Sunday, November 24, 2013

Who's hot and who's not


I have a theory about Mark Driscoll, but I don't know enough about his ministry to say if this is correct.

First of all, there's the common narrative of men who fail by succeeding. They never expected to be that successful. Success is unpredictable. Who could anticipate that The Purpose-Driven Church, Left Behind, or The Late Great Planet Earth would be blockbusters? It's often a matter of lucky timing. A window in time when there's an appetite for that. A neglected marketing niche to fill. 

In Driscoll's case, it may be that he started an empire which rapidly outgrew his limited talents. Perhaps he's a lightweight who could only stretch his material so far. Once he ran out of material, he had to resort to more sensational antics as filler. Like a pop vocalist who only has one big hit, one unforgettable song. 

Driscoll has squandered his opportunities, but maybe he never had the reserves of staying power. He just ran out of things to say, because he never had that much to say, and began padding with gimmicks and shock tactics. 

It's like the Peter Principle, where ambitious employees steadily rise to their level of incompetence–at which point they plateau in steadfast mediocrity. In effect, he was promoted one time too many. The job got too big for his modest abilities. 

I think of Gregory Peck in Moby-Dick. Peck was a perfect actor for certain roles, but he had a very narrow acting range. Capt. Ahab is a flamboyant part which was way beyond him. Patrick Stewart could pull it off, but not Gregory Peck. 

Success is a very trying criterion. Some men, like Spurgeon and Whitfield, were wildly successful as young men, but had the ballast not to capsize. Yet for every example like that, you probably have half a dozen counterexamples. 

In fairness, none of us is indispensable. In this life, we all have walk-on parts. Some build taller sandcastles than others, but all of us are building our sandcastles at low tide. Every earthly achievement will be swept away. 

13 comments:

  1. I think Driscoll is most vulnerable to temptations associated with his leadership motif. I get the impression it will not end well for him (I hope I'm wrong).

    OTOH, after listening to the Mefferd interview, I immediately felt sorry for her husband (though I don't know if she is actually married).

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  2. I have no dog in this fight. I know virtually nothing of Driscoll and (absolutely) nothing of Mefferd. But when I listened to THE INTERVIEW I felt like Mefferd clearly and intentionally set him up. Like it was a planned execution. She sounds all sweet at the beginning of the interview and then eventually goes in for the kill by getting subtly hostile and accusatory with "facts" and quotations. Yet at the beginning when she was guiding the conversation closer to that topic she began as if it weren't her main reason for contacting him. Driscoll on the other hand remained calm, composed and sounding more Christ-like than Mefferd. I CAN'T be the only one who got that impression.

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  3. I haven't had a chance to listen to anything on it yet myself, and probably won't since the topic doesn't interest me that much (I'm not a Driscoll fan, nor do I dislike him overly much), but apparently Tyndale said that they had two more minutes of unaired audio that proved Mefferd lied about Driscoll hanging up on her, so that makes me a bit suspicious about her claims in general.

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  4. Steve: I think you're way off, and should be cautious about trying to analyze people you don't know well, especially in a negative way. I disagree with a lot of his theology, and do find his style too authoritarian, but beyond that -- no.

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    1. You could be right about him. On the other hand, I do have informants who know him better than me. For instance, one explained to me that before he became famous, his views of women were greatly influenced by Doug Wilson.

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    2. What do you mean influenced by Wilson? Is he something other than simply a complementarian?

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  5. his views of women were greatly influenced by Doug Wilson.

    I can't tell if you are trying to communicate disapproval here or making a joke. I hope it is the latter, as Doug Wilson is a good man with views on women that are much for defensible from scripture than most evangelicals who secretly hate him.

    And for the record, Wilson's books on these issues are even listed on the Desiring God recommended reading list:

    http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/what-are-some-books-that-dg-recommends

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    1. Wilson is hit and miss. He's very good on some issues, but offbeat on other issues.

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  6. My informant relayed an anecdote from the time Mark was a new Christian and he and Grace were newly married. Doug Wilson had a men-only literary club, and the general impression was that Doug's young followers believed that "women should be kept in their place." My informant overheard one of these, a young man named Mike, opining loftily on one occasion that women should not be involved in intellectual endeavors and that he would want to marry a wife who didn't try to involve herself in such things. Mark was friends with Mike. This was a lead-up to an awkward incident involving Mark and Mike, which illustrates that mentality.

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    1. Steve, aside from a quite pejorative lens through which you recount that event, the books recommended by DG are actually Wilson's ones on men and women (Reforming Marriage and The Fruit of Her Hands).

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    2. Pejorative but true.

      I said nothing about what books he recommends. That's neither here nor there.

      I'm commenting on the personal example Wilson set, and the impact that had on some of the young men he mentored.

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  7. Okay, I gave in and listened to the interview. I don't think Driscoll did anything wrong or out of the ordinary and that Mefferd was actually the one behaving sinfully. When I heard charges of "plagiarism" I assumed it was a charge the Driscoll had copied text from a book, but instead Mefferd's claim is that Jones has "intellectual property" over the idea being presented. As far as I can tell, at no point did Mefferd even claim that Driscoll had copied text without attribution. She was just complaining that he put a single footnote attributing Jones's work on the matter.

    Seems to me that by Mefferd's standards, 90% of the scholarly books sitting on my desk right now are "plagiarized" since the authors rarely footnote anything, and instead rely on the reader checking out the bibliography in the back.

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