Religion Ultimate Fighting Jesus
posted by on April 21 at 18:16 PM
It those Roman bastards tried to crucify Jesus today he’d tear off all their arms and beat the Jews to death with the wet ends—well, at least He would in Mark Driscoll’s fantasies.
The message of Church for Men and GodMen is resonating with ministers of all stripes. Following Murrow’s advice, Don Wilson, pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona, has geared his entire ministry toward reaching young men. And while his ministry is not to men in particular, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, nevertheless desires greater testosterone in contemporary Christianity. In Driscoll’s opinion, the church has produced “a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks,” he explains, “and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks.”The aspect of church that men find least appealing is its conception of Jesus. Driscoll put this bluntly in his sermon “Death by Love” at the 2006 Resurgence theology conference (available at TheResurgence.com). According to Driscoll, “real men” avoid the church because it projects a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ” that “is no one to live for [and] is no one to die for.” Driscoll explains, “Jesus was not a long-haired … effeminate-looking dude”; rather, he had “callused hands and big biceps.” This is the sort of Christ men are drawn to—what Driscoll calls “Ultimate Fighting Jesus.”
Man, could someone from Mars Hill please explain to me again how this Mark Driscoll asswipe is so totally not anti-gay? Driscoll, by my reading, really seems to hate women and have a problem with effeminate men—including that pansy-ass savior of his. (Once again: misogyny = homophobia = misogyny.) I mean, Jesus just let those Roman soldiers nail him to that cross—what, He couldn’t go Bruce Willis on their asses first? Just to make a point about how he’s so totally not, you know, Richard Simmons? Jesus could still have died for our sins and shit, but there was nothing to stop Him from taking out a few of those Roman soldiers out with him, right? Can I get an amen?
Sigh.
Now I don’t want to get drawn into a complex theology debate with an educated man’s man like Rev. Mark “My Wife Got Fat so I Sucked Off This Male Escort” Driscoll, but… uh… doesn’t Jesus love the little children? All the little children of the world? And wouldn’t that include children who are, you know, sissies?
Or did Christ only die for the sins of preening, insecure douchebags like Driscoll?
Driscoll teaches to the converted.
His sermon and style would change drastically if he was preaching to the non converted.
Plus, growing up in the church, gives most a reference point of where contemporary christianity has evolved into...
something that the secular world doesn't understand.
Much like your naive post about what he said to a group of people that obviously understood what he said on a more "christian" level, then an onlooker and reader who is ready to slam his notions of "anti-gay" rhetoric.
Pray at the Church of He-Man.
Rambo Jesus? Terminator Jesus? Suicide Bomber Jesus?
Give me the fruity one any day. The only people who like that kind of Jesus - outside of pre-teen boys, who like anything that explodes or farts - are closest queens.
Yes, that means you Miss Driscoll. Keep your Jesus fantasies to yourself.
oops, I meant CLOSET queens.
Nope, you preening sissies need to invent your own savior, this one's already taken.
Will they be making an "ultimate fighting Jesus" action figure?
Let's not let the Bible get in the way of re-purposing Jesus so that he appeals to testosterone driven men. I mean, sure he probably did have great biceps being a carpenter and all that, but his teachings were of the distinctly love and peace variety. And, what about all that "meek shall inherit the earth" stuff?
why does mars hill hate christianity so much?
@1
Um, there's clearly something weird going on with Driscoll's take on gender and sexuality there. And I don't think he used "queer" in the hip, re-claimed sort of way. He does after all advocate an old-school gay sex = eternal torture by red men with horns and pitchfork theology.
Hipster fundamentalist types are possibly the most irritating people on earth.
"Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.'" John 18:36.
It amazes me that Driscoll and Mars Hill somehow pass themselves off as a hip young church to a large population of Seattlites. They're reactionary, simple-minded homophobes.
Mark Driscoll is gay gay gay gay gay
I like how religion has essentially degenerated to the same level of marketing that is used to hawk pop music.
Maybe f your belief were not so blatantly stupid you would not need to dress them up in various trendy ways in order to rope people in to joining.
Gee, Driscoll makes Yeshua sound so, you know, butch.
@6: only if it leads to a smackdown with the "Boxing Nun"; then we'll be able to settle this "chickified" (why did I originally read that as "chicken-fried"?) question once and for all.
#10:
Don't confuse mainstream Christianity with Mark Driscoll. As for Mars Hill, I know many people who attend who don't agree with Driscoll, and to lump them all together as reactionary, simple-minded homophobes is just as fallacious as saying all Stranger readers are Dan Savage-worshipping simple-minded gays who hate Jesus.
Let Christ speak for Christianity, not Mark Driscoll.
There already is a Jesus action figure, actually, complete with karate-chop action.
@14,
If they don't agree with Driscoll, why do they attend?
And why are you telling US this @14? Driscoll's the one who thinks he's speaking for Jeebuz...
Will someone please just kick Driscoll's ass!!
@14&16,
I think a lot of why people attend Mars Hill is the guilt. Fundamentalists are good at guilt, and Driscoll is one hell of a fundamentalist. I went to Mars Hill for a few weeks when I moved to Seattle, and I left each week feeling worse and worse about myself. I moved on to a better church, but many of the people who attend Mars Hill feel like without Driscoll's help, they will continue to be bad people. That's the problem with mega-churches. The pastor becomes the focus, not Christ.
He's speaking to his unconverted self. I think I remember him saying at one point, before he was a Christian, someone asked him what he thought of Jesus and he said, straight up, "I think I can take him." Driscoll's point is not about homosexuality but rather about who Jesus is. The claim that Jesus is God is not credible if Jesus personifies personal/physical/emotional weakness. If Jesus full of the Holy Spirit cried or broke down or stopped preaching after every time people tried to stone Him, He really couldn't credibly be said to be God. And Jesus points that out too, saying, "No one take my life from me, I lay it down."
In other words, in Driscoll's opinion, "masculine men" are not the sort who could worship an effeminate/homosexual Jesus as God, so it's good to point out to them that's not what Jesus was. He says this from his own experience as a "masculine" man growing up in SeaTac a block away from a strip club picking fights all the time. This was inelegantly worded by him, but considering it took him a few years of preaching to stop cussing while he did so I imagine he'll be less unintentionally offensive as time goes on.
Mr. Joshua,
How does Jesus displaying emotional weakness prove he's not God? It proves he's fully human. That's the part Driscoll seems to leave out of his Jesus equation. Driscoll seems to venture too closely to Marcionism in his selective reading of Biblical texts, ommiting important clues about Jesus' humanity, importantly being that he cried on multiple occasions.
This doesn't ruin the 'credibility' of Jesus, it affirms him as both fully human and fully God.
You CANNOT tell me that this man is not a flaming queen.
There is nothing to debate, really.
Who is the flamer in the photo?
This Driscoll guy seems like a closet case. Going on and on about Jesus's callused hands and big biceps? He's imagining those callused hands running all over his body.
@ 11 & 24: I was thinking the same thing.
@21:
A neutered Jesus is more of an expression of a dehumanized Jesus than a masculine Jesus. Jesus had a penis. Jesus was a man. Certainly, God doesn't have Gender in the sense of, you know, parts, since as John says, "God is spirit," but Jesus certainly did. When Jesus is expressed as gender-neutral or effeminate, it denies the masculinity of his incarnation.
@23 That's Driscoll... and he looks pretty gay to me.
Jeebuz drank wine, partied with his posse, got pissed off at his banker, and hung around with hookers - I mean, how much MORE "manly" does the Son-O'-God have to be?
@21: I don't think "Marcionism" is the word you're looking for - the notion that Jesus's message of love is incompatible with the brutality and legalism of the God of the Jews is roughly the _opposite_ of what Driscoll is saying.
Can we ship this guy to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher?
here's some insight to mars hill:
first that is a funny pic, but i'm pretty sure driscoll was acting there. without speaking to whether or not he is a closet case, he acts the belltown manly role, not any sort of effeminate one.
for many of the attendees, mars hill is this radical, liberal, young, hip place. and for their experiences, they are right. they grew up in churches where the pastor was always a male, and old, and likely boring. the churches were likely small, with lame music, and no twenty-somethings (except for those who already married, had kids, and were virtually indistinguishable from thirty-somethings who were married with kids).
the biggest problem here is that they've created this shell, this exterior, that paints one picture, while underneath, they are something else. i've equated it to a soccer uniform before. they dress like a belltown hip, liberal-minded seattleite would dress (the uniform) without a few of the significant liberal-minded views.
as we learned with obama, not everyone who attends a church agrees with everything the pastor says. those who are church-goers know this well. and though driscoll clearly is the centerpiece of mars hill, there are other compelling reasons people stay involved. i would go as far as to speculate that most members do agree with driscoll on most issues.
@29,
By using Marcion as an example, I was pointing more to a selective reading of the Biblical canon, not really the essence of Marcion's eschatological or ontological views.
@26,
I still think that the 'masculine' Jesus makes it hard to see any evidence of the Trinity in the Old Testament. Read Proverbs 8, and connect this with a Jesus who understands the feminine inherent in creation.
@32: Except that there was no established Biblical canon when Marcion lived - in fact, IIRC, the canon that he established is the first known attempt at an explicit listing of which of the numerous Christian gospels and epistles should be regarded as orthodox.
These types are really upset that the parts of the Bible that are about smiting got left behind in the old testament. They are just fake-christian jihadists.
For what it's worth, it looks like Mars Hill wanna-be Quest pastor, Eugene Cho, has chimed in on Ultimate Fighting Jesus.
http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/ultimate-fighting-jesus/
They are all freaks imo.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).