Mark Driscoll seems to have a low view of humanity. Maybe this isn’t news to you. I know that original sin and human depravity is central to Calvinism, but I didn’t expect it to be so obviously front and center in a sermon.
Sunday was the first sermon in the Esther series, and while he didn’t say anything terribly shocking or controversial, I was surprised nonetheless.
The sermon was on Esther 1:1-9, setting the stage for the story. He describes Xerxes and his reign, and what he enjoyed doing – women.
He continually makes the point that the men are abusing and using the women in the harem. It will be interesting to see what he says once Esther joins the harem.
His sermon was about description and condemnation. When he is describing the wealth and sinfulness of Xerxes’ banquet, he tells us we’re all just jealous of him. If we had that much money, we wouldn’t use it to help the poor, we’d use it to throw a massive party like that.
He thinks men are animals.
When no women are present and no rules are in place, men become animals.
Really? Women and rules are the only thing keeping all men civilized and appropriate?
There are no qualifications in what he says, no ‘some people may do this,’ it’s just all black and white with him. We all use social media as a means of glorifying ourselves.
There are things that I am doing that are glorious and you need to see them. You need to praise me and honor me by writing on my wall.
I’m sure that some people use social media as a means of vanity, but there are some people who use social media, to you know, be social.
As we condemn Xerxes, we need to condemn ourselves.
How is this redemptive? What I got out of this sermon was that Xerxes is horrific, but if we were in his shoes, we’d do the exact same thing. So we are just as horrific, but Jesus is better.
Of course humanity has a great capacity for sin. But we also have a great capacity for good. Jesus didn’t come to condemn. Why do we want to condemn ourselves, condemn others?
Why is a message of condemnation being preached? I truly don’t understand this. Maybe this is par for the course for him. I have no idea.
Are we here to condemn or to point out a better way?
That’s not to say nothing is worthy of condemnation. Obviously evil acts should be condemned. But in pointing out the sin and pain – if we just stop there, we haven’t gone far enough. It’s not enough to condemn. We have to point out an alternative. We have to show the opportunity to do good. We have to show that it is possible to be better than the lowest common denominator. Condemnation ends in guilt and shame. Affirmation and restoration ends in hope and love.
Condemnation keeps looking to the past, limiting the future. Affirming and encouraging points us to a better future. That should be a message, no matter the topic, that gets preached on a Sunday morning.
Seems like the message shouldn’t be “if you were in Xerxes’s place, you would do the same thing- you’re horrible!!!” but “if you were in his place, would you do the same thing? How are you using the power/opportunities/resources you do have?” I haven’t listened to the sermon, so I don’t know if he went that direction or not. But like you said, people have the capacity for a lot of good, as well as evil.
yeah, that would be a much better type of sermon. He didn’t say anything like that at all – if he did it was brief and I missed it, but that wasn’t the type of sermon it was :/ He laughed at the idea that people would use their money to feed the poor. “no you wouldn’t. You’d throw a party. You know you would.” and everyone laughed with him. :/
how depressing! 🙁
and sad that he has that opinion of his congregation and apparently they have that opinion of each other.
And don’t get me started on “When no women are present and no rules are in place, men become animals”…
Interesting. It seems to me that even when women are present and rules in place we can do a pretty good job of behaving like animals, so the presence or absence of them doesn’t really seem to be the issue. While I fully affirm the significance and importance of women in society (and rules, for that matter), if that is all that keeps us from being beasts, then we men are in trouble indeed.
I think the comment from perfectnumber is on target. You could address this topic in a way that would challenge rather than condemn and have both a more positive outlook and a more motivational message.