THE CHURCH OF SEX

THE CHURCH OF SEX

Exclusive: David Kupelian challenges Pastor Mark Driscoll about his 'obsession'

Warning: The following column contains sexually explicit language.

Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

There’s a new form of Christianity sweeping the U.S. Its main focus: sex.

Don’t be surprised. We already have a Christian denomination catering to every other worldview, comfort zone and obsession, so why not sex? As I said in “The Marketing of Evil”:

“No matter what kind of person you are, a form of Christianity has evolved just for you. There’s a politically liberal Christianity and a politically conservative Christianity. There’s an acutely activist Christianity and an utterly apolitical Christianity, a Christianity that holds up a high standard of ethical behavior and service, and a Christianity for which both personal ethics and good works are irrelevant. There’s a raucous, intensely emotional Christianity drenched in high-voltage music, and there’s a quiet, contemplative Christianity. There’s a loving Christianity and a hateful, racist Christianity, a Christianity that honors Jews as God’s chosen people and a Christianity that maligns Jews as Satan’s children.”

So, it was just a matter of time before we got a version of Christianity for people obsessed with sex.

Pastor Mark Driscoll

And while there is a surprising number of preachers, teachers and Christian websites today whose main focus is sex, the most prominent is Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of the wildly popular Seattle mega-church Mars Hill Church. According toMars Hill’s website, Driscoll’s mostly youthful flock has grown from a handful of people in a home Bible study to over 19,000 people meeting across 14 locations in four states.

“One of the world’s most-downloaded and quoted pastors,” says Driscoll’s official bio, “his audience – fans and critics alike – spans the theological and cultural left and right. He was also named one of the ’25 Most Influential Pastors of the Past 25 Years’ by Preaching magazine, and his sermons are consistently No. 1 on iTunes each week for Religion & Spirituality with over 10 million of downloads each year.”

By the way, as runner-up for top mega-church pastor in “The Church of Sex,” I’d nominate Ed Young, senior pastor of Dallas-based Fellowship Church, who recently staged “a 24-hour bed-in with his wife atop his church,” a stunt designed to publicize his just-released New York Times best-seller, “Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse.”

But back to Driscoll: I have nothing personal against this popular, hip, tough-talking young pastor in blue jeans, and I totally understand the appeal of his blunt, masculine, passionate style – a refreshing respite from all the stuffy, pretentious and cowardly pastors out there.

However, let’s just state the obvious: Mark Driscoll is utterly obsessed with sex.

He tells, for instance, the following story of one female member of his congregation who – and I quote – “brought her husband to Christ” by giving him oral sex, in accord with Driscoll’s specific pastoral advice to her. Here’s how Driscoll, during a Nov. 18, 2007, sermon in Edinburgh, Scotland, described this particular husband’s “conversion”:

She [the wife] says, “I’ve never performed oral sex on my husband. I’ve refused to.” I said, “You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, ‘Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife.’” She says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.” [Laughter from audience] How many men would agree, that is a deed of kindness. He doesn’t want tracts. Those won’t do anything. What we’re talking about here could really help.

Really, people? Is this what we now stoop to in our efforts to make the magnificent Christian faith – the moral foundation of Western civilization – more appealing to a rudderless, confused and sex-drenched generation? Is this what now passes for pastoral counseling and preaching the Bible? I call it abuse and exploitation. I would even call it blasphemy (“… tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus … And then you need to drop his trousers …”).

Driscoll was “preaching” the Song of Solomon, which he has said repeatedly is his favorite part of the Bible and about which he preaches often. It’s also a major focus of “Real Marriage,” his brand-new No. 1 New York Times best-seller – which is mostly about sex – co-authored with his wife, Grace.

For Driscoll, the Song of Solomon amounts to a soft-porn sex manual, which inspires him to admonish women – those who aspire to be “biblical wives” – to awaken their husbands each morning by sexually servicing them in the same way the aforementioned wife “converted” her husband “to Christ.” (Actually, I’m not really too sure she converted him to a deep Christian faith, but no doubt he was converted into an enthusiastic member of Driscoll’s fast-growing church.)

To his credit, Driscoll condemns fornication, adultery and homosexuality. But for married folks, Driscoll – citing his chief inspiration Solomon, who had 700 wives – promotes sex toys, imaginary sexual role-playing, cybersex, what used to be called “sodomy” (both oral and anal) and wives becoming strippers for their husbands.

In fact, the wives-should-become-strippers teaching is not only in the Bible, gushes the enthusiastic Driscoll, it’s in his favorite part of the Holy Scriptures.

“This is my favorite chapter in the whole Bible!” Driscoll exclaimed during the same 2007 sermon. “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus. It’s great too. But this is an amazing chapter of the Bible: [Song of Solomon] Chapter 6 verse 13. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. … Now, what do you think the dance ofmah haneim is? It’s an ancient strip tease. Stripping is biblical. You’re welcome. [Laughter from audience] It’s biblical.”

I am not a Bible scholar, far from it. But it’s fair to say the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) – a short love poem of only eight chapters – is probably the most controversial book in the Bible. It is never quoted in the New Testament. Because of its often erotic language, “ancient Jews and Christians alike rejected its literal interpretation and allegorized it,” explains the editor’s note in my King James Bible: “For the Jews, it referred to God’s dealings with his bride, Israel. The early Christians saw it as representing the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.” This spiritual interpretation pretty much held sway for the first 19 centuries after Christ.

But in modern times, of course, we like to think we understand such things much better than those ignorant, superstitious, early Christians who knew Jesus and the apostles. Kind of like the way today’s judges see things in the U.S. Constitution – gay marriage, abortion, banishing the Ten Commandments from courthouses – that jurists in all previous generations somehow missed.

In any event, however you interpret the Song of Solomon, it’s undeniable that weird and sometimes disastrous things happen when you base your worldview and ministry on one or two allegorical and controversial scripture passages. I mean, check out this YouTube video of a room full of “Christian worshipers” ecstatically handling multiple poisonous snakes. That’s right, there are some churches, mostly in the Southeastern U.S., that believe handling venomous snakes and drinking poison are an important biblical test and proof of their faith. Why? Because in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus said: “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

Common sense tells us – however we interpret Jesus’ actual meaning – that He didn’t intend for the faithful to “tempt God” by drinking strychnine and strutting around on stage with rattlers and cottonmouths, practices that every year result in one or more deaths being reported from these churches. But to proponents of snake-handling and poison-drinking, “it’s biblical.”

In the same way, common sense tells us God did not create women – including married women – to have to compulsively service the needs of oversexed, insecure, angry, egotistical men at all hours of the day and night. And women definitely shouldn’t be psychologically manipulated by authority figures into believing they are disobeying God, Jesus and the Bible if they don’t become sexual Stepford wives.

Which brings me to this question:

Why has Liberty University – a great Christian college, and one of the few schools in the nation that doesn’t infect students with a highly sexualized culture the moment they set foot on campus – agreed tobring Driscoll to its campus in Lynchburg, Va., next month to teach and preach – twice – to all the young Christian students entrusted to that school’s care?

Are the students’ parents cool with making their kids a captive audience for Driscoll’s sex-book tour? And what are the decision-makers at Liberty thinking? It’s not as though I’m the first person to point out Driscoll’s weird overemphasis on sex. The Christian blogosphere has long been fired up over Driscoll. The Baptist Press reported that a major Christian radio network, the Bott Radio Network, canceled Driscoll because of his over-sexed sermons. Even a recent Seattle TV news story about a controversy at Mars Hill Church revolves around – you’ll never guess – sex.

Or check this out: Driscoll tells his congregation he has spiritual visions – which he calls a divine “gift of discernment” – but guess what he spiritually discerns with this sixth sense? Right. As this rather creepyYouTube video reveals, Driscoll has detailed and graphic visions of sexual sins involving his flock, including (in this particular clip) molestation and adultery.

Or how about this story Driscoll told during the same sermon from which I’ve been quoting:

We were in a grocery store recently, and my wife and I were holding hands and just, you know, shopping. I said, “Why don’t you walk ahead of me for awhile.” She said, “What for?” I said, “I just want to watch your butt for a while.” She said, “Watch my butt?” I said, “Yeah, I like your butt. I like you and I like walking with you. But I’d like to watch your butt for a while, at least through the vegetable section. I want to watch your butt.” [Laughter] … Let her know.

Supporters of Mark Driscoll (including the decision-makers at Liberty University), it’s time to wake up. This is not normal. Asking your wife to walk ahead of you in public so you can ogle her rear end is not normal. Having mystical visions of parishioners in sex acts is not normal. Counseling female members of your church to bring their husbands to Jesus through sex acts – that’s not normal. Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

That’s not normal.

Modesty, moderation, self-denial, humility, patient endurance – remember that old stuff? Those are the spiritual qualities of a Christian, which are consistently extolled throughout the entire New Testament. “For to be carnally minded is death,” warns Paul; “but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6 KJV). The apostles constantly admonish believers not to get too caught up with “the lusts of the flesh.”

In “real marriage” – that is, a marriage made in heaven between sincere and spiritually seeking men and women – wives actually appreciate a little nobility, patience and self-restraint on the part of their husbands. Without the manly virtue of self-control and even a little self-denial in their relationship, women can feel trapped – like they have no choice but to become seductive sexpots to keep their husband happy. And if perchance this creates conflict within her own conscience – conflict with a part of her that is not so sensuous, but more angelic and childlike and innocent – her husband has no clue what is happening. But she suffers the conflict nevertheless, perhaps dealing with it by pleasing him more and more, in the vain hope it will relieve her conflict. It doesn’t.

Friends, one of life’s great challenges for fallen, broken beings like each of us is that we somehow, through God’s grace, eventually rise above all the various temptations and pulls of “the world” and livesolely unto Him. It would really be nice if our pastors and other spiritual authorities, who claim to represent God, would exemplify and exhort us along this high road – rather than lead us in the opposite direction. source:

The Question of Adam's Navel

---

A question that has plagued many of us in religious and intellectual circles for the last century has been subject of debate, and heated discussion across the globe. It is the presumption as to the exact time and nature in and by which Adam (being in this case the first man to exist) was blessed with a belly-button. ‘How curious,’ you might ask. Yet, this very curiosity has enthralled scholars and theologians so much for the last few decades that they have finally grouped themselves into three distinct positions. The first position, and it is worth exploring momentarily, however absurd, is the view of the "Pre-Umbilisists.” This group believes that Adam’s navel was formed upon the point of his creation. Adam, coming from dust and created in the precise image of our Lord was granted the navel at the time of his “coming into existence.” With this in mind, one must note that if Adam was indeed created in the image of God in Heaven, that our Lord must also be blessed with a navel. One might also argue that God at one time had to have had an umbilical cord. If this is indeed the case, our curiosity would lead us to question the location of attachment for the aforementioned “cord.” Some Pre-Umbilisists believe the point of attachment to be located between two star clusters, the Quinn Cluster and Gamma Quadrant Four. This location is hundreds of light years from our planet and was chosen because its coordinates lay within the area scientists have theorized to be the center of the Big Bang, the point of the universe's creation. The Pre-Umbilisist would argue that the Lord’s umbilical cord was attached to perhaps a planet or a mass in the deep space of nothingness. We could picture, they say, the image of a child-like God, floating about in this space with his umbilical cord attached to some mass. The “point of severing” which is an important term for the Pre-Umbilisist, would have happened at the implosion of that planet or mass. The explosion would have been so great, that the umbilical cord would have been broken, to float for eternity alone in deep space, and at the same point, our Lord awakened to complete consciousness, fully God and fully complete, with navel.

Adam’s navel would be complete and real, yet serve no known purpose were he to be blessed with it at the point in which he was “drawn from dust.” He would “simply have it,” the Pre-Umbilisist would argue, for without it, “he would not be in the complete image of God.” This series of arguments leads us to the question of “Eve,” Adam’s handmaid. It is here, we can bring up the second position, Mid-Umbilisism.
The Fall of Man, we define as the exact time when we, as human beings became aware of our sinful nature. The Fall, as we know, happened with the creation of Eve. The consequential events that followed led to Adams downfall and the human race as a whole, forever being “separated” from God. The Mid-Umbilisist argues that Adam’s belly-button was formed sometime between the creation of “Eve,” and the time in which it took that “Woman” to take the first bite of that most tempestuous apple. The central vision of the Mid-Umbilisist lays within the “taking of the rib.” When God saw that Adam was alone, he decided to create a help-mate. He did this by taking Adams rib and moving it in such a way to loose it from his stomach. The Mid-Umbilisist paints a picture of the protruding rib being pulled from the blank stomach of our dear Adam. Its being forced out in the very area where God intended to attach future children within the wombs of their mothers. The outward thrust created a puncture hole, and thus became, for Adam, the first belly-button. Eve, to the Mid-Umbilisist was and in a sense always shall be “without navel.” Even before the fall, they argue that this was God’s intention in creating the “Woman.” “Wo-” meaning underneath, below, less than, and in ancient Greek; inferior to.. the “Man.” You see, to the Mid-Umbilisist, women are forever caught in the wake of “Eve.” Eve, being without a navel, was of course, less than human, or as some might put it, “not human.” So in a sense, are all women, not human. They are not as their legacy unfolds, to be blessed with heaven, they are void and without a soul. The Mid-Umbilisist would have us believe that woman, at the end of time and at the point of their death, when they are no longer of any use to man, will be whisked away by the hand of God, as if they never existed, as if they never even happened. The Mid-Umbilisist refers to this time as “the Great Dusting Away.” In which those who were not created in the image of God, the women in this case, will simply be erased, as if nothing every happened. They were here to serve man, and incapable of service to God, so they can serve no purpose in the afterlife. Since they are soulless creatures, they can no sooner gain heaven than a dog or a cow.

This all leads us to the last position, that of the Post-Umbilisist. This group of learned theologians and scholars believe that Adam’s navel was formed after the Fall. The very instant when Adam and Eve discovered they were naked in the Garden of Eden, they were granted belly-buttons. You see, at this point there were no natural births, they were the only two people on the planet. They were not formed naturally, but supernaturally, by God. It would make sense, perhaps that the “placing of the navel” would be the last supernatural event. The children of Adam and Eve were the first to have natural belly-buttons. When these children slept with each other and birthed more children from incestuous relations, they in turn were given the placenta, the attachment. The navel was then to be symbolic of pain suffered in child-birth as well as the sinful necessity of incest to populate the planet. The question remains however, Why would Adam and Eve need belly-buttons. Perhaps for the very reason that they were created in the image of God. If this is the case, then the argument presented by the Pre-Umbilisist would need to be re-examined. Questions remain, like, where is the placenta of God, is it floating about in space, did it ever exist, why would God need a navel? This argument was explored recently in the arena of science fiction. Someone had theorized that there was this great cord like nexus “God’s placenta” zooming through space. Anyone who would pass through it could enter a state of euphoria, like being in the presence of God. Another matter that remains unresolved is the subject of “innies” and or “outies.” What do they mean? Is the inward formed navel a symbol of man’s attempt to reach the “spiritual” by looking “within?” The outward formed navel could mean the opposite, searching for spiritual meaning in the exterior world, a pantheistic view. In either case the “innie” would be the more desirable. Not only is it generally a more comfortable navel to have, as most of us that posses them know, but in a sense, doesn't having one make us less damned for not being born having the sign of seeking those material things that exist apart from the soul. In any case, most intellectuals agree that the question of “innies” and “outies” will not be resolved until more significant issues are addressed. 

....okay I wasn't looking at the belly  

 

The arguments of Pre, Mid, and Post-Umbilisists are rich in theory and for the most part, lack any original fact. Until the last century the exact location of the Garden of Eden was unknown. Now that archeologists and sociologists have reached a consensus on deliberating the origins of human life, perhaps we are closer to the day when carbon dating, and geological testing can give us some tangible evidence. We can only hope and wait for that great day when the announcement is made, “We have the lint ball! We have the lint ball!”

SOURCE: