http://download.marshill.se/files/2004/02/22/20040222_1-timothy-4-1-8_sd_audio.mp3
Part 8: 1 Timothy 4:1-8
February 22, 2004
You guys should aspire to get married. You guys should aspire to get--you gotta get a job first. You gotta get a job, not a job where you wear a uniform and ask people if they wanna supersize something. You gotta get a job. You gotta get a job so you can get a wife so you can get kids. And it's a great, glorious thing to be a husband and a father, and only a demon would tell you otherwise. Only a demon would tell you otherwise. [emphases added]
...
Only a demon, huh? What if you were commanded to never marry, by God?
Jeremiah 16:1-2 (NIV)
1 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 2 “You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place.” 3 For this is what the Lord says about the sons and daughters born in this land and about the women who are their mothers and the men who are their fathers: 4 “They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried but will be like dung lying on the ground. They will perish by sword and famine, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.”
5 For this is what the Lord says: “Do not enter a house where there is a funeral meal; do not go to mourn or show sympathy, because I have withdrawn my blessing, my love and my pity from this people,” declares the Lord. 6 “Both high and low will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned, and no one will cut themselves or shave their head for the dead. 7 No one will offer food to comfort those who mourn for the dead—not even for a father or a mother—nor will anyone give them a drink to console them.
8 “And do not enter a house where there is feasting and sit down to eat and drink. 9 For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Before your eyes and in your days I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in this place.
10 “When you tell these people all this and they ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 then say to them, ‘It is because your ancestors forsook me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and followed other gods and served and worshiped them. They forsook me and did not keep my law. 12 But you have behaved more wickedly than your ancestors. See how all of you are following the stubbornness of your evil hearts instead of obeying me. 13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’
Notice that when God commands the prophet to not take a wife and to not have sons and daughters the reason has nothing to do with the prophet having some kind of life-threatening prophetic ministry, although the Book of Jeremiah records attempts on the prophet's life. Being a husband and a father can be a good thing that someone can nevertheless be commanded to never be.
Driscoll's conviction that only a demon would say that it's otherwise than great to be a husband and father kind of runs aground if we bother to remember anything written by some guy named Paul.
1 Corinthians 7:25-36 (NIV)
25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
36 If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong[b] and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. 37 But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. 38 So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
Driscoll may have at one point said only a demon would say it's not good to be a husband and father but we nevertheless can easily consult the Bible to find an occasion in which God directly commanded a prophet to never marry and never have kids. We can also see from no less that Paul the advice that he who marries does right but he who does not marry does better.
Mark Driscoll has a history of joking about what eunuchs are. It isn't difficult to look at Mark Driscoll's past teaching on spiritual warfare to see that not-enough-sex-in-marriage is a foundation of the ordinary demonic and that's as may be, but what's been interesting over the last twenty years is how adamant he has been that he's formulated this stance in terms of anything that isn't in the direction of telling guys to be husbands and fathers is demonic despite how easily we can find passages in the Bible that indicate that those who have been made eunuchs can serve the Lord. It's as though Mark Driscoll's Bible has never had Isaiah 56.
Isaiah 56 (NIV)
1 This is what the Lord says:
“ Maintain justice
and do what is right,
for my salvation is close at hand
and my righteousness will soon be revealed.
2 Blessed is the one who does this—
the person who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it,
and keeps their hands from doing any evil.”
3 Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.”
And let no eunuch complain,
“I am only a dry tree.”
4 For this is what the Lord says:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant—
5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will endure forever.
6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord
to minister to him,
to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”
8 The Sovereign Lord declares—
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
“I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered.”
9 Come, all you beasts of the field,
come and devour, all you beasts of the forest!
10 Israel’s watchmen are blind,
they all lack knowledge;
they are all mute dogs,
they cannot bark;
they lie around and dream,
they love to sleep.
11 They are dogs with mighty appetites;
they never have enough.
They are shepherds who lack understanding;
they all turn to their own way,
they seek their own gain.
12 “Come,” each one cries, “let me get wine!
Let us drink our fill of beer!
And tomorrow will be like today,
or even far better.”
Now while he's had twenty some years to get around to teaching and preaching through Isaiah, which he was considering around 2005 or so, if I recall, Mark Driscoll has not had a whole lot to say about eunuchs. One would think that if a topic was significant enough to show up in Jesus' teaching about divorce, remarriage and adultery the topic of the eunuch would come up since:
Matthew 19 (ESV)
1 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”
Matthew shows Jesus recognized there were those who were born eunuchs, those who were made eunuchs and also those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. For everyone else ...
To the extent that Mark Driscoll's preaching and teaching career has touched upon the topic of eunuchs it amounts to, literally, a joke:
http://download.marshill.se/files/MH%20Audio/2012/20120921_jesus-has-a-better-kingdom_sd_audio.mp3
Jesus Has a Better Kingdom
Pastor Mark Driscoll
Esther 1:10–22
September 21, 2012
about 8:39 into the sermon.
Number two, men are castrated. Men are castrated. I’ll read it for you. “He commanded—” and these guys got names. “Mehuman—” That’s kind of a rapper name, I was thinking, like, ancient Persian hip-hop artist, Mehuman. That’s how it’s spelled. “Biztha.” Sounds like a sidekick. “Harbona, Bigtha.” That’s my personal favorite. If I had to pick a Persian name, Bigtha. Definitely not Littletha. I would totally go with Bigtha. “Abagtha, Zethar and Carkas.” Okay, a couple things here. The Bible talks about real people, real circumstances, real history. That’s why they’re facts. It’s not just philosophy. Number two, if you ever have an opportunity to teach the Bible and you hit some of the parts with the old, crazy names, read fast and confident. No one knows how to pronounce them, and they’ll just assume you do.
Here are these guys. So, you’ve got seven guys, “the seven eunuchs.” What’s a eunuch? A guy who used to have a good life, and joy, and hope. That’s the technical definition of a eunuch. A eunuch is a man who is castrated. [emphasis added] Proceeding with the story before I have to fire myself.
Besides a joke about pronunciation that suggests the possibility that Mark Driscoll has never really studied Hebrew, Aramaic or any of the applicable languages ... that joke that a eunuch was a guy who used to have a good life and joy and hope before he got castrated anchors a lot of good life and joy and hope on getting laid in matrimony. This is a stance that persists in Driscoll's shtick as of this year.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdriscoll/2020/01/5-ways-the-spirit-of-babylon-wants-to-train-you/
...
Daniel and his friends were selected to serve as slaves in the king’s palace because they were mentally smart, relationally skilled, physically handsome, and culturally royal. Likely wanting to keep his harem all to himself, the king had the young men castrated and made eunuchs.
Behind the nation of Babylon in Daniel’s day is the demonic spirit of Babylon which is at work in every day. The demonic spirit of Babylon has been trying since the great war in heaven (Revelation 12:7-9) to topple God and create a counterfeit kingdom. This is why we see Babylon spoken of again in the last book of the Bible, as Jesus returns to topple “Babylon the great” (14:8, 16:19, 17:5, 18:1-2, 18:10, 18:21) and usher in the Kingdom of God once and for all.
The spirit of Babylon sought to train Daniel in how to reject the real God and receive a demonic counterfeit. These five tactics are continually used in our day:
1. Gender – with castration, they sought to change Daniel’s gender as a male into something not God-given because the demonic hates that God made us male and female
2. Sexuality – they sought to force Daniel to not live a fully masculine life because the demonic does not want us to live as God designed us
3. Marriage – they forbid Daniel from marriage as he never conceived a relationship with a wife because the demonic hates to see godly people share the love of God in the marriage covenant
4. Children – they forbid Daniel from becoming a father because the demonic hates to see believers bring children in this world to love and serve God
5. Education – they sought to brainwash Daniel with a three-year pagan degree at a godless university where he would be programmed to deny everything he learned from the Scriptures
Today, these five things so incredibly, accurately, and painfully describe our culture it is staggering, stunning, and saddening. It just goes to show that the Spirit of Babylon is alive and well promoting the same kind of anti-God agenda that hell has always had, including overtaking the educational system.
Castration was not really done to change a man's gender. Driscoll's claim with regard to his point 1 is basically dubious across the board. No one has ever claimed that castration changes a man's gender. Castration was often conducted on criminals and prisoners of war but in some ancient societies castration was a prerequisite for serving in an imperial court (in various Chinese empires, for instance). The process of castration was believed to make men more docile and less aggressive and diminished sex drive and would ensure, if nothing else, that eunuchs who oversaw a royal harem couldn't possibly father children that could in any way be claimants to a throne.
But castration was also, famously in the West, taken up to prevent a boy's voice from changing. This was commonly practiced in contexts where women were not allowed to sing in church services but the soprano and alto voices were still prized and required for ensemble work. Haydn, one of my favorite composers from the Western tradition, was very nearly castrated but his dad did an intervention and prevailed upon church officials to stay their hand. Haydn went on to fall in love with one woman but ended up marrying another and that marriage was, among Haydn scholars, known to be a notoriously miserable one for both Haydn and the wife.
With respect to Driscoll's point 2, a generic appellation to "God's design" doesn't exactly eliminate things like God commanding Jeremiah to never marry and never have sons or daughters. It is traditionally thought that Jesus never married so would Jesus have failed to have lived a fully masculine life by Mark Driscoll's standard of masculinity? In the past Driscoll would have joked that Jesus would have been unequally yoked and left things at that. Driscoll's point 2 depends on assuming that forcing men to not be married is demonic. Well, okay, so would Driscoll go so far as to argue that American corporate interests that have exported manufacturing jobs overseas where working class American males who might otherwise have been able to work those jobs but can't because those jobs no longer exist in the United States are controlled by demons?
For Driscoll's point 3, Paul's concession that it is better to marry than to burn doesn't eliminate Paul's advice that those who do not marry do better and can be more undistractedly devoted to the things of God. It is not a foregone conclusion that married men and women are necessarily going to be better people simply for being married.
What Driscoll has bracketed out as 1 through 4 can arguably be collapsed into a single point in which Driscoll regards it as functionally demonic that anyone would advise men in particular to not marry or become fathers. After all, it was during the 2012 Esther sermon series Mark Driscoll preached a sermon where he said this:
http://download.marshill.se/files/MH%20Audio/2012/20121028_jesus-is-a-better-servant_sd_audio.mp3
October 28, 2012
Mark Driscoll
...
Chapter 6, verse 12. “But Haman hurried to his house.” He ran home, “Mourning with his head covered.” This is public mourning. “And Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened to him.”
Here’s what’s weird: he’s got a better marriage than King Xerxes. Esther previously said that she hadn’t even seen her husband in thirty days, and they live in the same palace. It’s possible to be a really proud, ruthless, horrible man who’s got a decent marriage. He goes and talks to his wife, the one thing that the king doesn’t do.
Do you see where, perhaps, even in his own heart, he’d say, “Well, I’m not a ruthless, horrible man. I’m a good family man. You know? I’m good to my wife. I’m good to my friends”? This is how proud people justify their inconsistency. He seems to have a decent marriage and he does have some friends, and he’s going to be a mass murderer. So is the human heart.
So even by Mark Driscoll's own history of preaching and teaching it's possible for a good family man who loves his wife and kids to plan to exterminate the Jews, which would seem to automatically fit into the category of demonic evil. Driscoll comes back year after year to assertions that the demonic takes the form of questioning gender or rejecting what he regards as God's design and yet he more or less skips past ever exegeting or discussing passages such as Jeremiah 16; Jesus teaching that involves taking as given that eunuchs exist in three categories; or even the Pauline admonition that if you can get by without being married you're actually better off even if it is no sin to marry. Driscoll will acknowledge the passages exist but seems to have a history of finessing them out of being the focal point of a homiletic discussion.
And yet we've just seen that he could grant that a loving husband and family man could still be a mass murderer. There's no way Driscoll's going to concede that wanting to exterminate God's chosen people isn't demonic, so whatever demonic may mean it can include a man being a loyal husband and attentive father.
Having chronicled the peak and decline of Mars Hill over the years I am struck by how insistently Driscoll presents things as being demonic that involve defying what he takes to be God-given gender and sexual norms. The possibility that the demonic could include leveraging a man's sense of responsibility as a husband and father to provide financial security or, where practical, medical coverage and care for his wife and family doesn't get any mention in Driscoll's rather brief checklist.
In point of fact, given that back in the late Mars Hill years it became headline news that Mars Hill Church used non-disclosure agreements that former staff regarded as onerous gag orders, a sample document was eventually published that revealed that it did happen that non-disclosure agreements stipulating continuing limited time medical coverage by Mars Hill provided the ex-staffer agreed to not talk.
https://world.wng.org/2014/03/signs_and_wonders_megachurches_order_staff_to_keep_their_mouths_shut?
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2014/03/09/a-former-mars-hill-pastor-speaks-out-and-why-others-are-afraid-the-mars-hill-church-non-disclosure-agreement/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/MH-Separation-and-Release-Agreement-1.pdf
Is it only demonic to tell men not to get married or have kids? Could it never be considered potentially demonic to leverage their filial and spousal sense of obligation against them to keep them from saying anything for the record about practices and systems within a church they may regard as abusive? Now it's not as though demons might consider it "bad" that men become husbands and fathers and raise children to fear the Lord but did not Mark Driscoll at one point claim that entire family lines were functionally given over to Satan? Would it not then be considered debatable whether those family lines continuing would be "good" within Driscoll's lexicon of reasons-guys-should-be-married? We'll be getting to the time where Mark Driscoll claimed entire family lines have been dedicated to Satan in just a few paragraphs.
In the past Driscoll has claimed he used to subscribe to Malthusian eugenics, although he defined Malthusian eugenics in strictly negative terms. I'm not saying everyone has to necessarily agree with a distinction that someone like local editor Charles Mudede makes between negative Malthusianism and positive Malthusianism but the point is worth noting that Driscoll claimed he was a Malthusian at some point.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/11/ht-warren-throckmorton-driscoll-claims.html
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2016/11/28/mark-driscolls-malthusian-past/
We've looked into this in the past before, back in 2016 but it seems worthy of mention again:
...
One of the other reasons to doubt whether or not Mark Driscoll really put what he calls his Malthusian eugenics ideas behind him comes from the 2008 spiritual warfare session he gave to leadership at Mars Hill.
http://download.marshill.se/files/MH%20Vodcast%20Video/2008/20080205_christus-victor_vodcast.m4v
Spiritual Warfare
February 5, 2008
Pastor Mark Driscoll
Christus Victor (Part 3)
34:54ish
I then ask them to confess sins and cancel ground and command leaving one at a time. `s all before we start, "How did you open the door?" proverbially speaking? "Well, it was I committed adultery then after that I started having nightmares."
"Well, guess what? Probably a connection there, huh? Probably opened the door with adultery. Have you ever really repented of that to Jesus and asked him to forgive you?"
"Not really."
"Well let's do that right now. Let's stop right now and have you repent of that sin, ask Jesus to forgive you. He died. Receive forgiveness."
Let's get--cuz, see, Satan and demons, with a believer, in addition to external torment and such, most of what they have is what we've given them by opening the door through sin.
"Well then, confess it is a sin. Let's kick `em out, lock the door but you gotta straighten this out with Jesus. You gotta repent."
So a good chunk of time is just spent on repentence of particular sin. It's all it is. Getting rid of those handholds and footholds.
...
36:00
I then ask them a series of questions. This is where we start, number ten. I'll usually check with ancestral sin. I'm looking at their past.
Now if they come from ten generations of third degree Masons I'm startin' there. If they're grandma was into witchcraft and their mama was into witchcraft and they have some demonic issues it shouldn't be shocking to think that this has been an issue in their family for a while. [emphasis added]
I know one family where incest was just part of the family. They actually had very intricate rules to control incest. The grandfathers and uncles could molest little girls but daddies couldn't and you could only do that once they hit the age of ten. You couldn't molest any child before that. I get these complicated rules that have been passed down for generations for the sexual abuse of the children. You're like, this, your struggle here, your temptations, your issues, they have generational lineage.
There are whole family lines that are just demonically inspired. You ever wonder why, in the Old Testament, God will occasionally tell his people, "When you go to war against that nation kill ALL of them. Don't let one of them live." People say, "Oh, oh that's terrible." Not if that whole line is demonized. Not if that whole line of people exists for the express purpose of fighting God and killing his people. The issue is either you get rid of them or they get rid of you. Satan is inspiring them to destroy you and you gotta get rid of them. Satan DOES work through family lines. There are family lines like the Herods who, just from one generation to the next, they're trying to kill Jesus and his people. Some of the family fights in Genesis, they continue all the way to this day. Not saying every person in the family line is demonized, but it seems like Satan likes to work through family lines, ancestral sin. [emphasis added[
...
It could seem in one fell swoop Driscoll from 2008 obliterated the five points of the demonic in the spirit of Babylon from Mark Driscoll in 2020.
I'm vaguely remembering Geza Vermes had a book out a few years ago on Herod the Great. For the moment it might suffice to say that even Driscoll's take on the Herods can't be taken as given.
That Driscoll has a history of pronouncing things demonic, ordinary demonic rather than extraordinary, that turn out to have been true of his own life is something that I've chronicled at some length here at Wenatchee The Hatchet. Take Driscoll's assertion that a Christian dating a non-Christian is demonic.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/11/2-5-2008-spiritual-warfare-part-2-part_46.html
Mark Driscoll in a February 5, 2008 session teaching about spiritual warfare
A] Christian dating a non-Christian is demonic. It's not just a lifestyle preference, it's demonic. It's the ORDINARY demonic. It's not EXtraordinary. People's heads are not spinning around on their neck, you know, their eyes bugging out of their head and deep voices coming out like the bizzare Hollywood movies. It's just Satan saying, "Hmm, I'll bait the hook with a non-Christian. Good enough, whatever it takes."
https://marshill.com/2013/10/25/9-reasons-to-not-marry-someone-who-s-pro-choice
http://marshill.se/marshill/2013/10/25/9-reasons-to-not-marry-someone-who-s-pro-choice
By: Mark Driscoll
Posted: Oct 25, 2013
I first met Grace, my wife and the mother of our five children, over 25 years ago in high school. I was pro-abortion. She was pro-life. We argued over the issue. I pretty much always won. I was wrong, but I was tough to debate with.
She came from an evangelical home. I came from a Catholic home. Both of our homes were pro-life. But I was not only pro-choice, I was pro-abortion. I agreed with the underlying principles of Thomas Robert Malthus, which greatly influenced Nazi Germany, and Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood. I read up on the issue quite a bit, and won debates in high school and my freshman year of college defending population control and abortion.
I would have said I was a Christian, but I was not. Grace was a Christian. ...
So if it was, and is, demonic for a Christian to date a non-Christian then would it not be necessary, in light of Mark Driscoll's teaching about spiritual warfare in connection to sexuality, to say that the marriage of Mark and Grace Driscoll was already off to a demonic start? It might have been just an ordinary demonic start, but a demonic start nonetheless.
If Mark Driscoll measured himself and his own marriage by the somewhat vague metric of his 2008 spiritual warfare series then he would be forced to concede most things about his marriage would have been off to a demonic start.
Sometimes it seems as though Mark Driscoll writes content for his Patheos blog that works on the assumption that nobody who ever currently reads it has ever read or heard anything he's said on any range of topics in the previous twenty years.
What's striking about the five points Mark Driscoll just listed is that the demonic aspect of Babylon, as defined by Mark Driscoll, seems to revolve perpetually around policies and social effects in which ... guys can't get laid in holy matrimony.
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