Back in September, Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church, shared a message at the Convergent Conference at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In it, he targeted the views of Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt and Rob Bell. While I have very little respect for McLaren and Pagitt, Rob Bell I don’t know too much of and haven’t made up my mind on yet.
But what bugs me most about this Emergent crowd is the constant need to question everything. For example, Rob Bell, in his book “Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith,” he writes:
“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?”
This is a disturbing view in my mind and totally contradicts scripture as early as Genesis 3 where God talks about the “seed of the woman” - way before any Mithra’s or Dionysian cults ever existed. Any serious Bible student would know that God is alluding to a mysterious event here as genealogies in Scripture are usually discussed along male lines and not female.
Furthermore, Bell seems to belittle the Isaiah 7 passage regarding the virgin birth in his attempt to address this issue and ultimately pokes a finger in the face of the Gospel account. To me, the pursuit to reach the unchurched is not worth it is you trash scripture. After all, even God exalts His Word - even more then His Name.
But out of the three Driscoll targets, Bell is the least of my concerns. It’s McLaren and Pagitt who concern me in their views and activism within Christianity today. Form your own opinion of what Driscoll says. Here is the iTunes podcast link for the conference and have a listen to what Driscoll has to say.
Well it seems as if the Emergent movement has had it’s feathers ruffled as a result of this and a series of bloggers have formed a “wink club.” Fuelled by people like Adam Walker from pomomusings.com, this group of bloggers are posting a series of “wink” posts at Driscoll to show their dissatisfaction at Driscoll for what he shared at the above mentioned conference.
OK, now here’s my rant. This wink club - take it’s collective ability and impact and it doesn’t register a blimp on the radar of influence or impact in changing lives. This group of “bloggers” are emergent friendly and tend to pledge their allegiance to McLaren et al and their rebellious questioning of everything done in the name of Christianity.
Sure, there are heaps of stupid things done in the name of Christianity and the modern church needs to change in order to address this. But to question scripture and to modernise it in a way to embrace all kinds of whacked out ideas makes this group akin to the mindset of the people from the ‘Jesus Seminar” where the Gospel is assessed according to modern ideas as to what Jesus actually said and done based on a humanistic and carnal attitude.
The net effect of this this movement is to assess the life of Christ and to categorise the probability of the events actually happening to red, pink, grey or black “beads” of probability of these events actually happening.
The result of this is that the vast majority of the life and teachings of Christ are ultimately questioned instead of believed. Bell’s quote above is an example of the same attitude within the emergent movement.
Driscoll on the other hand has distanced himself from this movement. Initially a part of the movement, he tore away from it alarmed at where this group was heading. He now pastors a 6000 plus church and is among the fastest growing and most influential churches in the USA.
Among the reasons for this is that Driscoll holds Scripture in high regard. He often gets slammed for his stance of “God says it, we need to obey.” Apparently, those in the emergent movement forget the words uttered by Paul:
“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,” 2 Cor 10:5
So to the winkers I say;
I know much of what WE as the church represent is questionable to an unbelieving world and I know that we have been a bad example.
But in our attempt to converse with them, we need not attack those who hold on to scripture in high regard for even our God places His Word higher then even His Name.
For example, Adam at pomomusings lists a bunch of “ridiculous” snippets from Driscoll’s message and one of them is:
“If Rabbis don’t love Jesus, they have a bad hermeneutic.”
Well Adam, you are a student of scripture and you should take note of the following passage where Jesus says:
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40
So if a Rabbi does not love Jesus, he indeed does have a bad hermeneutic. You bring that up with Jesus if you have a problem with that - not Driscoll.
You winkers amount to pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of things and have very little impact on spreading the Gospel. Driscoll does. So get over it.
Tags: Mark Driscoll, Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Rob Bell, pomomusings.com, Emergent, Jesus Seminar, Churchrelevance.com, Christianity
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