my thoughts on sex and power in the context of the recent Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill thing

From here:

I think I have a *great* gut feeling for a powerful abusive system when I see it. Call it whatever you want. There’s something inside that recognizes it immediately becuase I lived in something very similar for years, and it was hella hard to get out of, and to get healed from. Driscoll and Mars Hill Church set that feeling off big time, and the more I read about and interact with them, the more conscious evidence there is for my head of what my gut is telling me. It seems to me that perhaps the major problem over there is a misunderstanding of power. I really think that the leadership doesn’t understand the level of the power they have, and the damage their uncareful use of that power is doing. I think there are two possible paths for them. Either they will just continue to be the way they are–this happens to some people–they never really change, no matter how much pain they cause others and themselves. My hope is that it will go the other way for them–that they will come to understand and feel in their heads and in their guts the pain that their misuse of power is causing, and repent, and start to repair. That would be awesome. the sense I get from Mark, and from Lief, is that they have not yet experienced the depths of brokenness that they need to experience in order to *really* understand their desperate need for love, and for jesus. Mark gives very flippant lip service to being a sinner. It’s scary to see unbroken people wielding power.

and from here:

I think that what a man in a position of power like Mark Driscoll (that is, a man who knows that other people look up to him, listen to his teaching, and intend to implement it) should be emphasizing overwhelmingly to married guys about sex is this: We (guys) live in a culture where the overwhelming message is that women are objects, women are worthless unless they are young, thin, and beautiful, women are sexually assaulted, women are beaten–all in all, women have a pretty shitty time overall, and it’s mostly the fault of guys who are saying and doing all these abusive things to women. So in light of the fact that we are swimming in this pool, and breathing this freaking air, our first priority with our wives should be to give the lie to all this crap, and tell our wives both in words and deeds that they are beautiful, period, and that that they are worthy of respect and love, period. Our number one goal in regards to sex with our wives should be to be romantic, and kind, and gracious, and focused on what *they* want. Etc. Etc. Etc. etc. etc.
And if someone in a position of power, like mark, is focusing on anything else when teaching married men about sex, then by default, that is, by not swimming against the cultural tide, he is swimming with it, and reinforcing it.
That’s what I think.