Snowballs in You Know Where: Libby Anne Cooks Up a Pastoral Chicken and I Agree (Mostly) with Her

I believe that there must be snowballs in the infernal regions.

Today, I am going to applaud and link to a post on the Patheos Atheist Channel.

Libby Anne who blogs at Love, Joy Feminism is a wee bit put off because a “pastor” of some indeterminate denomination (or not) has managed to insult both men and women by reducing men to their most talked about appendage and women to … I can’t even say it.

Let’s just say that in my opinion (and evidently Libby Anne’s as well) this guy is one of those kinds of guys that people tend to refer to as actually being the appendage in question, as in “he’s a d—.” Or maybe, just for variety, they might say, “he’s a d——head.”

Whatever.

The point — at least to me — is that this nano brain is an embarrassment. I had to google him to figure out how he was, and when I did, I discovered that he’s a Really Big Deal in certain circles. His name, in case you’re wondering, is Marc Driscoll. Or, as he seems to be commonly referred to, “Pastor Marc Driscoll.”

I read a bit of his wit and wisdom about human sexuality, and I’m going to assume that he was trying to be … I dunno … cute? Maybe he was making an attempt to address adolescent males about sexuality and decided to get all clever about it. Add the fact that he’s clearly as tone deaf about women as a walking turnip, and you’ve got what we’ve got.

Or, at least that’s what I want to be believe. I want to think that he’s just another open-mouth-insert-both-feet dufus who doesn’t like women and tries to hide it, but who ends up letting it show because he’s unaware of how much he dislikes women. The world is full of these guys.

I said a moment ago that Marc Driscoll is an embarrassment. But I am not exactly sure who he’s an embarrassment to. Twenty-one former pastors of his church (I don’t have a clue how they’re organized, but the story says they have 21 former pastors) have made formal complaints against him for his bullying, intimidating behavior. I suppose they might read this little thingy he wrote and feel embarrassed. But those same pastors also claim that Pastor Marc (as he evidently likes to be called) taught them “sound doctrine.”

So, maybe not. Maybe they think that men are their appendages, and women are the … there it is again, and I still can say it.

Whatever.

Pastor Marc ended up getting ousted from what is said to be a mega church (maybe that’s why the 21 former pastors) from his own organization that he had founded because of his abusive behavior towards these other pastors. Based on my extensive experience with various men like him that I have known in politics, I would guess that if he’s uncontrollably abusive and exhibiting “ungodly and disqualifying behavior” toward other men who are almost his equals in his church, he must be a real treat for the women and girls to be around.

I’ve never known a jerk who wasn’t at least partly an equal opportunity jerk. If he was abusive with the guys, he was almost certainly worse with the women.

Which brings us back around to his absolutely bizarre whatever that he wrote about women, men, appendages and (I kid you not) what God was thinking when He created all of us. It appears that Pastor Driscoll not only knows the purpose for women, which is, it seems, to get laid, but he knows what God was thinking when He created women.

You see, Pastor Marc tells us, God made the male half of the human race with a particular appendage that had nothing much to do. After mulling this over, God decided to make the female half of the human race to give that appendage a “home.” In Pastor Marc’s homiletic,  men are an appendage and women are a purpose for that appendage.

Libby Anne goes on about this in depth and speaks to all sorts of female concerns, including our life-bearing, nurturing selves. She evidently was taught as a child that she was some man’s future wife. If I had been taught that, I’d be mad about it, too.

But I got lucky. I was taught from the get-go by my Christian parents that I could do anything I wanted to do. This wasn’t some pre feminist rap. It was about them, loving me.

I remember when I was a kid, reading a story in The Ladies Home Journal in which the author said that women’s bodies were made so that they could have babies, that having babies was the purpose of the female body. The underlying assumption was that the male body had no purpose except to be a home for men, whereas women … well, you get it. Looking back on it, the article was a dressed-up-go-to-town version of Pastor Marc’s sex ed thingy.

“That’s not true,” my Mama told me. “Your body was made for you to live in it. It’s yours.”

I got my dose of anti-Pastor-Marc early, and it stuck. Which I guess was my good luck.

One benefit of my raising is that when I read idiot commentary like Pastor Marc Driscoll’s, I know right off that it is commentary from an idiot. I also know, due to a lifetime of experience out there butting heads and competing in the open marketplace of full-speed, grown-up politics, that sexism knows no faith or philosophy.

I am telling you the absolute truth when I say that the meanest and most vicious sexists I’ve ever known were liberal men. I say that as someone who self-identifies as a liberal. As for running away from the Church to avoid sexism, you might as well stay home and fight it out. Because atheist men can be vicious sexists, as well.

You’ll find this kind of garbage — and much, much worse — anywhere you go.

I’m not chiding Libby Anne for her opinions. She has every right to them. In fact, I rather imagine that if we could put aside the shibboleths of label, she and I might sit down over lunch and find out that we have a lot of belief in common. I say that after looking down the list of her blog posts and seeing a whole chicken and a pot of things I disagree with.

I just know that women who think that God hates women have often been taught that by people in the church; the kind of people who would tell a little girl that she is not a full person in herself; she is nothing more than someone’s future wife.

I’ve been a wife for over thirty years and I like it a lot, but nobody ever told me my whole purpose for existing was to be a wife. Even now, after decades of sharing my life with my adorable and adored husband, I am not a wife only. Or only a mother. Or only a daughter. I am first of all myself, as is every other human being. You cannot give — to your spouse, your children, your friends or your God — what you do not have. You must first be wholly yourself before you can truly be with and for another.

But that’s getting all philosophical/theological and thoughtful. Which is moving a long, long way from Pastor Marc Driscoll and his bizarro thinking about men and women.

He is, as I said, an embarrassment.