I am speechless.  If this is one of our leading megachurch pastors, then God help us all, and I am not using that plea irreverently.

I have not read the book and do agree that these excerpts don’t seem to show a high view of female personhood. However, I think that tweeting and naming the article “Mark Driscoll thinks wives are only good for sex,” shows poor taste and uncivil behavior on your part. I expect more from Fuller and the Burner blog.

I think I am missing something here. From the above quotations, especially from the bold sections, I do not see how you support your thesis or the shock in the comments at the end.
    To say he wouldn’thave married her if he knew her sexual history is honest. This is not to prescribe that in every situation, but one has to acknowledge that plenty of Christian men and women would hesitate to marry someone who had been sexually active. I do not think it is necessary to hesitate about marrying someone for this reason but I do think it is acceptable.
    The large paragraph about counselling is about the difficulty of being so busy that sex with his wife has been pushed to the back burner. I know other pastors who have been in the same spot. If you include this paragraph so say “Driscoll only uses his wife for sex” you read into it more than it says. Saying that it is difficult to counsel people about sex when he is not having sex with his wife does not mean that he is not emotionally or intellecutlly, etc… connecting with her. Are you married? Sometimes at the end of a long week you may not have had sex but you might need to connect by just holding each other or talking over dinner. You might even be too tired for sex. Also, Driscoll is writing about counseling people about sex. If he wasn’t connecting with his wife intellectually and was counselling people about intellectual relations this paragraph might read the same way but substituting conversation for sex. Would one then be able to say “Mark Driscoll thinks wives are only good for conversation?” Hardly.
    I wonder why you put in bold that prostitutes might be the most damaged among us? Could that include male prostitutes? It certainly does not refer only to wives (as most prostitutes aren’t wives and most wives aren’t prostitutes). But one might counter that “Driscoll believes that damage caused to bodies by sex is the worst thing that could happen to a person. Therefore he IS primarily concerned about sex!” It is easy to see that, at least in what you include above, Driscoll does not say this at all. He says that those who sacrifice their bodies to sex are often the most damaged people. I can easily see why he might say this, for we are physical beings and what we do with our bodies affects our whole person. Also it is a dangerous lifestyle in which a vulnerable part of one’s self is exposed to many who are vicious and violent. A friend of mine tried prostitution for one night and the emotional and intellectual trauma of this event has led to a lifestyle of harmful choices. I would imagine that Driscoll has a lot of experience counseling prostitues or working with those who have counseled them. The few people I know who have worked with prostitutes in depth might agree with him about the degree of brokenness. Don’t read into this sentence that “only prostitutes are really broken people.” It doesn’t say that.
    As far as the last paragraphs you included, I am not sure what the problem is. I can see what implications might be drawn which would make a person leery, however the text itself does not lead to any negative connotations that I can see. As far as I can tell men and women tend to need sex for different reasons, and while a man may be emotionally satisfied by sex, a woman may be emotionally satisfied by other means. Do I believe that one’s wife is to be wooed and cared for? Absolutely, and, from what I have read in other publications, I believe that Driscoll thinks this as well. But let’s flip this around. If a woman is cantankerous and unsatisfied because her husband has not focused on her in the ways that she needs, be it cuddling, notes, flowers, etc…, does he have the right to say “well you have to have sex with me enough first, then I can give you that attention.” But that is what you imply by challenging Driscoll on this point. Marriage is a give and take. To die to self means that at times we recognize that the other person needs something, be it sex or conversation, that we do not need in the same amount. Yet we do our best to give it to them, not as one giving in to abuse but out of love and affection. It sounds like Driscoll and his wife have talked about it and reached a good method of meeting each other’s needs.
    Driscoll clearly states that he writes against the idea that sex is a reward. I think he is right. Do you believe that sex is a reward? I think at times it can be, but that is not its primary use. Sex is intimacy and if one person, be it husband or wife (and sometimes wives doneed it more)

He thinks the cure for his moodiness is more sex with his wife? Oh, dear.

None of these quotes are good, but that particular one I found quite repulsive.

Thanks for responding.

By uncivil I am referring to the definition of civil as ‘gracious, polite, or courteous.’ The title is none of those to a fellow brother in Christ (regardless of how you judge his theology and philosophy).

Your article’s title reminds me of all the one liners thrown at Rob Bell throughout the last five years. It felt like a shock tactic to get people to read the article. If you had a quote of Mark Driscoll stating precisely that he believes wives are only good for sex than that would be one thing; but I think he would strongly disagree with that statement.

Does that help to express what I meant by uncivil?

I had no expectations for this book and it’s low on the priority list of reading.   I am critical of things that Mark says but I do acknowledge that God has used him, his wife, many throughout his church in great ways. 

I hear what people are saying about the blog post title, but that is part of the nature of blogging.  Ironically, I suspect the title of the post is why many of us clicked – right?  So good David and good for Fuller – seminaries have plant y of opportunities to write academically and having a larger presence on the internet would be a good thing.  

More importantly, I too am concerned from what I have read (again have not yet read the book, one day likely will) and what this communicates to women in our church and what it communicates to women who are outside of our church.  

Specifically, I am disturbed that these examples were used of Grace.  I have no trouble believing that she gave permission but it’s hard for me to take serious the idea of  ”permission” in such a complementation household.  To refuse permission when the husband expects it becomes sinful disobedience so again, her “permission” means little.  

Regarding the blog title, perhaps it could have included that Mark thinks women are also good for illustrations of sinful behavior as well.  

Mark Driscoll also thinks that people would be happier and have better sex if they would just listen to him and go to a church like his. Yes, his book is full of barely concealed misogyny and homophobia. Not to mention some ridiculously reductive Biblicism, as I wrote about on my blog today– http://eatwithjoy.org/2012/01/05/two-new-books-on-marriage/

There’s a lot that could be said about Real Marriage and some very thoughtful reviews have been offered pointing to weakness within the book. May I suggest that the assertion in the title is misleading at best and slanderous at worst. I won’t attempt to discern others motives. I received a reviewers copy and they spend the first section of the book talking about developing friendship in marriage. Mark also says in the book he’s asked his wife to be a functional pastor to him in their marriage. He also discusses being servant lovers. You may take aim at his view of sex or his explicit discussion of it but leveling the claim he thinks women are only good for sex is dishonest. For the sake of the gospel I hope we can fairly critique and disagree with others especially when the criticism is due. Grace & peace!

Thanks for posting, Dave. More evangelical voices are needed to hold Driscoll accountable for his words and actions. The fact that Rob Bell gets tarred and feathered for suggesting that God’s love and grace may be a little more inclusive than many people think it apparently the worse sin to 1st degree misogyny (among other things) 

I wonder why we say “God has used him” — is it because he has a big church? Every time Mark Driscoll is quoted in something that comes to me, I can only think:  “pathological.”

We’ve seen this sort of thing before, haven’t we?  Big, popular, uber-confident, charismatic male preacher .  .  .  deep, dark underside. Some of the people who belong to their churches sound fine enough, some of their teaching sounds fine enough.  But still, there are dark currents running underneath it all.

When they write, teach, speak — hints of narcissim ooze out, though I’m sure they don’t see it in themselves. I dunno, but I think  the future Jimmy Swaggart is right in front of us. Better hair, better jeans — but same thing.

Thanks for the review. A lot of people are reading this book, Driscoll has quite a following. Hey, I guess “love” wins huh?

I am not a fan of Driscoll, not really even close.  But I think a bit more context for each excerpt you have provided would do well to argue against his points and support your main argument, particularly the last one.

I appreciated Rachel Held Evans post about this book, http://rachelheldevans.com/mark-driscoll-real-marriage, citing the need to rid evangelical culture of the celebraty pastor.  It seems (having not read the book, but basing off other reviews) that his fundamentalist patriarchal worldview is vomiting through the pages making his celebraty status all the more worrisome.  Though some of it is extremely awkward, given the excerpts above, I appreciate his vulnerability.  But it only fuctions to further expose that his theology of marriage and sex is troublesome and the he and his wife need coucil and probably shouldn’t have written a book (though a bit more context for each excerpt would be helpful).

Thanks for the post.  Would love to hear you unpack it a bit more… mostly because I’m not going to touch this book with a 10 foot pole.
 
 

I like that definition of  ”yes”.  I’m with you on that. 

You know, I’m feeling quite concerned about Grace Driscoll in all of this. Not just because of the aforementioned comments about her – what might seem to be – diminished role in their relationship, but because of the backlash this book is going to bring on her as ‘co-author’. With everything else, that’s a huge load. Mark has a tough skin. Does she?

I don’t know, I think there probably are going to be a lot of people who are very sympathetic towards her.

“This is not to prescribe that in every situation, but one has to
acknowledge that plenty of Christian men and women would hesitate to
marry someone who had been sexually active.”  Actually, Grace was sexually active with Mark before they got married (before he converted). So, he has no rights there at all. The quote is referencing the time that she had sex with another man soon after she’d started dating him (before he converted, she recommitted, and they were in HIGHSCHOOL).  She should have ‘fessed up before they actually got married, but I hardly think that a fling in HIGHSCHOOL is worth of divorce. Particularly after a major life change for both of them.

I agree.

Thanks for your comments.

I do have an unfavorable view of Driscoll. I find him to be unsophisticated, unthoughtful and an egomaniac. I am baffled as to why so many people attend his church. I admitted as much in shorthand when I referred to my personal “Crazy Mark Driscoll” nickname for him. (I think he would genuinely like the nickname). I also included a couple paragraphs that referenced my wife.

I’m glad you brought up the quote about the sexual history of his wife, Grace. It’s clear from the chapter that Mark and Grace were intimate before they were married, and that Mark had more partners that just Grace. No judgment there. The shock comes from when after writing all of this, that he held the sexual sin of his wife as something so bad–so much worse than his own sin(s)–that he would hurt the woman he claimed to love by rejecting her. Yikes.

The next point would be best explained by reading the tone of entire chapter. It is clear to me that his paragraph definitely meant his misery came from hearing about how great other men’s wives were in bed, while he was bored at home.

I think you have read me right about the prostitute quote, and I still disagree with you.

As far as the last point, Driscoll does write that sex should not be used as a reward. But the quote I picked out I consider to be indicative of a shockingly male-centered, sex-centered attitude. Maybe I should have included this quote in today’s post on male chauvinism.

Thank you for calling this book what it is. That Grace was made to feel such profound shame for this apparent high school transgression is something I think most therapists would classify as abuse.

One note: I appreciate the reviewers honesty about his own faith and relationship. I do hope that he will come to realize that a godly relationship can entail women as primary decision makers (or ideally both partners according to their expertise and abilities.) When a woman must always be second-in-command at home, even with everyone fully respected and well-meaning, it bleeds into how women are perceived and treated outside the home–especially at work. I hope you’ll be inspired by Real Marriage to take a hard look at gender roles in your own life and household–as should we all.

Rob Bell claimed to speak on behalf of the Bible and then contradicted it blatantly.

In the blog link below are guidelines taught for thousands of years by our Hebrew ancestors and still taught today regarding sex in marriage.  Many come from the Vow of Onah taken by most Jewish men on the day of their wedding – and still taken today.  Others are from Hebrew fertility guidelines.  They reveal God’s elegance in the mystery and purpose in sexual intimacy and the responsibility put placed on men.

Once again Mark reveals his lack of understanding of Judeo/Christian history and the degree to which his underground demons regarding women and sexuality express themselves.  Someday we will hear his particular ‘Ted Haggarty story’ … the writing is on the wall (and now in a book) … watch and see.

http://blog.tinaschermersellers.com/2011/02/12/the-vow-of-onah-and-other-jewish-attitudes-about-sex/ 

For more read: Rabbi Shmuel Boteach’s books on marriage and sexuality

 My wife is still a person, she still has needs that are at least as important as mine, and I am called to serve her as Christ serves the church. I fail a lot, but if I’m not sacrificing my needs for hers then I’m not doing a very good job. 

I’m no fanboy, and I don’t agree with certain things in the book, but I got the impression that what you wrote is actually what Driscoll was overall calling for. 

as a progressive, i strongly advocate recycling.

So you’re rid of the bathwater.  Where’s the baby?

I knew Driscoll a bit in the earliest days of Mars Hill, when I was part of a similar church startup in Seattle.  Ours went an entirely different direction…  Mark never did remember my name and as a matter of course women were not expected at any leadership meetings.  As our pastor’s wife was integral to our formation and a dear friend of mine, this did not sit well with me (or her).

This didn’t put me off church entirely, though.  Perhaps what you mean is that you’re not going to step foot in a Mars Hill church anytime soon.  

I think of church as a big family.  Driscoll is an embarrassing cousin, not the Heavenly Father himself.