Well Played, Cosper

 Episode 8 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast finally dropped on Friday. Demon Hunting looked into the weird world of Mark Driscoll's Narcissistic Personality Disorder brand of deliverance ministry.

As a side note, Cosper announced in this episode that these Podcasts will begin to come out every two weeks rather than every week. One reason given was that people who initially didn't want to be interviewed for this have been changing their minds, so they are coming forward and wanting their voices to be included in this massive undertaking.

Over all, I suppose that this is good. However, I see this as a potentially detrimental turn in one area.

Apparently there are those who are mad at Cosper for giving feminists and egalitarians too much voice in the fifth episode of the podcast. You know that podcast that I mentioned in my Mars Hill and Consumerism (NPD) post called The Things We Do to Women.

In "The Things We Do to Women" Cosper includes the voices of feminists and actually went as far as addressing the Rape Culture at Mars Hill. He didn't hit it hard. In fact, there are many of us who felt he let Driscoll and Mars Hill off easy rather than giving this issue the full attention that it deserves.

But as is common among Evangelical men, there was an outcry and one star reviews about Cosper giving voice to those filthy feminists. (gasp!!! entities far worse than pedophile pastors and repeat sex offenders that riddle the SBC.)

So in this episode, Episode Eight, Demon Hunting, Cosper again addresses the blatant misogyny of Driscoll and the Mars Hill community. But this time, he brings a Complementarian in to point it out so that the screeching Patriarchy couldn't just poo poo what was being said. The Comp dude was concerned with and opposed to the woman-demeaning culture that Mark had created, including the misogyny perpetuated in his teachings on deliverance.

This can be both good and bad. I do feel that Cosper did well to bring in that pro-woman Complementarian voice. This is why the title of this post includes "well played" in it. However, now I am worried that the egalitarian voice and the voices of trauma informed counselors might be set aside for the rest of the podcast series.

Make no mistake, what Mark taught men and women about sex and the purpose of women was spiritual and sexual abuse. And his warped teachings did, in fact, lead to a rape culture. Women were traumatized. And while it was going on, Evangelical men did not care. This fact should not be minimized or glossed over. And I hope Cosper keeps this in mind and doesn't just throw women under the "keep the peace with the patriarchy" bus.

Mars Hill and Consumerism (NPD)

In this post we are looking at Episodes 4 and 5 of Christianity Today's Podcast on "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" and it's relationship to Mark Driscoll's Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) symptoms.

Episode 4  is  "I Am Jack's Raging Bile Duct". We reference to this one in the post below.  This episode takes on Driscoll's teaching on masculinity.

And Episode 5 is "The Things We Do to Women" which is almost like Episode 4b to me. It is concerning Mark's teaching on womanhood and sex. Episodes 4 & 5 go hand in hand when talking about the toxic teaching on marriage and sex at Mars Hill..

And I do want to address how this relates to Consumerism. But first I must link to a Youtube video from a trauma informed counselor, Kyle Howard, who reflects on the connection between 4 & 5 and the bad theology presented at Mars Hill concerning gender and sex.

Thanks to Ava Aaronson and her comment at The Wartburg Watch that has alerted me to the video. Hers is the third comment down on Why Do People Attend Mark Driscoll's Church. She lists several points brought up by the linked Youtube video above. And her list is better than anything I can put together after watching only the video once.

Now, onto Consumerism.

I've heard Mark preach to men about the need to stop being consumers and to start being producers. I wish I could find a good link to an example, but I haven't been able to. Episode 4 talks about this without using the word "consumer". Mark defines masculinity as being a producer. That is, getting a job, marrying and supporting a wife, having children, supporting the church. This, according to the podcast, was what some men needed.

But, in Episode 5, concerning his teaching about women, he basically commands women to be consumed sexually and hierarchal-ly by men.

In other words, while commanding men to be producers, he enables men to be sexual consumers of their wives by teaching a rape and porn culture version of Scripture. The term "rape culture" is mentioned once in Episode 5. But Kyle Howard goes into more detail about how truly wicked and abusive the teaching at Mars Hill was.

Furthermore, Kyle Howard goes on to point out that Driscoll, through twisting scripture, commands women, in the name of God/Jesus to be porn slaves, always available, and making every part of their bodies available to be consumed by their husbands no matter how they feel spiritually, emotionally, or physically.

Writing that last sentence reminds me of some of the angry rants I made on this blog back in the day when I was speaking out against Driscoll and his false use of scripture. It reminds me of all the times I complained about him misusing the Bible to make wives submit to every whim of their husbands. Deja vu anyone else?

Anyway, I prefer Kyle's term "grooming". This is what abusers do. Also, Abusers don't just groom victims for their own personal use. They can groom victims to be used by other predatory consumers. Kyle gives several examples of this in his video.

So, in the end, I find it both ironic and the height of hypocrisy than Driscoll instructs men to not be consumers while instructing them to be sexual consumers of their wives.

You know what else is ironic and the height of hypocrisy? Driscoll is the biggest consumer of them all. As a Narcissist, he is in need of a continual Narcissistic Supply. He feeds on his inflated image of himself, the accolades given to him by those he manipulates, and the self-righteous rage he unleashes on the unsuspecting from time to time.

Relating it back to my marriage to a Narcissist, I remember how needy and demanding my ex was in so many areas. He was never satisfied, no matter how hard I tried to please him. Eventually I came to see him as a needy bottomless pit. In the end he basically used me up.

And do you know what Narcissists do when you are no longer able to give them Narcissistic Supply? They discard you like an empty wrapper.

Or, in the case of Driscoll, he runs you over with the infamous Mars Hill Bus

The Cold War and 911

Relating my experience on 911 ten years ago over on Elizabeth Esther's blog has opened some deep places.

My children were young, home school age, boys: 12 and 11, and girls: 8, and 4.

My boys' friends came over and talked about joining the military. They were afraid that the terrorists would bomb our small town, population 2700, located over an hour away from anything that could be considered even a small city. I assured them that the terrorists were not interested in little ol' pop2700 us. That we were most likely safe.

But that moment got me thinking of when I was their age. Back then there was a different kind of war going on. It was "The Cold War". It is hard to explain to anyone who is too young to remember. Movies that could help to understand would be "The Iron Giant" and "War Games".

Back when I was in school, we were taught that the U.S. had nukes and the Soviets had nukes and that, whoever started a nuclear war, it didn't matter, we would all die, either immediately or later from radiation sickness or lack of food and water or some other complication. And it was put forth, or implied, or somehow I picked up that a nuclear strike could happen any minute. It could happen while I was at school or sleeping in my bed or playing with friends. It was something that always hung over my head.

911 was a terrorist attack that happened during a time of assumed peace. There was never a strike during that time of restrained hostility between two world powers, or The Cold War.

I would imagine that the children and young adults of 911 were traumatized worse than the children of The Cold War. 911 trauma was powerful and immediate. But those of us who grew up during The Cold War, some of us were also traumatized over the long term. And I don't know about the others, but I felt alone in my fears. I went to bed every night wondering if that was night that we would all be incinerated in our beds. 911 was a collective, nationally, even internationally shared trauma.

At the bottom of a lot of our fears is the fear of death, for ourselves, for our loved ones. The death of one person in our lives or facing death ourselves is a traumatic thing. 911 and The Cold War magnify this fear. The fear of death is a fear that covers people. It was this fear that lead me to the only Being who cold defeat death, our mortal enemy. And those of us who know Him take comfort in His power over death. We hold on to the One who defeated death. Hanging onto Him gets us through these things like 911.

Isaiah 25:7 And on this M0untain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. Vs 8a He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,