The Rebel’s Guide to Power: Biden, Trump and Mark Driscoll

My favourite preaching series by Mark Driscoll was his heart-warming Philippians series, The Rebel’s Guide to Joy. Almost two decades ago.

And it was joyful. And slightly rebellious, in that it pitched Christianity as being worthwhile and worthy in the midst of a culture opposed to it. It was listened to by hundreds of thousands and it launched a book, and it picked the zeitgeist for those who wished to live for Jesus faithfully, and could expect suffering for it to come. And to do so joyfully.

I am sure in the comments online people will be shocked, shocked I tell you, that I was listening to Driscoll almost 20 years ago. But like music (particularly bands such as The Cure and REM), it’s a case of “I like your old stuff better than your new stuff”.

And to say that I don’t like Driscoll’s new stuff would be an understatement. But I did love The Rebel’s Guide to Joy. It was an album full of bangers.

Yet somewhere along the line, Driscoll’s joy turned to anger. I remember the first really angry sermon I heard and I was like “Woah!” For me that was pretty much it. He was done for me.

It felt like there was a lot of iceberg under that tip, and as I have talked to people from Mars Hill and Acts29 over the ensuing years, that 90 percent under the surface was pretty ugly. It sunk a lot of ships.

Now I don’t always like a post-event feeding frenzy, and as much as I listened with intrigue to the first couple of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, – Mike Cosper’s podcast series which went viral, I have to confess that it also fell into the “I like your old stuff..” category.

I never finished the final couple of episodes. It felt like its agenda had come adrift from where it started. It felt like it had a skewed take on a number of key issues. Felt like a sermon in there somewhere trying to get out. Unlike, say, the amazing podcast that started the viral trend, Serial.

The Rise and Fall.. ended up being like those cassettes you saw in Christian bookstores by second-rate bands, with labels that said “Sounds like..,”. “Sounds like U2”, for example (though given how second-rate U2 actually is, that would make the Christian sound-a-like merely third-rate). But I digress.

In the case of Cooper’s podcast the “sounds-like was  Serial.  But having started as sharply as that podcast, it soon became blunted by it’s agenda, and after that, listening to it it felt like rubbernecking a car wreck, and I lost interest.

Which tells you that sometimes, less is more. And in this instance, Mike Cosper has managed to keep to that brief. He reposted the tweet by Mark Driscoll, with the words “presented without comment” attached.

So….

In other words, for Mike, it says everything that we need to know about Driscoll. Or at least where is he now in terms of what he believes. In terms of his theological position, his political position, and most importantly, his position in terms of how he views the USA in relation to God’s kingdom. Mike nails it. Fewer words the better.

Driscoll, it would seem, has moved from Reformed theology to “charismatic with a safety belt” (his term) to full-blown charismatic/Christian Nationalist. How else would one take his meaning, if not that the USA is now in the hands of a prophetic voice from God?

This is a long way from the rebel. A long way from finding joy in the kingdom to come that has broken in by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s right up there with the CN crowd and their hopes for a return to the unicorn of the Christian nation that the US once was. Or should have been. And will be again if we can just ditch that “coming soon” aspect of eschatology and nestle into post-millennialism. After all we’re going to need about five thousand years to complete this project.

As someone who holds to a reformed theological framework (albeit Baptistic and therefore not kosher enough for some), it struck me, when I attended an early iteration of a Mars Hill/Acts29 Boot Camp, that the reformed theology of Driscoll and his ilk was something they had taken on because it fitted another agenda altogether.

And what was that agenda? It was a rejection of a Boomer-led Southern Baptist “fundagelicalism”. The Reformation doctrines appeared to be an escape hatch for young men (the young, restless and reformed), who could not abide the stultifying culture of their upbringing, a culture that could not see its own blind spots and therefore viewed itself as theological more than cultural.

I remember standing on the lawn at Driscoll’s house with bearded young men all smoking cigars and drinking whiskey like they were making up for lost time. Which they were.

And not only lost time. Lost boys. Driscoll, disparagingly says that many of them were looking for a daddy-figure. Well, hello, that’s exactly what X-Gen types were looking for. They were all latch-key kids or had broken families (or were about to have). Driscoll was kinda happy to be that figure. Until he wasn’t.

Which is the same as his reformed theology. He was kinda happy to be reformed. Until he wasn’t.

There are two types of people in the reformed camp of my experience in the past twenty years. First up, there are those who came to Mark Driscoll through reformed theology (they had reformed backgrounds and noted that he had aligned himself there). Second, and more problematically, there were those who came to reformed theology through Mark Driscoll.

What marked them out – apart from their adherence to Mark – was just how thin their understanding of reformed theology, and biblical theology as it happens – was. I remember them “wowing” like Joe Rogan did recently over Wes Huff, when they mentioned the venerable Graeme Goldsworthy of Gospel and Kingdom fame.

Indeed I attended that Boot Camp with Steve Timmis of The Crowded House fame, who went on to take Driscoll’s position in Acts29 (both in terms of his aptitude and his attitude).

Whatever his faults, Timmis was an amazing gospel preacher with a thoroughly reformed conviction and framework, and as the keynote speaker that year, he did the “wow” thing to those lost boys in this talks too.

As an Aussie, and as one taught by those who themselves had been taught at Moore College in Sydney, this stuff was foundational to us. Foundational and well-known. But they’d just discovered it, so they were “roganing” all over the shop.

This was new to them. New and exciting. And full of promise. Until it wasn’t. And when Driscoll went down in a blaze of inglorious glory, taking his theology with him, down most of them (though not all) went too.

And now we have muscular, nationalist Mark Driscoll. There’s nothing Philippians about him. One of the central tenets of our faith, the driver of our joy in fact, is that our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly away a Saviour from there.

His god, I fear, may be his stomach.  This is a man who taught week in week out (incorrectly in my opinion, but he taught it nonetheless), that in the church there are three types of leaders, prophet, priest and king.  And now, in this tweet, he supplants the church with the nation. Biden an ungodly king, and Elijah a godly prophet.

Which only leaves us with the priests. Who will prepare the place the places of worship and intercede on our behalf?

Of course, you could wrap up all three of those titles into the person of Jesus, which is actually what the New Testament does.

When Driscoll used them as frameworks for Christian leadership we gave him the excuse that his theology would provide him with the safety net to keep Jesus and his kingdom at the centre, Jesus and his Word at the centre, Jesus and his intercession for the saints and their wellbeing at the centre.

Yet here we are. Driscoll has gotten to where he is, because he began where he did. Maybe we should have heeded the warning signs of him playing fast and loose with categories that belong to Jesus. Because, from this vantage point, he’s ramped that up.

I often speak at conferences and quote the memorable insight of Melbourne pastor, author and podcaster, Mark Sayers, that the progressive political agenda in the West is to have “the kingdom without the King”.

But I add this: There’s also a conservative political agenda in the West – and I worry it may be in ascendency – that we have “Christendom without Christ”.

Good traditional, conservative values (which I espouse), but if we can get those without Jesus, without the way of the cross, without the Philippians 2:1-11 stuff in which the true and final inauguration event is described in the only city that matters, then it seems some people are happy for that tradeoff.

If all the bro-boys want to align with cultural Christianity then fine. But that will not, I suspect, sway the spiritual direction of the nation as much as they think. Though I doubt many of them care all that much about the spiritual direction as much as they care about having the reins of power back.

Please don’t think I am laissez-faire when it comes to politics. I am not. There were terrible ideas and actions promulgated by the previous administration; ideas and actions that flew in the face of created realities.

I think Trump is a blow-hard, but will watch what he does rather than just what he says. Whether progressive or conservative, the USA is far more robust than many countries (most countries).

But Biden wasn’t Ahab. And Trump is not Elijah. And the USA is not Israel. It’s not even the new Israel. It’s especially not the new Israel.  And I don’t need a Graeme Goldsworthy book on biblical theology to tell me that.