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Does Mark Driscoll know anything about economics, politics and foreign policy?

45 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome visitors from Peter Lumpkins. Thanks for the link, Peter.

I find this article on religion and politics by shallow, trendy metrosexual pop star pastor Mark Driscoll to be extremely disturbing.

Excerpt:

People are longing for Jesus, and tragically left voting for mere presidential candidates. For those whose candidate wins today there will be some months of groundless euphoric faith in that candidate and the atoning salvation that their kingdom will bring. But, in time, their supporters will see that no matter who wins the presidency, they are mere mortals prone to sin, folly, and self-interest just like all the other sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. To help extend naïve false hope as long as possible, a great enemy will be named and demonized as the one who is hindering all of the progress to atone for our sins and usher in our kingdom. If the Democrats win it will be the rich, and if the Republicans win it will be the terrorists. This diversionary trick is as old as Eve who blamed her sin on Satan rather than repenting. The lie is that it’s always someone else’s fault and we’re always the victim of sinners and never the sinner. Speaking of repentance, sadly, no matter who wins there will be no call to personal repentance of our own personal sins which contributes to cultural suffering and decline such as our pride, gluttony, covetousness, greed, indebtedness, self-righteousness, perversion, and laziness.

And, in four years we’ll do it all again and pretend that this time things will be different. Four years after that, we’ll do it yet again. And, we’ll continue driving around this cul de sac until Jesus returns, sets up his throne, and puts an end to folly once and for all.

From this regrettable post, I understand that Mark Driscoll thinks that Christians should not try to assess which party best promotes policies that will promote liberty and goodness in the world. And that they should not take seriously their duty to vote, and to convince others to inform themselves and vote. Instead, I understand that he thinks that it doesn’t really matter who wins. Democrats, Republicans – who cares?

What does it mean when someone says that it doesn’t matter who wins elections?

  • It means that the pro-life and pro-abortion positions are equivalent
  • It means that traditional marriage and same-sex marriage are equivalent
  • It means that intact families and single-mother families are equivalent
  • It means that Iran and Israel are equally threatening to world peace
  • It means that North Korea and the United States are equally free
  • It means that Zimbabwe and Canada are equally prosperous
  • It means that sex education and abstinence education are equivalent
  • It means that public schools and homeschooling are equivalent
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether Darwinism is taught as dogma or taught critically in schools
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether there is another terrorist attack and millions of Americans are killed
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether people have jobs or enough money left over after taxes
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether tax dollars go to fund abortion, ESCR, IVF or sex changes
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether religious liberty is limited by repressive fascist policies
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether Iran nukes Israel back to the stone age
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether poor children have the choice to go to a better school
  • It means that it doesn’t matter whether people die while waiting in line for health care
  • and so on…

Back in the days of slavery, it wouldn’t have mattered to such a person whether the slavers or the abolitionists won the election.

Avoid Mark Driscoll at all costs on these political and economic issues – stick with Wayne Grudem on politics/economics. Grudem actually knows about how reality functions. He studies the Bible and then he studies how the world actually works. Unlike Driscoll. Driscoll needs to spend less time on his hair and clothes, and more time reading actual books on economics, social policy and military affairs.

Here is my previous article about how Mark Driscoll minimizes women’s responsibility for their own poor choices.

45 thoughts on “Does Mark Driscoll know anything about economics, politics and foreign policy?”

  1. I don’t much about this Driscoll fellow, but that article you listed was pure tripe. At best it is misguided, and at worst it is self defeating for Christians. I would agree with you that what he seems to be saying is, hey, politicians are imperfect, so let’s not even bother. Bah humbug to that!

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    1. He’s a very famous pastor favored by man-blaming women. He puts a lot of effort into his physical appearance and clothes, in order to appear stylish for the cool Seattle set.

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      1. He’s also favored by men who want to burp and fart and cuss in mixed company and brew their own beer and drink it.

        He’s so hip.

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  2. I can see why you find this frustrating, WK. I do too. It’s important who we vote for. It does make a difference. A big difference. I hate it when preachers say it doesn’t matter who we vote for.

    However, I think I get what Driscoll was aiming at. And I think that what he’s aiming at has some value. I just don’t like his way of saying it.

    This is how I would say it:

    This world will never be perfect, whoever we vote for. It can be a lot better or a lot worse, but it’s not going to be Heaven, not by a long shot.

    Whoever becomes president, will not be perfect. He won’t be a messiah. He may be really good or he may be really bad, but he won’t be Jesus, not by a long shot. (All the Messianic talk surrounding a certain previous candidate who shall remain nameless revealed what people were after. They were voting for a very poor substitute for the Real Messianic Deal.)

    If people come to church and they hear more about politics than about Jesus, then something is seriously wrong. In *some* churches that happens. (And they usually have horrible politics too. Bleh.)

    I have political issues that I get pretty passionate about and I debate people in church on these things. I really, really wish we would discuss these things more in church and I wish they would be discussed in greater depth, and with a more biblical understanding.

    But I must always remember that the Gospel is central. If I make politics central it’s blasphemy.

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  3. I guess that I read this article a little differently. I don’t see a call to ignore politics — I simply see a reminder to Christians to keep a proper perspective on the human condition, and what, ultimately, is the only solution for that condition.

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  4. I’m at work so I can’t quite articulate this as much as I’d like, but in short: I see politics as something that flows from your worldview, not as a distinct, separate thing. So therefore I don’t get too concerned with making it too central in my life, as something that interferes with my faith.

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  5. I think you’ve missed Mark’s point WK. I would agree with chamberscreek and Rob Howard that politicians shouldn’t be our saviour. Mark is aiming at those who set up political parties to be their redeemer from a messed up world and telling them their only redeemer can be Jesus – I’d have thought you would have agreed with this?

    If you watch or read anything of Mark Driscoll’s that half those statements you made are unfounded and borderline slander.

    It would seem that you have a thing against Mark Driscoll and this has tainted your view of what he has written. Be careful how you write about fellow Christians because this article makes you sound very bitter and isn’t really doing anything for Christianity.

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  6. I think Driscoll makes a bad assumption, that because Christians are involved in the process must mean that our hope and trust are placed in the system and those in it. If we are hoping for salvation from our elected leaders, then he has a point. But I don’t find many who believe that and merely see their involvement in the process as being faithful to their calling to be salt and light in the world. We are called to be faithful, regardless of what the world does, or how God blesses us with that faithfulness on this side of glory. As a fellow pastor once told me, “always show mercy to those you meet. What they do with that mercy is between them and God.”

    The same applies to faithfulness. I think Driscoll is trying to be trendy and distance himself from any association some might have to be a part of the religious right. If that is true, shame on him.

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  7. Yeah Timothy, that’s how I read it as well. I have no problem with a church just focusing on the gospel. But if a church leader does decide to bring up political matters, I’d rather not hear this “pox on both your houses” kind of stuff. There are important choices to be made, and those choices have consequences.

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    1. I’m with you guys. I cleaned up the post a little to make it clearer that I am talking about someone who equates the two parties and discourages Christians from being informed about the differences between the two parties on the issues. In my opinion, Driscoll is doing that. And he also seems to be discouraging people from voting, in my view.

      How can Driscoll complain about abortion, same-sex marriage, or any other issue? There were working fathers who lost their jobs after Obama took office in 2008, and part of the blame falls on Driscoll because he was too much of a coward to study economics and to explain how the free market promotes strong families over government. He could have talked about economics without endorsing any candidates. He could have talked about free markets, free trade, firearm ownership, capital punishment, just war, abortion and same-sex marriage. Wayne Grudem knows these things. If Driscoll doesn’t know, he should shut up and read a book. Maybe spend less time primping and preening in front of a mirror.

      I find it very convenient that he tells his flock not to worry their pretty little heads about the evil in the world. How convenient. I’m sure they will be happy to hear that there is no work for them to do in terms of applying their professed worldview to the issues of the day.

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  8. You have greatly misunderstood him. One of the earlier comments was on target: He’s telling us not to put our hope in the political process because it will always disappoint us. Nowhere does he say that Christians shouldn’t research the issues, take a position, or be involved.

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  9. I’m no fan of Mark Driscoll, but have to agree with Phil about some of your statements being unfounded and borderline slander.

    Also Mars Hill is tax-exempt, so Driscoll has to be very careful when he speaks about politics because he runs the risk of losing being tax-exempt if he endorses a candidate or party.

    Finally, Driscoll mentions naive false hope regarding Democrats and Republicans, but he doesn’t include any of the third parties (conservatives, right to life, etc.) I think he is saying vote Democrat or Republican and we’ll get the same old run around, so possibly we as Christians should be looking to the other parties.

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    1. I think he is also speaking out about the proclivity of the Christian right to demonize the left and vice versa, which is a frequent preoccupation with this blog. Republican candidates aren’t more worthy and righteous, although I’m sure Wintery will disagree.

      His comment “there were working fathers who lost their jobs after Obama took office in 2008, and part of the blame falls on Driscoll because he was too much of a coward to study economics and to explain how the free market promotes strong families over government” is a perfect example. Free market policies got us into the financial crisis in which many working fathers, mothers, sons and daughters lost their jobs. And Obama did not cause it — he inherited it.

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      2. Republican candidates aren’t more righteous and worthy, but Republican, or more precisely, conservative ideologies are. Dems don’t support conservative policy proposals, so, by virtue of the ideologies espoused, the Republican candidates lean toward being more righteous and worthy of our votes.

        I have been having this discussion at my blog and perhaps YOU, McSpinster, can provide an example of which free market policies got us into the financial crisis. Free market policies allow for more freedom in which business can thrive and grow and produce wealth. Free market policy is plainly freedom. Human nature being corrupt, corrupt people will abuse freedom. But to remove freedom, as the left does when over-regulating the free market, good people are inhibited from thriving and growing and creating wealth. So to save you the hassle, know that free market policies did NOT create the crisis. That is, unless you can make a direct connection between a policy and a mandate for totally corrupt activity.

        As you may or may not know, Obama was a member of the Senate for the two years of Dem contol at the end of the Bush admin, when the downturn began in earnest. He inherited nothing he was not a part of creating.

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          1. Wintery, which side are you on? For regulating the financial industry or against (as GLenn Chatfield seems to be)? Conservative opposition to any type of regulation is well known. So are Republican senators who have united to try and block financial reforms. Here’s just one of dozens (if not hundreds of articles) on the subject.

            http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-16/politics/republicans.financial.reform_1_reform-bill-senate-majority-leader-harry-senate-republicans?_s=PM:POLITICS

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          2. I am for abolishing the GSEs. I want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop messing in the free market by guaranteeing loans made by private corporations with government money. We are in this mess because Fannie and Freddie Mac are NOT PRIVATE COMPANIES. They are hybrids who are using taxpayer money to cover risky loans. And notice in the videos I posted that the GSEs are RUN BY DEMOCRATS. We also need to get rid of the Carter/Clinton Community Reinvestment Act that forces banks to make loans to people (Democrat special interest groups) who cannot afford to own homes.

            So it is messing in the free market (Hybrid firms and coercion of banks to make loans they would not want to make) that got us into this mess. Government intrusion into the free market got us into this mess. Some people want to “regulate” the government intrusion. I want to ELIMINATE the government intrusion completely.

            We also need to raise interest rates and considering re-vamping the rules about securitization of mortgages. We could also 1) require a driver’s license 2) require a 25% downpayment, 3) require a job held for at least 2 years than pays enough so that the mortgage payment is only 30% of the paycheck, 4) reducing zone laws/open-space laws, etc. that prevent home construction and raises the cost of homes 5) abolishing all rent control, etc. to increase the number of rental places for people to live.

            These are all things that Democrats oppose.

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        2. “Free market policies got us into the financial crisis in which many working fathers, mothers, sons and daughters lost their jobs. And Obama did not cause it — he inherited it.”

          The “Free Market Policy” of allowing corporations to export jobs to lower cost countries have directly caused fathers, mothers, sons and daughters to lose their jobs.

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          1. Except that all the video evidence shows that the Democrats were the ones resisting regulation of GSEs and the Republicans were the ones calling for regulation of the GSEs. And the Democrats were getting donations from the GSEs AND running the GSEs. Click the link. Watch the videos.

            https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/democrat-barney-frank-admits-his-role-in-causing-the-recession/

            MCS, please don’t comment on this just to make a counter-factual assertion. If you have videos of Democrats calling for regulation and Republicans resisting them, post it. Otherwise, my video evidence showing actual Republicans calling for regulations and actual Democrats refusing those regulations is the truth. Don’t write long comments that I just won’t approve.

            Here’s more:
            https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/democrats-caused-the-recession-and-republicans-tried-to-stop-it/

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    1. No, actually Driscoll sounds OK to me here. I think it’s OK to ask his wife what she thinks so long as she isn’t preaching, and I think he’s right that the man has the responsibility to work and provide for his family, except in emergencies. I think that he might go on to say that a woman has a responsibility to choose a man based on his ability to do manly roles like protect, provide, and lead morally/spiritually.

      What I often see that annoys me to no end is that some women choose men based on whether they want to have sex with them, whether their secular leftist friends like the man, or whether the man is fun and amusing. A woman can read and blab about Mark Driscoll all day and then turn around and choose a penniless non-Christian as a husband. I’ve seen it done. I know at least one woman who listens to Mark Driscoll in order to feel justified in blaming men – she herself acts incredibly selfishly and refuses to take any responsibility. The Bible has nothing to say about her behavior, only about the man’s behavior. That’s the danger with Driscoll – he has nothing to say to women about what they are supposed to do – their responsibility to choose a Biblical man.

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      1. Fine.
        But the verse he’s using as proof isn’t saying that.

        And, gosh darn, I’m glad my comp pastor doesn’t have your attitude about women preachers.
        It’s so unbiblical.

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          1. (Snicker)

            Nope, you’re right. She’s not.
            If you want to hear some good teaching, come listen to me in the mixed adult Sunday school class my pastor asked me to lead.
            I did it last year. And he liked it so much, he asked me to do it again.
            Though I declined to teach an entire quarter because of family obligations, you know taking care of kids and stuff.
            I have to keep my priorities in line.

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  11. Not to be critical here, but I think this is reading into the article a bit. I’ve heard lots of Driscoll preaching and read many of his books and to make such a claim based on this old web article is a bit of a stretch IMHO. I read the original article and your comments and I just don’t see how you can get the conclusions you are drawing from what Driscoll said.

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    1. I removed some of your links because they had spaces or were broken and gave me 403 Forbidden. Can you PLEASE quote something from each story that substantiates your view? Don’t just put links.

      This 2010 “financial reform bill” that the Democrats were trying to pass did not address ANY of the causes of the mortgage lending crisis. It came out in 2010, not when the problems were actually happening. When the problems were actually happening from 1999 to 2009, the Democrats BLOCKED all regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (While receiving donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). The bill actually authorized CONTINUOUS BAILOUTS for banks, which is why Republicans opposed it. We opposed the bailouts that have ALL been passed when DEMOCRATS HELD THE HOUSE AND SENATE. These are NANCY PELOSI/HARRY REID BAILOUTS. The bailouts started in 2008, and the DEMOCRATS had the House and Senate in 2007.

      Source:
      http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/14/finance-bill-favors-interests-of-unions-activists/

      Excerpt:

      The financial reform bill expected to clear Congress this week is chock-full of provisions that have little to do with the financial crisis but cater to the long-standing agendas of labor unions and other Democratic interest groups.

      Principal among them is a measure to make it easier for unions, environmental groups and other activist organizations that hold shares to put their representatives on the boards of directors of every corporation in the United States.

      […]Business groups are also rankled that the legislation would impose costly new burdens on airlines, utilities and other non-financial businesses that were victims rather than villains in the crisis, simply because they use financial derivatives to hedge their businesses against risks such as fluctuations in oil prices, interest rates and currencies.

      Such hedging practices played no role in the crisis, though they helped many businesses weather the financial turbulence and recession that followed in the aftermath of the Wall Street storm.

      Other provisions of the financial legislation, which goes before the full Senate on Thursday for a vote and likely passage, favor Democratic constituencies directly by requiring banks and federal agencies to hire and do more business with them.

      The bill would create more than 20 “offices of minority and women inclusion” at the Treasury, Federal Reserve and other government agencies, to ensure they employ more women and minorities and grant more federal contracts to more women- and minority-owned businesses.

      AND:
      Source:
      http://www.cnbc.com/id/38210531

      Excerpt:

      Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the real ‘black holes’ in the inancial regulation bill before Congress and they both need to be addressed, Robert Pozen, Chairman of MFS Investment Management, told CNBC Monday.”They were too political volatile to handle and are not in the bill,” said Pozen who is a former vice chairman of Fidelity Investments.

      AND:
      Source: (The non-partisan libertarian CATO INSTITUTE)
      http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11916

      Excerpt:

      The House and Senate will soon vote on a finalized financial-regulation bill, one that was mostly hammered out in a closed-door conference between the two chambers. Legislators will have a stark, simple choice: support a bill that gives us more of the same flawed banking regulations, or reject it in the hopes that new congressional leadership next year will address the actual causes of the financial crisis.

      Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, the bill’s primary authors, would fail to end the numerous government distortions of our financial and mortgage markets that led to the crisis. Both have been either architects or supporters of those distortions. One might as well ask the fox to build the henhouse.

      Nowhere in the final bill will you see even a pretense of rolling back the endless federal incentives and mandates to extend credit, particularly mortgages, to those who cannot afford to pay their loans back. After all, the popular narrative insists that Wall Street fat cats must be to blame for the credit crisis. Despite the recognition that mortgages were offered to unqualified individuals and families, banks will still be required under the Dodd-Frank bill to meet government-imposed lending quotas

      […]While one can debate the motivations behind Fannie and Freddie’s support for the subprime market, one thing should be clear: Had Fannie and Freddie not been there to buy these loans, most of them would never have been made. And had the taxpayer not been standing behind Fannie and Freddie, they would have been unable to fund such large purchases of subprime mortgages. Yet rather than fix the endless bailout that Fannie and Freddie have become, Congress believes it is more important to expand federal regulation and litigation to lenders that had nothing to do with the crisis.

      […]Washington subsidizes debt, taxes equity, and then acts surprised when everyone becomes extremely leveraged.

      Until Washington takes a long, deep look at its own role in causing the financial crisis, we will have little hope for avoiding another one. And the Dodd-Frank legislation, sure to be heralded as strong medicine for perfidious financiers, is actually not even a modest step in the right direction.

      These problems started in 1999. The time to regulate (or abolish the GSEs) was then. The videos I posted showed that the Democrats blocked reform of the GSEs and abolition of the GSEs. The 2010 bill had nothing in it to address the problem. It was just called the “financial reform bill”. It did not do any actual financial reforming. The same way that the “stimulus” bill did not do any actual stimulating of the economy and we are still at 9.6% unemployment, which twice what we had under Bush. And the deficits are triple what we had under Bush. Those are the facts. The numbers.

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      1. WN – “After all, the popular narrative insists that Wall Street fat cats must be to blame for the credit crisis.”

        The Wall Street fat cats DID work hand-in-hand with the mortgage brokers by taking sub-prime residential loans re-packaging them and selling them as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The rating agencies computer models gave these CDOs investment grade ratings. There was a lot of money being made all around, so the mortgage brokers kept thinking of different types of loans (interest only, ARMs, stated income, negative amortization, etc) to get new buyers into the market. Everything would have worked out if housing prices continued to rise. Some people on Wall St saw the folly in all of this and bet that the “housing bubble” would burst. They bet correctly and their hedge funds made billions.

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        1. Yes, but the Wall Street bankers supported Obama over McCain by nearly a 2-1 margin in 2008.

          Source:
          http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/06/30/2008-06-30_barack_obama_has_collected_nearly_twice_-2.html

          Excerpt:

          Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.

          Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.

          “Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy,” said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC’s “Mad Money.”

          […]For both candidates, Wall Street’s investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.

          This was in 2008 before the election, and they got their big bailout for all their trouble.

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  13. So, in your opinion, we could fix this by throwing all the Democrats out and replacing them with Republicans, right? Because you only see Democratic bogeymen and Republicans, riding in on their white horses to save the day. Ain’t that right, W?

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    1. No! I just want policies that will allow me to 1) have a job, 2) keep most of what I earn (low taxes) and 3) be able to buy things in the free market, not from government-protected monopolies. When you see the election results on Tuesday, you will understand that that is what everyone voted for. We voted for jobs. We voted for limited government. We voted for federalism. We voted for the Constitution and the Declaration. We voted for LIBERTY.

      Michele Bachmann is my favorite:
      http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44418.html

      Why can’t you be more like her?

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        1. Woah there. Those would be tax *credits*, not cuts, totally different thing. Just more spreading the wealth around and that sort of thing. A credit is, well, a credit, and not a cut in the tax rate, which would be actually meaningful.

          Giving out tax credits is what liberals do when they pretend to be conservative. They get to pick winners that way.

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          2. Whoa, indeed.

            There’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to taxes, and families have enough to deal with these days without taking a quiz on how changes to the tax code have helped them. But the facts, supported by clear evidence, are that President Obama has presided over hundreds of billions in tax cuts that continue to help families get through these tough times. So says Jared Bernstein, Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice President. You can read his analysis here:

            http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/21/tax-cut-facts-how-obama-s-tax-cuts-are-helping-american-families

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          3. Actually, you can’t seriously be talking about Obama and tax cuts, can you?

            Here is the libertarian Cato Institute to explain what Obama really did.

            http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12508

            Excerpt:

            How many times have you heard the president and the congressional Democrats say Americans who make less than $200,000 a year have not had, and will not have, any of their taxes increased? Unfortunately, it is not true, and it is likely to become a whole lot worse.

            The 111th Congress has already enacted $352 billion in net tax increases and may, in the upcoming lame-duck session, enact the largest tax increases in history, which will hit every man, woman and child — as well as every business in America. The good folks at Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) have put together the data on what the current Democrat-controlled Congress has done already.

            I have summarized their analysis in the accompanying table.

            The tax increase of $725.7 billion dwarfs the tax cuts of $373 billion, leaving a net tax increase of $352 billion. But it gets worse. Just $107.6 billion of the tax cuts are permanent — the rest are temporary — but all of the $725.7 billion increases are permanent.

            So you can’t really mean tax cuts. Did you mean “trillions and trillions of spending and government waste”?

            Or perhaps you meant “massive increases in unemployment rate”?

            Since Pelosi took over the House and Reid took the Senate in 2007, we have lost 7.5 MILLION jobs. Know why? Because that’s when the massive government bailout of rich Democrats in big corporations started. Democrats hate the middle class – that’s why they have bailouts for rich Wall Street bankers and overpaid underworked union bosses in the auto industry.

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  14. Me like her? OMG. That is too funny!

    How do you feel about Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle? Like ’em or no?

    Or my old high school tennis buddy, Meg Whitman?

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