Friends Don’t Let Friends Be Calvinist

Mark Driscoll, local Seattle cult of personality leader among the Obnoxious Christian set, is good at saying “confrontational” stuff that is dumb as a stump.  Fresh from denouncing Avatar as the most evillest satanic film ever and declaring that he couldn’t worship a Jesus he could beat up (a sentiment shared with the guards who oversaw the scourging at the pillar),  he now unburdens himself of his need to tell Those People Over There that God hates them:

Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is “meritous” [the word he’s looking for there is “meritorious]. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too. God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.

Driscoll is what you get when you have a charismatic dynamic bully with a smattering of education and a big mouth who decides he is a Prophet.  I’ll give Mars Hill a few more years before the Dominator does something that destroys the cult of personality he’s built around himself.  Meanwhile, this particular Pronouncement from the Chosen One reminds me of an exchange I saw years ago over on Steve Ray’s board.  Some inquiring person came to the board and asked, in all simplicity, “Does God love me?”  Typically, when somebody asks that they do so because they are a humble soul.  Catholics, naturally, answered, “Of course!”  But a Calvinist replied, “I don’t know.”

It all depended, you see, on whether the inquirer was Elect.  If so, then yes, God loved them.  If not, then too bad for them.  Driscoll’s tough talk is rooted in that shiny assurance Calvinists have that they are, naturellement, part of the Elect.

I’ll take Catholics and their indiscriminately loving God any day.

Hat tip: the aptly named “Jesus Needs New PR” site.  With representative like Driscoll, it’s no mystery why young people are abandoning Christianity in droves.