If this is love, who needs bigotry?

So Mark Driscoll apologized.

I want to forgive him, and I will work on it. It will have to come through the power of my Jesus because I am just. so. angry.

And tired. Sometimes I get so tired of fighting this fight.

In my last post, I shared part of a conversation I had on Twitter with a man named Jerry, who told me we should pay Mark Driscoll no heed. The conversation was becoming circular and pointless, so I just let him have the last word. He wasn’t getting it.  I got to that point — tired of the fight, ready to just leave it — when he said this:

@sheselevated Look, I’m no fan of his at all, but there is a way to love him. And he has no power at all. He’s a man. Just a man. 🙂

–“Jerry” (I’m not including his handle here — he does not follow me to my knowledge; we were both commenting on a post by Rachel Held Evans, and that’s how we meandered into our conversation.)

Here’s the thing the people closest to me know — when I go silent, run.

It means I am pissed.  And when I’m pissed, I pull back so that I don’t lash out, do damage that can not be undone. I try to review my thoughts, make sure they are legitimate before I speak them out into the world. Often, I find things that probably should not make it past my glossed, effeminate lips.

But sometimes, after my internal review, I realize that some things need to be said. They need to be said because maybe no one else is saying them. Or maybe because I need to lend my voice to the lone wolves who are howling at the injustices perpetrated by those in power. And so, after a cranky review of my viewpoints, I need to respond to Jerry.

Because yes, Jerry, Mark Driscoll has power.

To say he has no power at all — well, spoken as a true white American male, dude. Spoken from a nice, solid pedestal of privilege. How does it feel up there, where you are untouchable, and the barbs of oppression have never once influenced a choice you had to make, a job you applied for, or how you could serve in church? As a straight white woman, a lesson I learn more and more every day is that the less I notice my own privilege, the more deeply it is embedded in my soul.

It’s time to do some soul searching, Jerry.

How deep does your privilege go, to say that Mark Driscoll has no power? Can you even begin to comprehend how hurtful that comment is? How with one small group of four words — He has no power — you sweep whole groups of people and their pain under the proverbial rug?

To say he has no power is to obliterate a huge number of people who have been hurt by his misogyny and vitriol. I get that you’re saying that when compared to God he has no power. But here on earth, he has power. Plenty of power. Power and influence. He writes books that get published and institutions give him a platform from which to speak. As a pastor, he can wreak havoc in marriages, as a leader, he can make the workplace hostile. That’s power, Jerry. That’s power.

When he uses this platform to inform the thinking of whole groups of people, that’s power. When he can influence not one or two but hundreds or thousands of men to believe that Jesus commands their wives to perform oral sex — despite what the woman might want — make no mistake. That’s power. And it’s misogyny.

When he can make whole groups of men feel less than and othered because they participate in housework or show emotion or in any way act supposedly “like women” — a fate worse than death, apparently — that’s power.

When he can financially decimate a family and organize a public shunning, that’s power.

He’s used his power to hurt people close to him, that’s clear. But what matters to me, Jerry, me — all the way on the other side of the country, no where near Mark and his minions — is that he is speaking into a future that my children will inhabit. And he’s not speaking love.

Because chances are, Jerry, that you’ve never given a presentation at work only to be interrupted by a co-worker of the opposite sex, waxing poetic over your appearance.  My guess is you’ve never walked into a room to overhear your boss discussing your weight with his female assistant.

I’m a little certain that nobody has ever said to you, “You’re really pretty, for a black girl,” like what happened to my friend.

I don’t know, Jerry, I may be reaching here. But my guess is that you never had to sit through a sermon about the “abomination” of homosexuality with your parents sitting next to you, realizing, the whole time, that you are, in essence, that very “abomination”.

You’ve probably never been a little girl who just wants to wear red and play sports and go fast, and have to search for days to find a sports top that fits you but doesn’t have pink on it (because — you rebellious little thing — you just can’t accept lavender as an acceptable substitute).

And maybe you’ve never been a five year old boy who felt the need to suppress his love of rainbows because you somehow understood that it was too “girly” — and being “like a girl”, you somehow knew, was just a horrible thing to be.

This is the kind of world the Mark Driscolls are perpetuating, and those who stand in the privileged, protected spot where none of this touches them can take the easy way out and speak of love and forgiveness.

Just understand, please, that the rest of us are sitting here going, “Boy, if this is what love feels like, who needs bigotry?”

There’s a whole world of people out there who recognize that power is a very real thing, and it’s a force to be reckoned with in our everyday lives. There are those of us who are affected by it every day. I’m not saying that power is a bad thing — but I think it’s clear that it not only exists, but that it can be used in horrible ways.

Jerry, I don’t mean to pick on you, and I feel that I am. My Jersey Girl came out in this post — I admit that my tone is a little — heated. That’s passion, Jerry.  It’s the passion of the disempowered. And trust me, I’m not the most disempowered on the planet, what with my SUV, my AMEX card, and this little blog of mine.

But I am not a straight, white American male, and that means that my life has indeed been touched by ill-used power. I have been subject to inappropriate sexual innuendo; I have been paid less than my male counterparts for the same work; I have been judged for my choice to work and have had Christian men tell me that I am not designed to lead — despite an obvious propensity for it.

So I guess what I’m saying, Jerry, is that you love Mark Driscoll your way, and I’ll love him mine. I’m not saying he’s not worthy of love and forgiveness, nor am I saying that my occasional urge to whack him on the head with a two-by-four isn’t sinful. It is. I’m working on that — I’m working hard on loving the people who persecute me, or perpetuate my persecution by informing the world of my alleged lesser value.

So if your way to love him is to just remain silent over his leadership style, that’s cool.  But my way is to call him out on his behavior for what it is — misogyny, bigotry, patriarchy, and full out hatred.

By calling Mark out in love, I am loving the disempowered. Because if not you, Jerry, somebody has to.