Many of you will know Mark Driscoll, heard him preach, maybe even be part of his church. Many of you will also know that last week he resigned from the church he began, Mars Hill.
The board of Mars Hill said that while Pastor Mark has, at times, been guilty of arrogance, responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading the staff and elders in a domineering manner, they did not find cause for him to be disqualified from pastoral ministry. The board went on to note that Pastor Mark has never been charged with any immorality, illegality or heresy. It appears he resigned voluntarily.
As an outsider on the other side of the world, it is a bit hard to work out what actually has happened, and whether it really had to come to this. Perhaps all that can be said is that Mark Driscoll, like all of us, has sinned and is in need of forgiveness.
But rather than focus on the details of the recent days and weeks and perhaps months, we thought we would focus on the humor of Mark Driscoll. He really does have a way with words and a certain straight talking about him. Therefore please enjoy our top 10 favourite quotes from Mark Driscoll and even a short segment of a sermon he gave on the humor of Christ.
Do you have any other favourite or funny quotes? Why not leave them in the comments below?
- “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 Revelations, Jesus is a prize 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.”
- “I’m in my jeep minding my own business, when I turn to Christian radio for the first time in a long time. Last time in a long time.”
- “You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we’re all good people. That is a lie… God looks down and says ‘I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,’ and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says ‘Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.’ This is a miracle.”
- “You wanna be counter-culture? You wanna be a total rebel? Get a job! You wanna be counter-culture, totally alternative, radical? Be a virgin until you get married…to a person of the opposite gender. And then stay married and pump out some kids and pay your taxes and read the Bible, you freak. You’ll be just totally a rebel.”
- “Jesus, could you please rapture the charismaniac lady who brings her tambourine to church?”
- “God picked a junior high girl [to be Jesus’ mother]. Jesus was raised by a woman who today, we wouldn’t even let her lead a bible study at a high school. But she could raise God.”
- “Jesus and Paul were serious dudes. They had teeth missing. Jesus was a carpenter, Paul was in prison. These guys didn’t eat tofu dogs and bean sprouts. They didn’t play tennis. If there were trucks back in their times, they would have been doing driveway lube jobs on a Saturday afternoon. Same thing with King David. Yeah, he might have played a lyre, but he slaughtered thousands of guys.”
- “Even a cursory reading of the book of Ecclesiastes shows that culture is a stationary bike that each generation climbs on in hopes of getting somewhere only to die and fall off so that the new young stud can take his turn peddling and, like a fool, make pronouncements about his progress. We would be wise to see postmodernity as simply the new guy on the old bike and not mistake cultural change for kingdom progress.”
- “I also did not explain in written form that we were theologically conservative and culturally liberal, which caused great confusion because half of the church was angry that the other half was smoking, while the other half was angry that I taught from the Bible.”
- “And to top it all off, God comes to earth. He has a mom whom everyone thinks is a slut, a dad whom they think has the brilliance of a five-watt bulb for believing the ‘virgin birth’ line, and brothers who likely pummel him frequently, because even God would have to get at least one wedgie from his brothers if he were to be fully human.”
