[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0[/youtube]
“The final line in ‘Same Love’ is “I’m not crying on Sundays”. I cried every Sunday for nearly a year in high school and afterwards. In apology to God, with guilt, with shame. I was out and proud to the world, but I had been battling Christian rhetoric inside of me for a long time. After suffering with my diagnosed bipolarity for awhile, a suicide attempt, and the war within my head and heart, something had to change.”
The words above are from Mary Lambert, a survivor of Mars Hill Church. The pastor who made her cry is Mark Driscoll.
No, this wasn’t even one of those churches that hated gay people. The preacher said to love gay people — just not to partake in the sin yourself, as Mary Lambert states on her blog.
A friend brought me to an Evangelical church in high school, known as Mars Hill, where I fell in love with the music and the bands that played on Sunday evening. The pastor was funny, charismatic, and made the bible seem simple. I was sad that my gay friends were going to hell, but the pastor said that I could still be friends with them. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” was the accepted rhetoric.
And that was good enough, until Mary Lambert fell in love and saw how cruel that doctrine was.
When I fell in love with my first girlfriend, I recognized my sin immediately. She was also Christian. When you’re 17, and you feel like a freak already, and you’re in love with a girl, and high school is a battlefield, you can’t stand to let another part of your life down. I remember making a conscious effort to accept my sin. My recognition allowed me to repent daily. I prayed often, apologizing to God, but accepting that this is who I had always been and always would be. I still went to Mars Hill. I was never hated on, never felt rudeness from the community, but the sermons were difficult to hear.
That’s terrible. It’s the experience that led her to write the song “She Keeps Me Warm” — a beautiful lyric she wrote in the space of two hours that brought Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, upon hearing it, to tears.
Mary Lambert appeared before the Seattle hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis last year to sing lyrics [to “She Keeps Me Warm” that] she scrambled to write in two hours to be included on their second album.
“I kept telling myself, ‘Play it cool, play it cool,’ ” Lambert said.
She thought it went well: The pair teared up during the performance and Lewis asked her to record it immediately.
I can hear the love mixed with pain in: “I can’t change/even if I tried/even if I wanted to/my love, my love, my love/she keeps me warm/ I’m not crying on Sundays…”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhqH-r7Xj0E[/youtube]
Mary Lambert wasn’t the only one whose heart Mark Driscoll broke. Underneath his Sunday morning encouragement to “love the sinner, hate the sin” was a rampant hatred for gays and lesbians, as was exposed in a 141-page conversation he had under an alias on the Internet. And besides that, there is a website dedicated to those hurt by Driscoll’s tactics. In the words of The New York Times while he was still preaching in August of 2014:
He has been accused of creating a culture of fear at the church, of plagiarizing, of inappropriately using church funds and of consolidating power to such a degree that it has become difficult for anyone to challenge or even question him. A flood of former Mars Hill staff members and congregants have come forward, primarily on the Internet but also at a protest in front of the church, to share stories of what they describe as bullying or “spiritual abuse,” and 21 former pastors have filed a complaint in which they call for Mr. Driscoll’s removal as the church’s leader.
The full scale of what Mark Driscoll did is jaw-dropping — you can read more about it here.
Under this tremendous pressure, Driscoll resigned in October of 2014. The church leadership (which, if stories are to be believed, he had a lot of control over), say they didn’t want him to go — but there was tremendous pressure from others to do so, so he left.
Also, just a month ago, a lawsuit was brought to Driscoll:
A lawsuit was filed against Driscoll and former Mars Hill executive elder John Sutton Turner by four members of the now-defunct Seattle church, accusing them of “a continuing pattern of racketeering activity.” The suit claims the two solicited donations for specific purposes and then used that money for other things.
I used to like Mark Driscoll when I was a conservative Christian. I’m an atheist now, and as I look back I can see how deeply damaging his teachings are, and how churches too often give undue authority to a pulpit minister who has at least just as many, and often more, problems in his character as most in the congregation.
I normally write from a strongly anti-theistic viewpoint, but doing so here would not be fair to the quotes I gave of Mary Lambert, who is still religious and wouldn’t want their words turned into a message against Christianity as a whole. It also wouldn’t be fair to many people who were hurt deeply by Mark Driscoll and share their experiences, but still passionate about Christianity. Besides, it’s not primarily atheists this piece is written for; y’all aren’t going to church anyway. This is mainly to encourage you to warn people who are.
Tell your Christian friends in Phoenix about Mark Driscoll — and don’t be afraid to tell your Christian friends when you think their pastor is being too domineering, controlling, or cruel. I mean, yes, I would prefer them not to go to church at all…but some Pastors are worse than others. So if you care, don’t be afraid to bring up warning signs, even if they decide to stay Christian — at least they may go to a less unhealthy church. You don’t have to be on a mission to deconvert — the most beautiful parts of living are often embodied in sensitively considerate, kind relationships embraced in the moment with people we care about who are, in one way or another, not who we are.
It’s just what love looks like sometimes.
Thank you for reading.