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Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

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Classic Piper
Gone Fishin'
art markers and oil paints
Because I said so
Just Like me, redux
Aha.
And while you're at it ...
Yes, this one, too
filler
Just like me

Here's the part where I try to avoid getting sued ...

As you undoubtedly noticed, I like comics. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy" because I don't give a flying FOOM what they are worth. That said, almost all the images on my blog are scanned from comics I own, and it would be frankly impossible to tell you where each one comes from specifically.

Many are © and/or ® Marvel Comics Group, with all rights reserved.

Others are © and/or ® DC Comics, which is an arm of Time/Warner, and not only are all rights reserved but they are a little jealous about it, so if I get "the letter" from them, those images are just going to turn into blank spots until I configure out what to do about that.

There are also the occasional images from Valiant, Image, Defiant, and some indies which I'm not sure even have a name, and they are all also © and/or ®, all rights reserved.

All other images not covered by this disclaimer are the property of their respective owners, and if you are one of those people and you see your image on my blog, tell me what you want me to do about it and I will. No sense making people angry.

Hope that helps.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

... and elbows ...

OK -- back from Fishin'. Had a nice vay-kay with my family and my in-laws, and I discovered that I am allergic to Dallas. Somehow since we have been these I have had the most wicked allergy attack since I was a teen, but the benadryl still seems to work out the kinks, so no substantive complaints.

Anyway, I get back from an internet fast while on vacation, and I find this post from iMonk based on this video from Pastor Mark Driscoll.

Go ahead and watch the video as it contains nothing which ought to offend you -- except maybe one word, and my suggestion to you is that he said that the nicest way anyone can say what he meant. But in spite of that, I am not interested in your prudery, so if you don't like to hear one sin of the unsaved mentioned, don't watch the video.

Now, that said, iMonk has watched this 8-ish minute video and come away with commentary on whether or not men ought to want to have sex with their wives every day. Well, here's what iMonk said:

I have to admit that when I heard Driscoll say that young men want to know how to have sex with their wives once a day, I was stunned. I know Driscoll walks the edge, but this was the kind of juvenile distortion I don’t expect to hear. I’ve had plenty of young males ask me about sex in marriage, and I’m not bashful or less than straightforward, but this isn’t a good answer, and it’s presenting the wrong description of a Christ follower.

And to be fair to everyone involved here, here's my transcript of the portion of this video which has suddenly made iMonk into a post-Puritan Victorian:

People walking in tend to think that a church planter is … a pastor. He’s not yet a pastor: he’s trying to build a church so that he can be a pastor. A church planter has a different skill set. He’s got a different mission that he has to be on – to gather men.

To gather the best men that he can find. To gather men who are willing to be trained, willing to repent, willing to learn. Willing to learn both doctrine and practice. That’s why Paul tells Timothy to watch his life and his doctrine closely.

The sad, hard, painful truth is that most churches are struggling, dying, and failing, and most church planters will just be part of the rising body count of failed church plants if they are unable to gather, to inspire, to correct, to discipline, to instruct MEN.

And this is particularly important for young men. The least likely person to go to church in the United States of America is a young man in his early 20’s. These are guys who have absolutely made a wreck of everything. They’re [PURITAN EDIT SQUAD] their girlfriends. They are guys who are blowing all their money, staying up all night playing World of Warcraft, finding free porn on the internet, and trying to figure out how to get a bigger subwoofer into their retarded car.

Those are the guys who must first be gathered, they must get a swift boot in the rear, they need a good run through boot camp, they need to be told that Jesus Christ is not a gay hippy in a dress, and that they’re dealing with the King of kings and Lord of lords, and there’s a mission that he has called them to.

60% of all Christians today are female. I’m glad that the ladies love Jesus. But if you wanna win a war, you’ve gotta get the men. And once you get the men, you must know what to do with them.

They wanna know how to get married. They wanna know how to have sex with their wife at least once a day. They wanna know how to make money, buy a home, how to have children, how to pay their bills, how to father their sons, how to encourage and love and instruct their daughters, and so in addition to being to being the right kind of man, he must clarify the mission that he is on. And he must understand that his first priority is to gather men, and to, by God’s grace, force them to become the kind of men that are needed for God’s work and God’s kingdom so that that church can actually be established, those women can actually be loved, those children can actually be raised, and that that city will have an example of the difference that Jesus makes.

Now, I underlined the one sentence that iMonk has somehow isolated from the rest of this stuff. Let me ask you: is he [Mark Driscoll] giving advice here, or is he listing the kinds of questions young guys of the sort he has already described have?

See: it seems to me that he's talking about the kinds of questions that need to be answered. Like "how do I get married?", which does not have a technical manual or a how-to book which would be worth the paper on which it is written. So the question, "How do I have sex with my wife at least once a day?" is that same sort of question.

And when iMonk comes up with this:

Listen, a lot of young preachers I enjoy talk a lot about sex and gender issues. Good for them. When I preach on sex and gender my students listen, ask questions and want more. I have a grasp on how this works. But I cannot present the Christian life primarily as a way to great maleness. Given too large a place, that’s close to just another prosperity gospel.

If you follow Jesus, you may have lots of sex or no sex. You may give up sex because you have to care for a sick or ailing spouse. You have to put your sexual agenda at the bottom of a list of things like crying babies, the stress of daily life, emotional realities and physical facts. If a man tells me his wife provides him daily sex, I’m happy for him. He’s way above average. But I have some questions about periods. Crying babies. Housework. Illness. Non-sexual affection. And I have some questions about demands being made for the sake of some idea of sanctified maleness.

If a guy shows up to talk to me about his marriage and says his wife is depriving him of daily sex, I’m going to bluntly tell him he needs to rethink what marriage means in more realistic terms.

Jesus was the perfect sexual male, and he never had sex. He called us to take up our cross, lose our lives and find his life. He called us to fight, but also to serve, love, wash feet, go after lost sheep, be tender, weep, pray and just hang in there.

I have to wonder: did he listen to what was being said, or is he simply having a knee-jerk reaction to a throw-away statement about the kinds of questions young men have?

It's ironic that Pastor Driscoll was talking about reforming the things which are most obviously wrong with the young men in America today and iMonk somehow thinks that this is devoid of real discipleship.

Sheesh.

I also have another post about this video's message which is bound to be even more controversial than this one. Stay Tuned.

Labels: Blogosphere, local church, Mark Driscoll fan club, missiology, Orthodoxy