joe cannot.

This leads me to a question.

Why were the men on that blog so unconcerned with the fact that Tyler had a 14 year old girlfriend yet were ready to tear down feminism and make comments concerning gullible girls and poor parenting? Why did it not bother them that Tyler could get away with something they, most likely, could not?

Well, I have one guess. I think it's because the male fantasy of being a Rock Star is alive and well in the world and the church. Those men on that blog might have said in passing that it was wrong for Tyler to have such a young girlfriend. In truth, the hideousness of the wrong of statutory rape was completely lost on them. All they could see was a man, a celebrity, facing losing his child because of unfair laws concerning the rights of father of the unborn. They couldn't see that Tyler was using his Rock Star status to get away with breaking the law and that the parents were using their daughter and Tyler's Rock Star status to make gains of their own.

Bringing this back to Driscoll, he also has gotten away with stuff the average Joe could not. This has not been a good thing for Driscoll or the people around him. Rock Stars getting away with stuff is not good for them. Tyler suffered greatly due to the consequences of his action. He lost a child over it and from what I gather, he still mourns over it. And as we are seeing, many people around Driscoll have also suffered greatly and many have mourned over Driscoll and the time they spent in his church.

It's time for the male fantasy of being a Rock Star Preacher to be recognized for what it is. Destructive, unchristian, and unbiblical.

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The misinformation was about the age of the young lady in question. She was actually 16 at the time.

Here is a link to her story:

Light of the World - the Steven Tyler and Julia Holcomb Story

Also, I noted that in part 4 of my series that several ladies and I pointed out that Steven Tyler was guilty in his own way. We said something like:  "where we agreed that we didn't like the fact that an abortion was involved, the abortion was not the beginning of the problem, it was the final, violent solution chosen by a girl's family to deal with the wrongs and excesses of a man living out the Rock Star dream."

The men of the blog, including the owner, actually listened to us and realized that this story was not a good one to use to bemoan the lack of father's rights. Looking back at this story today, it is just another illustration of men jumping to the conclusion that, whatever happened, it had to be the woman's fault. Oh, and feminism was probably involved somehow.

Who Is It About, Then?

 If it's not all about men and male church leaders and what they think, feel, want and how they want to teach and direct the church, then who is it about?

Well, I'm pretty sure that if we look at the words of Jesus, we can get an inkling. There are tons of amazing examples. But  I'll pull out this one because it gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Luke 10:30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31 And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ 36 Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” 37 And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

This story is not about religious leaders, except to expose their failures to represent God. As many church leaders today fail to take care of the vulnerable, broken, and wounded, so have these religious leaders failed to show God's heart toward the beaten and half-dead man on the road to Jericho.

Rather, this story is about a man who takes care of the broken, beaten, wounded and vulnerable. This is the story of what is important to God. Because it is all about the broken, wounded, and vulnerable and those who take care of them.

These are the kinds of things Jesus taught us. This is what is important. Years of men wringing their hands over what women and teen girls wear is a gross departure from what is important to God. It is a distraction away from what is near and dear to Him.

It's all about healing the broken hearted and binding up their wounds (Psalm 147:3). This is what God loves to do. And God loves those who join Him in this ministry.

It's Not About You

 Back in the day, someone loaned me a copy of "The Purpose Driven Life".

I couldn't get beyond the first few lines of the first chapter.

The book opened up with the sentence, "It's Not About You."

My response?

"No kidding, 'it's not about me'! It has never been about me. It's always about him."

Who was I talking about when I said 'him'? My ex who is on the Narcissistic spectrum. Being married to a Narcissist taught me early on that it would never ever be about me in our marriage. It could only be about him. When people asked me why I divorced him, my short answer was, there wasn't room in our marriage for two people. Only one. And that one was never me.

As God was trying to lead me into His healing work on my heart, I began to learn that, actually, yes, sometimes it is about me. It is about my healing from Narcissistic abuse. And it was about my eventual escape from that relationship.

That book, "The Purpose Driven Life" was a huge best seller. And the message in it to not be selfish, definitely has its place. It was written by a man, Rick Warren, to all Christians. I suspect that he thought  that all others needed to hear this "Don't be self-centered" message just like he needed to hear it.

But the problem with projecting this on everyone is that it doesn't apply to everyone equally.

I gave a personal example above. Now I will tie it into the most recent To Love, Honor, and Vacuum post: "On Modesty: We shouldn't sacrifice Teen Girls Well-being for Adult Men's Comfort".

I read the post when it came out on Friday and this part kept going around in my brain.

...I had rather polite interactions with men (on Twitter) who seemed like totally reasonable guys, explaining that we were supposed to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper, and men were visual and do lust, and so women and girls should dress accordingly.

When I said, “if we’re to be a sister’s keeper, and if we know this message does harm (to teenage girls), then when does she get to matter?”, the response from several was, “that’s certainly sad, and we don’t want that to happen, but it needs to be understood how men are.”

So once again–men’s comfort matters more than women’s well-being.

And it just reminded me of the first few words of Rick Warren's book. "It's not about you."

These men live in the land of, "It's all about me". Their comfort and all Christian dialogue has to be about what men need, think, and feel. Women don't count. It's never about women, including teenage girls.

The male-centric message you teach from the pulpit hurts women and children? Sorry, that's just the way it has to be. It's all about men. Women and children need to understand how men are. Men don't need to understand how women and children are because it is all about men

Here is where Rick Warren's words should be applied. Men need to stop making it all about them. Because in God's economy, it isn't just about men.