Jesus, Violence, and Masculinity

When thinking about violence this past week, and wondering how Americans get so socialized to violence both in our homes and in our international affairs, I came across this blog posting in my research files. It was written by pastor Mark Driscoll last fall, and it narrates his experience watching prize fighters in Las Vegas. You can read the full post for greater context, but I have excerpted a few paragraphs below. It begins:

"I am writing this blog while sitting in the Vegas airport . . . waiting for a delayed flight. This trip was on Southwest Airlines and this is the first and likely last time I fly it, for the same reasons I do not ride the public bus. It's always late, there is no assigned seating, and it smells like a Honey Bucket at a county fair.

The trip started with a cancelled flight due to what the pilot called "excessive leakage," which I assumed was from the plane and not the pilot. As we got off the aircraft we had just got on, I overheard the pilots talking about how it was leaking fuel from the same place as the plane that recently exploded.

Upon arriving in Vegas, my buddy, Mars Hill Worship Pastor Tim Smith, and I were picked up by Scott Knight. He is an elder at a church in the Portland area who was kind enough to get us tickets for the UFC heavyweight bout at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. He is a good guy who knows a ton of the fighters in what is the fastest-growing and most exciting sport in the world today--mixed martial arts, which also goes by other names such as cage fighting and ultimate fighting....
Scott then took us to pick up our tickets for UFC 74 Respect.

While waiting for our tickets, a few Mars Hill Church guys in attendance said hello. The fights were sold out and all fifteen thousand seats were filled. The sport has exploded and is selling out arenas all around the country. With the UFC also recently buying out the Pride Fighting Championships league, the sport is certain to only skyrocket. Curiously, it is most popular with men ages eighteen to thirty-four--the exact group that most churches are abysmal at reaching and retaining, in part because most churches and pastors have no idea what to do with men who are not motivated by a weepy worship dude(ish) singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.

The fights were amazing. The bloodiest fight was Renato Sobral's dismantling of David Heath. Apparently Heath talked too much trash in the pre-fight weigh-ins and the seasoned veteran Sobral took it personally and proceeded to open up some major head wounds, which turned Heath's head into a bloody mess. Despite the fact that Heath tapped out due to a choke hold, Sobral refused to release Heath until he forced him to pass out unconscious to teach him a lesson in respect. In short, Sobral does not seem like the kid who ever got his lunch money taken. There were a number of good fights on the card, including a few good fights that did not make the pay-per-view event.

The headliner was Randy "The Natural" Couture's dominating victory over Gabriel Gonzaga, who earned his shot at the heavyweight title after a surprising knockout via leg kick to the cranium of former Pride fighter and K-1 striker Mirko "Cro Cop." Despite Couture being much older and lighter, he absolutely dominated Gonzaga, breaking both his nose and will in overwhelming fashion from dirty boxing in the clinch....

Overall it was a good trip. I would strongly encourage all pastors and Christian leaders to spend some time familiarizing themselves with the fast-growing sport that is capturing millions of young men and ask yourself why. Lastly, if you get an opportunity to see a fight live, have fun….”

Now, before I explain what offends me in the above writing, I think it is fair to give some background on where this guy is coming from. One of Mark’s main points is that the church does not do a good job being relevant to men. Perhaps he is insightful here; I can appreciate this perspective. He also has often asserted that there is a crisis in masculine identity in the aftermath of the feminist movements of the 60s and 70s. I would agree with him on this point, too. Gender roles are not nearly as clear anymore and things have certainly been disrupted (though somethings needed to be disrupted, I would add.) In a sense I think there is something Mark is doing that is needed: he is identifying that some men are feeling at a loss to step into a sense of their own masculinity.

But in perceiving this crisis of men, it would be one thing for Driscoll to say, “We have a crisis of masculine identity happening today. Boys are growing up without dads and role models. They are being given confusing and often unhelpful messages from the media about being men, and we need to help them be responsible adults and be actively engaged in society and their families.” However, it is quite another thing for Mark to publish posts like prize fighting in Las Vegas as some kind of model of mature, even Christ-like masculinity.

An interesting blog posting that my friend Eric sent me (you can click here to read it), offers some more thoughts on why this kind of masculinity is theologically dangerous. This post is at times heavy in rhetoric. The sarcasm of Halden (its author) can even emulate the communication style of Driscoll that so often concerns me. So, I am not saying I agree with every sentence of this post, but I do think parts of it are brilliant.

Halden's blog begins by critiquing the following excerpt from an article in Relevant magazine, a publication which asked Mark the question, “What do you see as the greatest challenge for young Christians in the next 10 years?” Mark responded:

"There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity." [Italics added]

Here, I will echo some of Halden’s thoughts but put them in my own words. Mark states clearly that he cannot worship a Jesus he could beat up. I have to break it to you Mark, your street-fighting Jesus is not actually in the Gospels. The Jesus of the Gospels came in vulnerability and he came to lay down arms; he came to call us to a kingdom quite different than we could perceive in human power. He did not overthrow Rome. He did not engage in prize fighting. He did not summon legions of angels while he hung on the cross. And while Jesus may come with a sword in Revelation, he has not asked you to come with a sword (and I have a hunch that the book of Revelation, since it is in the prophetic genre of literature, is not just to be read at face value. Either way, you don’t get to come with a sword. That is not your job.) The New Testament clearly portrays a battle for Christians to fight that is not of flesh and blood. Christians are called to fight, but our weapons are prayer and love and truth and hope, not bloody hands or violent words or Bible verses we have made into ammunition to shoot people with from our cozy moral highgrounds.

The Gospel critiques the violence of men and women. And people of Christian faith need to begin to critique the violence in their own culture and ask why it is so endemic. And Mark Driscoll– who is hugely popular in evangelicalism– needs to be critiqued. He is a man with many gifts and talents, but he needs to be held accountable for the harmful messages he dispenses.

After spending weeks writing and thinking on the reasons behind why some men are socialized to be violent (see my article on TheOoze.com), I cannot read Mark’s words and not see connections. It is not OK to dress up our private need to be a playground bully–or a prize fighter in Vegas–with our religious language. It is not OK to package Jesus with our own violence, and somehow preach this as the Gospel.

(For further thoughts on violence, my friend Cabe is blogging on it these days. He has been an important conversation partner for me. You can read his thoughts here.)