Mark Driscoll Steps Down

The Christian corner of the internet has no doubt been buzzing at news of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll's resignation from Mars Hill, the church he founded and which grew to encompass large parts of the Seattle area and spawned a church-planting movement that today is doing fantastic work. I say "no doubt" because I refuse to read anything about this situation.

I am sad about this, and I imagine others are using the opportunity to gloat or feel vindicated or otherwise coat themselves in smug self-righteousness, and I just don't want to read their thoughts. 

I am sad because Driscoll is something of a hero of mine. He was the man who almost singlehandedly introduced me to the Reformed faith, if only by introducing me to the work of others who claim that proud tradition. I remember well the first time I heard one of his sermons. I was living in New Orleans in that city's post-Katrina malaise, and a friend at my house was watching a video of a Driscoll sermon. I was enthralled. This guy had, for want of a better word, balls, a quality generally lacking in many pastors. He was bold and brash, but seemed to really love Jesus and want to make him known. It was immensely attractive to a 21 year-old kid turned off by the effeminacy so prevalent in much of the church. I was hooked. Returning to Colorado, I had a 2 hour round-trip commute every day and I filled a good chunk of the listening time with Driscoll sermons on my trusty iPod (that thing still works!). We were in Seattle a few years ago for a backpacking trip and Clara and I attended a Mars Hill service at their flagship location in Ballard. The church wasn't really my cup of tea, but it was great to get to hear Driscoll live. 

I have fallen out with Driscoll in recent years. Some of his alpha male bravado wore on me and I didn't appreciate the book he and his wife wrote on marriage (though not because Driscoll cheated to get the book turned into a bestseller). And I am not writing here to defend him necessarily, or even to say that he shouldn't have stepped down. Who in the world am I to make that judgment? He did and said some detestable things and in this culture where people love nothing more than to be offended, that type of personality is always going to have issues.

But I will say in his defense, that he has never backed down from his own sin or made light of his shortcomings. He has always been forthright in asking for repentance. That is an admirable quality. 

Also in his defense I will say that God, scripturally and anecdotally speaking, seems to love to use brash, arrogant men whose hearts are softened by the gospel of Jesus. It is rare indeed that a pusillanimous people-pleaser comes to lead a revival. Those guys make excellent critics, though.

I am not saying this to suggest that we sweep everything unseemly a successful pastor does under the rug. The problems with that approach are manifold, and well-illustrated by a take-your-pick glance at recent church scandals. I am saying that I don't think God is done with Mark Driscoll. I am praying for him now, that God would take those great gifts he has given the man and continue to refine his character. That he would surround himself not with the sensitivity crowd, but with people full of grace and truth that want to see him be used and God be glorified and not strike a point for their pet cause. That as the gospel grows in Driscoll's heart he becomes the type of man he always showed signs he could one day be. I do also pray that there would be healing where there is hurt he has caused, genuine healing, and true repentance from Driscoll, but that his critics who were not directly involved in any of these events have the humility to recognize their own sin and pray for their brother.

After the Praying, I'm Still a Bastard

In my junior classes we just wrapped up a unit on faith poetry. We surveyed a broad range of poems, ranging from atheist screeds against belief to faithful endorsements of God's power and beauty.

My favorite (new) poem from the unit was "Unholy Sonnet: After the Praying" by Mark Jarman. I will reproduce it below and then explain what I loved about the poem:

After the praying, after the hymn-singing,
After the sermon's trenchant commentary
On the world's ills, which make ours secondary,
After the communion, after the hang wringing,
And after peace descends upon us, bringing
Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary
And how the light swords through it, and how, scary
In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging
There is, as doctors say about some pain,
Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers,
Your listening and your rejoicing, your small part
In this communal stab at coming clean,
There is one stubborn remnant of your cares
Intact. There is still murder in your heart.

Ah! That last line. But to begin at the beginning, it took me awhile to move past a bit of a superficial interpretation of lines 2-3. I had read it fairly straightforwardly as the "world's ills" being stuff like poverty and pain and war and how our own ills are "secondary" in the face of the overwhelming suffering in so much of the world. However, Jarman isn't making a surface-level comment here, but indicting the preaching in both conservative and liberal churches for being too outward in their denunciation of evil. In both places, the world's ills are emphasized to the point that our own fallenness, our own depravity, somehow becomes secondary.

For conservative churches the world's ills are gay marriage or cohabitation or wealth redistribution, so as long as you aren't living with your gay partner and voting Democrat you are doing well. For liberal churches the world's ills are poverty and conformity and capitalism, so as long as you are against poverty in the abstract, heterodox in your religious beliefs, and can go on a good rant about the evils of major corporations you also are doing well.

This is a caricature, of course, and painting with too broad of a brush, but I think the point holds. The churches that appeal to me, the ones that will last when the liberal or conservative topic du jour has lost its intensity are the ones that speak to me not about how bad stuff is out there and how messed up other people can be--be they communists or capitalists, homosexuals or homophobes--but about the murder in my own heart. In other words, I need to be reminded regularly how big of a bastard I am. I can always readily nod along to condemnations of evil in others. Who can't? Part of being a really big bastard is that it is easy to see how other people are bastards. What I need when I sit before the word of God is to hear how bad I am and how good Christ is to me. Despite my bastardness. 

I love how Jarman forces us to consider the question of the efficacy of church: does church work? There is violence in this poem. The light swords through the sanctuary. The dust motes are scary in their sheer number and cling to the air, which for those paying attention is impossible to do. We make a stab at coming clean. And for our efforts we leave and feel better, but there is that unsettling small voice when we leave reminding us that this did not do the trick. What ruins us is not on the outside, but on the inside. Despite the prayers and the sermon and singing we are still murderers.  

My students seemed to view this as entirely cynical and hopeless. I let them think that for awhile. I try not to be too directive in guiding their interpretations. After their frustration mounted, I told them that this is the gospel. This is who we are. Murderers. Adulterers. Thieves. Greedy. Covetous. Blasphemous. There will always be murder in our hearts. No communal stab, no sermon, no song will cleanse us. In Christ alone our hope is found.

The Word of God and the word of God

As most of you know, this is my first year teaching high school and thus the past two months have been chaotic. We are settling in to a new house, and both Clara and I to new jobs. Roots seem to be sinking, some traction digging in.

I do not have many preliminary reflections on teaching. Most of the time I still feel as if I am trying to keep my head above water, but the schedule seems to be coalescing and I am hopeful to have more time to read, write, and reflect about other matters tangential to my job teaching. My hopes might be misplaced; it certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I did want to make one comment about teaching, though, one thing that has surprised me: I enjoy teaching grammar. Grammar instruction is a huge component of our curriculum, especially at the freshman level and one of my favorite parts of the week is teaching that week's grammar lesson. I have never been anti-grammar, whatever that might mean, but I have respectfully ignored spliced commas, dangling modifiers, unclear pronouns, and their brethren in bad grammar. In fact, while teaching writing at the collegiate level I was explicitly instructed to ignore grammar errors. I could mark them on the page, but errors could not be punished in lowering the student's grade.

Not so here. At my school we aim to produce students who write right, right? There is a precision to grammar that I love--the aim to say precisely what we mean in the most rhetorically effective manner. I found this John Piper quote where he discusses the importance of grammar to a Christian. Read this:

"An evangelical believes that God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common; they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and the prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture."  

Piper is driving at the fact that since God has revealed himself to us through Christ and through the language of Scripture we ignore both to our peril. In the incarnation Christ becomes present to us in our humanity, humbling himself in our form, and God likewise condescends to speak to us in words that are intelligible to us, words meant for our instruction and delight. When we see the syntax and grammar of Scripture we are seeing a piece of the mind of God. Words and how we use them are important if for no other reason than our God has deigned to speak to us in words. The power of words is blessed by the power of God.

Therefore, grammar instruction is not pedantry, precision in language is not becoming a grammar nazi. Caring for words reflects our care for the word-giver. And that is sufficient to make me excited to teach the subject to kids who couldn't care less.

The Guns of August, 2

When war broke out the various nations that would play a part in the conflict began mobilizing their forces. Germany's entire war plan counted on a quick strike. In order to ensure victory, they had to seize victory in the west before Russia could mobilize and strike in the east. Russian mobilization was expected to take longer than six weeks. Thus, Germany's plan called for victory over France in 40 days.

A few obstacles to this goal arose. First, was Belgium. Belgium was a newer nation, small in size and not able to fight against one of the continental powers. Thus it was protected by the other powers, including England. Strategically, Belgium was hugely important to Germany. If they occupied Belgium they could strike directly south to France. The German war plan called for the rightmost soldier to brush the channel with his sleeve. In order for that to happen, Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty would have to be violated. German leaders were not concerned about the military threat posed by the Belgians. If anything they expected them to roll over. The timetable for swinging its right flank through the country neglected to account for any Belgian resistance at all. The problem with invading Belgium, from the German perspective, was that once Belgian sovereignty was violated England would be treaty-bound to enter the war. The British military, especially the British Navy, was of concern to the Germans.

When German boots crossed into Belgium they did not find a compliant people or a feckless king. The Belgians resisted, decimating the German army in an early series of battles. Victory by the Belgians was never a possibility, but their fierce resistance slowed down the German advance. Moreover, it emboldened the world to speak out against Germany's aggression. News of German retaliations against Belgian citizens was broadcasted to the world, and the world turned against Germany. England, goaded by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, declared in favor of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to occupy the left flank of the French forces. Though poorly led and mostly retreating the first month of the war, the French rallied the English to their cause when von Kluck exposed his right flank and the BEF was a key part of the battle of the Marne. 

Another obstacle to the German timetable was Russia. The Russian behemoth mobilized much quicker than was expected. Spurred on by the French, the Russians sent armies into the field that were grievously unequipped for war with Germany but even 1,000,000 poorly-equipped soldiers is something that has to be dealt with. Germany dispatched two key battalions to the eastern front. Russian losses were staggering, but they accomplished the goal of making Germany fight a two-front war. 

In a sense, then, Russia and Belgium are responsible for saving Europe. England might not have entered the war had Belgian neutrality not been violated and popular opinion so enamored of the conduct of the Belgians. If that hadn't happened the Germans would have enveloped France and taken Paris by the middle of September. If the Russians hadn't sacrificed thousands of men in an ill-fated early attack on Germany, the two German battalions called away might have given the Germans all they needed to overrun both the French and the British forces in the west. All of this three years before the U.S. entered the conflict. 

The Battle of the Marne was waged over a week in early September of 1914. It falls out of the purview of Tuchman's book, which keyed in only on the first month of the conflict. In that week, though, 500,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest-per-day battle of the conflict. While it was ultimately an Allied victory and the Germans would never get as close to Paris as they had been in August of 1914, the victory also set the stage for four years of trench warfare and the madness and killing and senselessness of that war. With victories like that, who needs defeats?

The Guns of August

In August of 1914 the world erupted into the conflagration that came to be known as the Great War. After the European powers repeated the steps less than thirty years later, the Great War was amended to World War I. It is a conflict about which I know very little. Its brutality and pointlessness do not make way for glory in the same way as its better known child. There is little glory at the bottom of a trench, nothing rousing in a pile of young bodies rotting in no man's land. 

Attempting to rectify my ignorance of the conflict I spent the past month or so reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, her account of the first month of the war. Superlatives fail. It was a fascinating read. Even though the Europe it conjures is scarcely a century past (there are people in your town who were alive during the conflict), it is an entirely foreign world--a world of princes and kings and archdukes and detente and entente and confusing treaties and the vast progeny of Queen Victoria. It was an era that still believed in honor, that took a nation's right to dominate whatever was within its power to control as a piece of natural law, that saw Europe as a continent of competing powers and not some panEuropean utopia. 

Tuchman begins with a vision of old Europe. The death of King Edward VII of England was attended by nine kings, five heirs apparent, forty imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens, and numerous ambassadors. The Kaiser of Germany, William II, rode in attendance; the new King of England, George V, rode in the front row; King Frederick of Denmark was there, as was Alfonso of Spain and Manuel of Portugal and the soon to be famous Albert of Belgium. Franz Ferdinand was there, accompanied by the old Emperor Franz Josef. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who would lead the German army in battle, was there. Edward had broken England's isolation, uniting the nation with France and Russia, two old enemies and the upstart Japan. 

The unity with France unsettled the Kaiser and prevented him from pursuing a better peace with England. The Kaiser longed for the acclaim of France, dreamed of being paraded through the streets of Paris. Tuchman notes, "it is perhaps the saddest story of the fate of kings that the Kaiser lived to be eighty-two and died without seeing Paris." The rapprochement was not to come. The new Germany, united by Bismarck, emboldened by the victories over France in 1870, chomped at the bit, straining to assert itself in a continent that openly derided its parochialism and provinciality. Germany would soon get its chance. 

England's unity with Russia was even more of a blow to the German people. Alexandra, Czar Nicholas's wife, was German. Nicholas and William were cousins. But Alexandra hated William and the czar was constrained by his more evenhanded ministers from signing an entente with Germany. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded. France to the west, Russia to the east, England on the seas. Their alliance with Italy was suspect and Austria could not provide enough protection against the hulking beast of Russia to give Germany freedom to fight only on one front in the west. A two-front war haunted Germany's military minds.

However, much of this was subliminal at the death of Edward. Peace seemed to be the order of the day. Germany could pontificate and quotes its Nietzsche and thump its chest, but the balance in Europe seemed to be stable. In 1910, the year of Edward's magisterial funeral, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which "proved that war had become vain." Given the economic interdependence of the nations, no country would be foolish enough to start a new war. A cult grew around the book and optimism seemed to replace predilections of war.

But at the end of June, Gavrilo Princip's shot rang out in the Sarajevo morning and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire choked to death on his own blood in the back of his motorcar. Austria declared war on Bosnia, Bosnia was defended under treaty by Russia, Germany came in for Austria under odd pretenses. Thus the war in the east began. Inventing a threat from France, Germany violated Belgian neutrality in order to invade France from the north. Treaty-bound to defend Belgium, England declared for the side of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to France. Thus the war in the west began. 

Four years later, after 16 million people had died, the madness was put to bed for a time. 

In my next post I will take a brief look at how that first month played out and how it served as a harbinger for the horrors to come. I would love to have more time to engage with the book, but tomorrow morning I start teaching and will be pretty busy for the next several months. My posting has fallen off the map since moving to Colorado, but I anticipate being able to post once per week during the school year. I should have a follow-up post by the end of next weekend.

The Key to Paradise Lost, or One Nominal Theory on the Issue of the Hero of the Epic

I do not know that I have found the key to understanding Paradise Lost. Maybe. The title of the post is a nod to the wonderful pedantic Edward Causabon of Middlemarch, whose life's work was to be The Key to All Mythologies. Unfortunately for the world, Dr. Causabon died, victim to the harshness of George Eliot's pen, before he could complete his tome and enlighten the world.

In general I am leery of theories or claims that are as absolute as "the key to this" or "the until now overlooked aspect of that." People who make claims like that are mistaking boldness in rhetoric for boldness in thought. That large caveat aside, in my Scripture reading the other day I did come across a verse that can function, while perhaps not the key, at least a very useful lens for adjudicating the great Satan debate in Paradise Lost. 

For those of you further down on the nerd scale, the debate basically centers around the hero of Paradise Lost. PL is an epic and all epics come equipped with a hero. The Iliad has Achilles. The Odyssey has Odysseus. The Aeneid has Aeneas. But Milton doesn't have a straightforward hero. People who enjoy controversy and quite literally playing the devil's advocate claim Satan as the hero. William Blake, a great reader of Milton and wonderfully visual poet, wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it." 

A straightforward, maybe simplistic, reading of the poem can lead to this conclusion. Satan has all the best speeches. He is defiant and brave. "To reign is worth ambition though in hell/ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is a great line. He refuses to accept defeat after literally waking up in hell. In other words, of all the characters in the epic Satan most embodies the classical traits of the hero. 

But maybe Milton didn't want a classical hero. Maybe, in fact, he was sending up the ideals embodied by the classical hero. I have long sensed this as I have engaged with the poem, but in reading Romans 2 the other day it was brought home in a different way. Here is the text:

"He will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:6-8 ESV)

The classic course of the hero was to seek glory and honor and immortality. It was why Achilles went to Troy. But there is nothing more antithetical to the classical notion of heroism than the idea that glory and honor and immortality are achieved through "patience in well-doing." Glory and honor and immortality, for the ancients, had to be grasped at, struggled for; you had to do bold things and risk daringly, like Satan in Paradise Lost. But for the Christian we live patiently and do the good works God has prepared for us in Christ. A bit less grandiose. Not too many three hour blockbusters made about a Christian businessman living a patient life of good works in his suburban community.

But the quest for the Christian is different. What we need to do has already been done in Christ. Our job is to use the faith we have been given to endure. To finish the race. To continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we heard. My ambitions when I was younger were for grand things. To change the world. To die a glorious martyr for Christ. Now my goals have changed. Life is long, the race is hard, and I just want to make it. When all hell breaks loose in this world and in my life, I want to stand.

I think Milton was on to this in setting Satan up as the most heroic character in the epic. If heroism leads to being Satan then what value is there in that type of heroism? Better to be patient. Better to endure. Better to live out good works. Better to, as Milton puts it in another poem, "only stand and wait."

Tomorrow, I Teach

Tomorrow I start my training to be a high school English teacher. The road to this point I have already documented and you can read if you wish. I do not have much more to say on the topic right now. Only that I am very, very grateful.

We have been living in Colorado for just over a month now, out of suitcases in my parent's house. And it couldn't have been better. The weather, the mountains, our families, our friends. I have climbed mountains and run trails, sat outside on cool July evenings and slept under the stars at 11,000 feet above sea level. 

When we first arrived in town I actually got a head start on my teaching experience. My new school had a project starting this summer that my department head thought I would be a good fit for: a Great Books project, or a history of philosophy. We took critical Western thinkers from the past 3,000 years, read their works, and wrote a 4-5 page chronicle of their biography, the themes in their writing, and their legacy in Western life and thought. In my 2+ weeks on the project I covered the following thinkers: Milton (obvs), Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, William James, John Dewey, Dante, Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Horace, and Edward Gibbon. In other words, I was paid well to do what I would have gladly done for free. The goal of the project is to have a Great Books elective for our students and hopefully to use the curriculum we develop in other schools as well. Thus far in my life it is the coolest intellectual project I have ever been involved in. 

I am excited, which is why I am writing at what is typically my bedtime. It is not often in life that everything seems to align perfectly and you understand why it is that you have traveled the road that you have. I spent most of the past four years wondering what in the world I was doing with my life, and now it appears I have my answer: preparing for this.