Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Holy Ghost Porn.

Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Seattle-based Mars Hill megachurch is no stranger to controversy.   Early in his career, he was known as the ‘cussing pastor’.  As things rolled along, he garnered a devoted following by preaching a macho Jesus who would probably enjoy watching a UFC cage match, deriding effeminate male worship leaders, and telling Christian wives that they should drop their husband’s trousers and ‘serve’ them by performing oral sex.   His sermon videos on the topic of sex are often too controversial to be carried by GodTube (the Christian version of YouTube).  Recently, he has been in a new kind of controversy, as charges of plagiarism have been leveled at him.

What is perhaps not as widely-known is his claim that he sees replays of sexual encounters and child molestations in his head, courtesy of a ‘gift’ of the Holy Spirit.  That’s right folks.  We have a pastor claiming that he has a Holy Ghost porn channel in his head.  As Mark puts it, “I see things.”

I’ll let him tell you about it:

Now that you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor, let’s talk about this.  Why is this guy even still a pastor?  These are purely anecdotal stories of course - the same as what Christianity and the Bible are largely constructed out of, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised he gets away with it.  We have no reason to suppose that his claims are true.  Mr. Driscoll may simply be a compulsive liar, or he could be suffering from some sort of mental issues which lead him to visualize these things in his head.  The logical problems created by his stories however, should should lead even Christians to question their veracity.

For the hell of it, let’s dissect his comments. The following quotes I use are taken from a transcript of the video, posted on this site.

Uh, like I was meeting with one person and they—they didn't know this, but they were abused when they were a child. And I said, "When you were a child you were abused. This person did this to you, physically touched you this way." 
He said, "How do you know?" 
I said, "I don't know. It's like I got a TV right here. I'm seeing it." 
He said, "No that never happened." 
I said, "Go ask him. Go ask him if they actually did what I think they did and I see that they did." 
They went and asked this person, "When I was a little kid did you do this?" 
And the person said, "Yyyyeah, but you were only like a year or two old. How do you remember that?" 
He said, "Well, Pastor Mark told me." 

Riiiight.   So according to Mr. Driscoll, a holy god who supposedly cannot tolerate sin does live replays of child molestation in his head so that he can tell a parishioner who has no memory of being abused, to go and accuse someone of pedophilia.  Why do I not find this convincing?  Once again, I find myself thinking that a person of average intelligence could easily come up with better ways of handling things, than what Bible-god supposedly does.  For example, what good is served by filling Driscoll’s head with visions of molestation?  We all know how hard it is to forget things once they are seen.  Why not have a heavenly voice state the details rather than showing them?  What good is served by revealing to a person who doesn’t remember being molested, that they were?  Why didn’t Mark’s god prevent the molestation in the first place?  If he wanted to deal with it after the fact, why not appear to the molester and scare the crap out of him or her, rather than this elaborate setup which basically serves Mark’s ego and builds his reputation? 

I'm not a guru. I'm not a freak. I don't talk about this. If I did talk about it everybody'd want to meet with me and I'd end up like one of those guys on TV.

But here you are, in a video on the internet, talking about it, Mark…  Weird.

Um, uh, there was one woman I dealt with. She never told her husband that she had committed adultery on him early in the relationship. I said, "You know—" (she's sitting there with her husband). I said, "You know I think the root of all this—I think Satan has a foothold in your life because you've never told your husband about that really tall blonde guy that you met at the bar. And then you went back to the hotel. And you laid on your back. And you undressed yourself. And he climbed on top of you. And you had sex with him. And snuggled up with him for a while. And deep down in your heart, even though you had just met him, you desired him because secretly he is the fantasy body type." I said, "You remember that place it was that cheap hotel with that certain-colored bedspread. You did it—you had sex with the light on because you weren't ashamed and you wanted him to see you. And you wanted to see him." 

So here, we basically get a play-by-play of the sex scene.   Mark gets to be a voyeur, spying on this supposed sexual encounter, after the fact.  Very creepy.  If you were a Christian, would you want this guy to be your pastor?  Hot Hotel Encounters from Yahweh Productions.  Pastor Mark doesn’t even need to go online for porn because he gets a direct feed from his god, apparently.  Even creepier – the fact that Mark claims to know what the woman’s thoughts and motives were – i.e. her secret fantasy body type, and why she left the lights on.  If this is any indication of how Driscoll does counseling, the people he counsels are going to need some serious help afterwards.

Things get weirder, with him talking about questioning demons, and his counselees having visions.  He doesn’t say whether the visions come from demons, or by divine inspiration.

Some of you when you're counseling you will see things. I mean you will, you will literally gift of discernment see things. I can't explain it. It doesn't happen all the time. 
Sometimes your counselee, they will see things. Ye—eh—there's pa— I found this with people—ok, now let me—I'm gonna ask the demon questions. You tell me what they say." 
"They don't say anything." 
I say, "What do you hear?" 
And they say, "Nothing." They say, "But I'm seeing stuff." 
"Oh, oh, well tell me. What's that?" 
"I'm seeing—you know when I was little my grandpa molested me. I didn't know that." 
I said, "Well, let's not assume it's true. Go ask your grandfather."Grandpa says, "Y-yeah, when you were little I molested you." Grandpa was assuming they'd be too young to remember. So he'd only molest grand kids up to a certain age. But they saw it.

Notice that when other people have visions, Mark is skeptical.  Of course, when he has visions, they are absolute fact.  Notice in his story, that when Grandpa is questioned about the molestation, he readily admits it.  This doesn’t ring true.  Wouldn’t his self-preservation instinct lead him to deny it?  And, once again, Mark is claiming to know people’s thoughts – telling us about what Grandpa was assuming, and his methodology.

So I say—tell me everything you hear, tell me everything you see. And sometimes I see things too.  I see things too.  I've seen women raped. I've seen children molested. I've seen people abused. I've seen people beaten.  I've seen horrible things done.  Horrible things done.  I've seen children dedicated in occultic groups and demons come upon them as an infant by invitation.  And I wasn't present for any of it, but I've seen it visibly. Upon occasion when I get up to preach I'll see—just like a screen in front of me—I'll see somebody get raped or abused and then I'll track 'em down and say, "Look I had this vision. Let me tell you about it." All true.

Whew.  I’m glad that Mark added that “All true” at the end because I was starting to think he was just spinning bullshit stories.  I mean, children becoming possessed by demons, in occult ceremonies... I haven’t heard that kind of stuff since the ‘80’s – when people were worried about backwards messages in rock and roll songs. But hey, Mark has the gift of discernment and if he says it’s true, so I guess that settles it. 

I wonder if any of this gives members of Mark’s church pause.  I mean, he is pretty much admitting that while he is preaching a sermon, he can be having hallucinations of child porn, torture, rape, and abuse.  This must make it a bit difficult to focus on his sermon notes. 

An awful lot of Christians look up to Mark Driscoll.  They attend his church, buy his books, watch his videos, and download his podcasts.  They are thrilled by his macho posturing, potty mouth and sensationalized preaching style.  Me?  I’m an atheist, so I don’t find his magic stories convincing – except in one way.  They convince me that this dude has some serious issues and should probably seek help.  In the meantime guys - do the ‘manly’ thing and keep him away from your wife and kids.

Written by J. M. Green