Mark Driscoll’s Nine Misguided Misconceptions

Driscoll gave a series of sermons on topics his church had the most questions on, and then made it into a book called Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions.  I found the other book the other day perusing the religion aisles at Barnes and Noble.  For those of you who know me, I wanted to buy the book simply to debunk everything in it, but alas, it is not worth the twenty bucks I would have spent on it.  Driscoll has enclosed one of the chapters on dating online, and I would like to discuss it.

First, Driscoll says this about the “calling” or “courting” system of the last century:

The major downside of calling [courting during the 19th century] was the expense, which made it impossible for many people in the middle and lower classes. They simply could not afford a sitting room or parlor designated for calling, complete with a piano, along with formal attire to wear and specific food to eat (p. 181).

Driscoll then talks about how the world has “changed” so much saying:

This [the car] altered the nature of male-female pursuit so that the best men were those with the most money (symbolized by which kind of car they drove) and therefore the most able to afford the nicest dates, and the most prized women were the most outwardly beautiful and sexual who could serve as the best trophy (p. 182).

I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed this glaring inconsistency in Driscoll’s writing.  I could understand how this might be missed in one of his fast-paced sermons (the man is a smooth-talker and he does it a million miles a minute with no notes), but in print it seems that in the courting age, those with money were given preference in the courting system, and in the automobile age those with money to buy automobiles were given prefence.  The story seems to be exactly the same: preferential treatment for the rich in our dating social systems.  Those without cars or those without money in the previous system are left out of the accepted dating or courting norms of their culture.

Driscoll – read your own words – nothing has changed.

He then talks about how cohabitation is now a huge problem in the United States jumping from 1 million cohabitators in 1978 to 5 million in 2008.  He uses this evidence to say that now the   “expectation is that they will cohabit prior to marriage.”  Let’s ACTUALLY look at the statistics: taking into account population inflation that means the percent of cohabitators in the United States has changed from 0.8% of the population to 3.3% in the last 40 YEARS.  In other words, less than 4% of the population cohabits before marriage.  This surely does not lend itself to the idea that people are “expected” to cohabitat before marriage.  The statistics, in fact, still say exactly the opposite.

He does make the point that a quarter of women 25-39 cohabitat before marriage, but this STILL means that the majority (75%) do NOT cohabitat before marriage.  Which STILL does not establish an “expectation.”

Using his expectations, he then makes the case that:

“Virtually all research on the topic has determined that the chances of divorce ending a marriage that was preceded by cohabitation are significantly greater than for a marriage that was not preceded by cohabitation.”

Again, he seems to ignore the same statistics that young [often sex-crazed Christians] couples in their early twenties [who can't wait any longer or are 'burning with passion'] are also more likely to divorced than those who get married later.

What am I trying to say?  Basically, I am asking that those like Driscoll would stop using statistics to “prove” his points.  Statistics are complicated and the general public is often duped into believing all sorts of false things based on the idea that the “statistics” prove the point.

What else am I trying to say?  Basically, that Driscoll and others should address some of the root points of our societies obsession with sexual relationships.  He bemoans the move away from the “calling” system (which, he admits, was bent towards the conveniences and the excesses of the rich with their parlors and free time).  What can Driscoll say to what we might call “the working poor” with kids who can’t have that kind of supervision because both parents work full-time?

The same issues that Driscoll talks about as “modern” are rife in the literature of former arenas.  Just read Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen to find that many of these same social problems were alive and well back then in Driscoll’s ‘good old days.’  What issues am I talking about?

Here are some deep-issues that need to be addressed which are not at all addressed in Driscoll’s work:

1. Automobiles: Driscoll has done a good job of noting one of the root problems that has hampered our family life in the last century, but he doesn’t flesh the point out.  Why do adolscents in our culture feel the need to have a car (sometimes taking on a level of debt that takes them years to pay back)?  Why do adolescents feel the need to buy new cars every few years?  I know of people who are 23 and have already owned four cars in since age 18.
2. Family:  How do we reunite the family in a way that they are involved in the dating system in a way that does not show prefential treatment to the rich?  How do we make sure that the ‘working poor’ are involved in the conversation?  How to we restore proper family relationships?

There are other issues here too, but I feel that Driscoll has spent too much time in his second “misconception” that he has misguided his audience into thinking there is some “problem” without ever addressing the root causes.