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Bible, Theology & Philosophy
Sexuality
Marriage
Mark Driscoll
Pornography

There is “a much healthier dynamic for both husbands and wives. The crushing expectations that accompany an addiction to pornography need to be dealt with separately from the marriage bed…” Practical Theology for Women

Discussion

Wed, 07/30/14

A sister’s brief review:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LAXK48860BVR/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R1LAXK…

Can’t believe this is still around, December 30, 2013
By AJ Red
This review is from: The Total Woman (Mass Market Paperback)


I got a copy of this back in 1976 when we engaged and we read parts of it out loud. My now DH of 37 yrs was horrified. He told me that if I even pulled any of those manipulative tricks on him to get my way, he would have a fit. Also, if he was wrong, he would rather hear it from me than someone who couldn’t care less about him. We started our marriage based on being brother and sister in Christ first, then best friends, and then lovers. We have only once tried this King of the Castle stuff when our son was born and after a very brief time, we were miserable. We went back to a marriage of mutual submission and have been happy ever since.
If you are unable to be open and honest with your husband, you should not have married him. If you chucked your brains out when you stepped into that wedding dress, you are in for a frustrating existence, and not what God would want. I say this as a dedicated homemaker and Christian, as well as one happy wife with a happy hubby.

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Jim's Doctrinal Statement

Wed, 07/30/14

Thanks for the links—it strikes me that whether “wife as husband’s porn star” is a central theme or not, it certainly is consistent with some of the content of “infamous chapter ten” and the transcript of the Scotland sermon I saw online. Driscoll is, after all, more or less endorsing a certain number of things that one used to be able to see only in adult shops based on (MacArthur comments, Challies) some highly questionable exegesis, to put it politely.

It also strikes me that Driscoll’s “lawful, helpful, enslaving” decision matrix misses a very obvious point; 1 Cor. 7 suggests mutual comfort from the marital relationship, and one can also note that certain behaviors are not exactly safe or private. If we hold up nonmutual, unsafe, or non-private behaviors as models for marital joy, we’re working against marriage and for prostitution.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Wed, 07/30/14

A danger of the Driscoll-type comments is that they are used to discredit the proper role of the husband in the home.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

Wed, 07/30/14

[Bert Perry] …It also strikes me that Driscoll’s “lawful, helpful, enslaving” decision matrix misses a very obvious point; 1 Cor. 7 suggests mutual comfort from the marital relationship, and one can also note that certain behaviors are not exactly safe or private. If we hold up nonmutual, unsafe, or non-private behaviors as models for marital joy, we’re working against marriage and for prostitution.
But if you read Real Marriage, you’d find that the ideas of “non-mutual” and unsafe are discussed and must be seen within the “helpful” question:

If a sex act includes humiliation, degradation, violation of conscience, pain, or harm, then it is not beneficial for the marriage. [Thus, it violates Question #2 of the grid and should not be done.]

Driscoll, Mark (2012-01-03). Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (p. 178). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Bert, I’m not trying to pick on you. The points you bring up are good. I’m just trying to point out that Mark already agrees with you.

Wed, 07/30/14

Jim, you really should read Driscoll and then Challies on Driscoll. Take this, for instance:

In my last article I showed that [Driscoll’s] grid does not do an adequate job of evaluating heart motives.

- http://- http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/can-we-the-1-corinthians-612-grid

The only thing inadaquate about Driscoll’s evaluation of heart motives

What the Driscolls miss, at least in their teaching on this passage, is the wider gospel context. This grid is not meant to be taken on its own and it is not given as a grid we are use to evaluate what is acceptable or forbidden within marriage. The freedom to have is not the point; rather, it is the freedom to love by not having. You need to read more than this one verse to see this. We are not meant to read this verse and walk away with a list of ways a spouse might have his own sexual needs met. If anything spouse should read this and walk away with the determination to seek only the how he might serve his spouse. And this is where the gospel is truly lived out, not in celebrating the freedom to enjoy this or that sexual act, but in the freedom to deny yourself, trusting that not every desire or “need” actually needs to be met in order to be beautifully satisfied and fulfilled.

All of which is to say, this grid, drawn from 1 Corinthians 6, is just too simplistic, it is inadequate.

- http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/can-we-the-1-corinthians-612-grid

Without getting into a big discussion of liberty and 1 Cor 6-10, of course Challies is right in how he’s describing this passage. Paul gives the grid of 1 Cor 6:12 as a sort of “Step 1” in thinking about how to evaluate things. The remainder of 1 Cor 6-10 elaborates that very simplistic Step 1. So, “Is it helpful?” cannot be approached with whatever “help” standard we want. Paul gives examples and further develops what he means by “helpful.”

I bolded one line in Challies above. Challies is saying that even if the simplistic Step 1 grid questions allow something, it might still be wrong for reasons (for instance) of love. Now compare with Driscoll; he says in Real Marriage that his own conscience doesn’t allow some of the things that someone else’s might.

…we are explaining what a married couple may do, not what they must do. The Bible often gives more freedom than our consciences can accept, and we then choose not to use all our freedoms. This is true of us (Mark and Grace); we do not do everything that is mentioned in this book or the ensuing chapters, although we are free in Christ to do so if our consciences should ever change.

Driscoll, Mark (2012-01-03). Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (p. 180). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Wed, 07/30/14

The problem with Driscoll’s idea of freedom of conscience is that our conscience is quite often defiled, especially in the area of sexual relations. One of the problems the OP describes is the idea of a husband using Driscoll’s taxonomy as permission to use his wife as a sexual object. There are many young men who have viewed porn at some point, and want to use their wives to fulfill their fantasies. I’ve heard questions from many young women about acts that they were afraid/ashamed of, but their husbands wanted to try. Guess which verses these young men were using to manipulate their wives?

I don’t recall Driscoll using Eph. 5 in his formula, nor does he address other consequences of some of the acts he encourages in his “Can We _______” chapter. For instance, there are serious health risks associated with some sexual acts which, regardless of one’s conscience, should never EVER be done.

Quite frankly, if one was going to tackle the topics that Driscoll has taken on in his “no holds barred, no cow too sacred” approach, it would require a much more mature person with a better grasp of Scripture and an deeper understanding of the far reaching implications of one’s teachings.

Scenescape Media

Wed, 07/30/14

Dan, the difference I’ve got with Driscoll is that he considers the logical implications of these behaviors to be “unhelpful”. Biblically speaking, however, they are sinful. To walk through some of his examples:

1. Can we really argue that “role playing” is anything but mental adultery? The whole point is to pretend you’re making love to someone besides your spouse, after all.

2. Sodomy? No condom can stop the colon from tearing, and e coli is really, really nasty outside the colon. To make it even halfway safe, one makes it act more like….the proper orifice, which is only a couple of inches away. Is there any reason to do this except for thrill-seeking?

3. Toys? Self-pleasuring? Are we to pretend that automated, guaranteed excitement will fail to erode the Bible’s prescription for mutual comfort?

4. Sexting? In the age of the NSA and Paris Hilton, do we really need to go over why this is a really, really bad idea?

5. Cosmetic surgery? We should needlessly expose our spouse’s secrets needlessly…exactly why? And didn’t we promise our wives “for better or for poorer, in sickness and in health”, and all that? But now we need her to have these features that either God didn’t give her, or time took away?

So my take here is that Driscoll has more or less failed in his pastoral duty to warn people that these (and other) behaviors are not just “helpful” or “unhelpful”, but are rather extremely likely to involve very real issues of sin.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Wed, 07/30/14

It is very difficult to have this discussion in this context due to the various backgrounds (theological and other). While it is more or less agreed upon that the wife is not a porn star for the husband, there are those who react to the wife being sexually creative with her husband in a way that would seek to please him. There were those who would object to lingerie altogether. Their “consciences” wouldn’t allow for it.

Pornography makes money for a variety of reasons such as no responsibility, easy access, etc. The whole world of it though seeks to appeal to what men (and increasingly women now) want. They wouldn’t sell their product if it wasn’t actually appealing. The Song of Solomon has been reduced to allegory about God/Israel or Christ/Church. It isn’t allegory at all. It is quite descriptive and graphic regarding sex between the man and woman.

1 Kings 8:60 - so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.

Wed, 07/30/14

[Bert Perry] Dan, the difference I’ve got with Driscoll is that he considers the logical implications of these behaviors to be “unhelpful”. Biblically speaking, however, they are sinful. To walk through some of his examples:

1. Can we really argue that “role playing” is anything but mental adultery? The whole point is to pretend you’re making love to someone besides your spouse, after all.

…

5. Cosmetic surgery?

Re: #1 - Yes, I agree. And I think that Mark agrees with you, if you read this section of the book. He presents it as a choice the couple has to make, but he’s trying to guide toward the same position you’re taking, I think.

Re: Cosmetic Surgery:

“Is plastic surgery bad because it’s unnatural?”

Wed, 07/30/14

I think James K does well to bring up the “personal porn star” question again.

The biggest problem with Real Marriage, IMO, is the same as with books like 5 Love Languages. There is a sense in which saying, “Hey, X is a way to be loving to your spouse,” can invite unrealistic expectations. In this way, books like 5LL can teach a selfish person how to be better at being selfish. In other words, 5LL can give you the tools to better ask your spouse to love you in ways you’ll appreciate. That sounds great, but it can also make you FEEL like since you finally had the way to ask and you did ask, WHY ISN’T IT HAPPENING?

Personally, I went through Tim Keller’s The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness and Real Marriage with my small group last spring. While everyone found RM very helpful, we went back to Keller’s book (and the GOSPEL!!) again and again. I think that the concepts of how Keller expresses the Gospel are all there in Real Marriage, the way the Gospel kills selfishness is so clear in FoSF that I always recommend it first and last as a marriage book. I don’t think that our positive experience with Real Marriage would have been as good without FOSF.

Wed, 07/30/14

[Dave Doran] This is worth reading as well. http://www.dennyburk.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/2012-Denny-Burk-Revi…
That was actually a pretty good review. (I do disagree with the part where he says that Driscoll’s three questions are reductionistic. Driscoll clearly elaborates and RM ends up having many questions within each of those questions.)

But it’s still a good caution. When we did RM in our small group, we expanded and clarified the three questions process AND we skipped the rest of the chapter. We invited anyone in the group to talk about them privately, but we didn’t want to have those discussions in our group.

Wed, 07/30/14

always leads to the wrong answer.
If a couple/spouse think they have a “lame sex life”, then lessons on spicing things up or answering questions like “Can We _______” are not going to address the underlying problem. The very idea of the expression “I have a lame sex life” reveals immaturity and desire for self gratification. Sexual intimacy is about loving, honoring, and pleasing YOUR spouse. The way you find out how to do that is by communicating and knowing each other, learning to be unselfish, honest, and vulnerable, and asking God how you can meet your spouse’s emotional needs and physical desires in a way that honors God. If that is not happening, then any pursuit of sexual gratification is going to be rooted in sin and won’t bear good fruit in your marriage.

IMO, using a book like RM is like opening a soup can with a steak knife. You can do it, but why not just use a can opener? Plus, someone could lose an eye, or a pinky finger.

There are better tools out there to help couples working through relationship issues, so use those.

Scenescape Media

Wed, 07/30/14

Dan, the trick here is that if Driscoll truly believes that these things are sin, as I do, then he would be calling them out as sin in his book. The reviewers I’ve seen—MacArthur, Challies, Burke, and others—all have read the book, and all paint a very different picture than you do. They’ve gotten the mood of the book, and as many note of Driscoll, they note that Driscoll seems almost to revel in the acts he’s painting as “left to the discretion of couples”, in fact giving line by line descriptions of many rather deviant acts and how to perform them.

In other words, it’s not the words of a guy who is astounded that people would actually do that, and who would call his congregation to repentance. By leaving the door open, he’s doing many of his members and readers a grave disservice.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.