Valentine freebie - Mark Driscoll on Marriage

[RandomTrivia]

I just got an email from BookShout - they're giving away a free book for Valentine's Day. It's Mark & Grace Driscoll's "Real Marriage." So if you want to torture your brain for Valentine's Day, or just have a good snark, there you go.

[Firiel]

I totally just downloaded it. Despite the fact that even reading excerpts from this book in reviews almost gave me a panic attack.

Hi, I'm Firiel, and I'm an emotional masochist. :shifty:

[Closed Womb]

I just got an email from BookShout - they're giving away a free book for Valentine's Day. It's Mark & Grace Driscoll's "Real Marriage." So if you want to torture your brain for Valentine's Day, or just have a good snark, there you go.

Finally, a price that reflects its worth.

[FloraKitty35]

I wonder if it could double as toilet paper in a pinch, JW literature works great for that btw.

[Beammeup]

I wonder if it could double as toilet paper in a pinch, JW literature works great for that btw.

Not unless you wipe with your Kindle because it's an ebook. :whistle:

[Ampak]

Ok, I am so mad at myself for wasting one of my Audible downloads on this garbage! I thought it was going to be hilarious snark but, it was just disgusting. Mark prefaces the book by saying don't read it as a form of voyeurism into he and Grace's sex life; WT actual F? He is too creepy guys. I can't handle it.

[debrand]

I don't know why but the opening sentences annoyed me. Because I can't cut and paste from the book, please forgive me if quote the book incorrectly.

"This is a costly book. It cost many couples a lot to learn the hard lessons that they shared with us so that we can share them with you. It costs us a lot to learn from our sins so that we could have something to share. It cost Jesus his life, as he died to forgive our sin and give us a new life together, which includes our family and ministry."

There is something obnoxious and egotistical about this statement, I just can't explain why. I would assume that saying that Jesus died so that people can have a good marriage(which listed in the bible as one of the reasons he died) would guilt people into staying in a bad marriage.

"Don't say, "We tried that and it didn't work." If it is rooted in biblical wisdom keep trying until it works or you die. Try to do it better ,more consistently or differently. "

Couples are different. What works for one couple does not work for all couples. The adage, "Don't go to be angry." does not work for me. When I am angry, I need time to cool down before I can have a conversation. Sometimes this means that sleeping will cool me down enough to make more logical and less emotional. I know myself well enough to know that I shouldn't have a conversation when I am angry. However, I am sure that the saying works for many people.

Strangely enough, Mark seems to contradict himself a few paragraphs later when he admits that all marriages are different and some need different methods to work

[debrand]

More quotes: "For such a big issue, most teaching on sex inside the church is inadequate, and most teaching on it outside the church is perverted"

I am curious about his definition of perverted.

Is anyone here from Seattle. Mark says that he was brought up in a neighborhood, close to the airport that resembled the wild west. He said that the Green River Killer and Ted Bundy killed women in his neighborhood.

[FloraKitty35]

Not unless you wipe with your Kindle because it's an ebook. :whistle:

They've gone to Kindle too. I was referring to the magazines and flyers that they stick in the front door. When I am lucky enough to avoid them. :shrug:

[BravaAmica]

More quotes: "For such a big issue, most teaching on sex inside the church is inadequate, and most teaching on it outside the church is perverted"

I am curious about his definition of perverted.

Is anyone here from Seattle. Mark says that he was brought up in a neighborhood, close to the airport that resembled the wild west. He said that the Green River Killer and Ted Bundy killed women in his neighborhood.

Which airport? Paine Field? Sea-Tac?

And, no, there's no saloons or stagecoaches anywhere around there.

I don't know where the Green River Killer or Ted Bundy killed people. I don't want to know. Look it up!

Seattle was probably the only major US city without an asshole mega-church pastor. He saw the empty place in the market and is making his fortune. It's the American Way! All there is to do now is to wait for the sex and financial scandals. Because conservative mega-church preacher = sex and money scandals. It's like a job requirement.

[debrand]

Which airport? Paine Field? Sea-Tac?

And, no, there's no saloons or stagecoaches anywhere around there.

I don't know where the Green River Killer or Ted Bundy killed people. I don't want to know. Look it up!

Seattle was probably the only major US city without an asshole mega-church pastor. He saw the empty place in the market and is making his fortune. It's the American Way! All there is to do now is to wait for the sex and financial scandals. Because conservative mega-church preacher = sex and money scandals. It's like a job requirement.

Green River Killer killed women in South King County. I thought that Bundy killed mainly college girls and not prostitutes; however, I know nothing about Washington state. I didn't want anyone to look up the information just was curious if he could have lived in a neighborhood that had victims from both killers or is he exaggerating?

A lot of what he writes sounds like he is exaggerating slightly. For instance, he writes that he was a "good Catholic" kid with a foul mouth who occasionally beat up people who were hurting women and kids. That plays into his tough guy persona. He was also sexually active as a teenager which makes his future anger at Grace seem a bit silly.

He met Grace at 17 and describes her as a shy and naive pastor's daughter who got involved with the wrong crowd. He says that naivety is a bad thing in an adult woman(and I would agree). As an example, he says that Grace would walk around at night on a dangerous campus and trust that strange guys would not hurt her. I can't find what dangerous college campus that she attended.

In college, god told Mark to marry Grace, start a church, teach men and preach the bible. Grace was attending a different college but they seem to have still been a couple despite the distance?

He says that he didn't want to go to a Catholic church because "To be a young man, a life of poverty, celibacy, living at the church and wearing a dress was more frightful than going to hell..." :roll: I am barely into the book and he seems determined to prove that he is a manly man.

[debrand]

He says that before marriage, he and Grace had great sex. They decided to stop having premarital sex with one another until they married. After marriage, she became frigid and suddenly tense about sex. He was angry at god and her and felt trapped. He blames this on her past relationships with guys and says that she became afraid of him. This is the type of story that makes you want to read between the lines.

Grace says that she didn't follow the bible and leave her family because she called her mom every day and complained about Mark.Her family had keys to their house(no idea why) She called her family, my family, which made Mark feel as if she didn't value him. Now she refers to Mark as 'my family' and others as 'extended family'

How can anyone read this fucked up book and not view Mark as a control freak? I am barely into the book and realize that he married an unconfident woman and seems to have broken her down. Yes, she should have set boundaries with her family but they are still her family and expecting her to not call them my family sounds very controlling on Mark's part. I also wonder what the heck was going on early in their marriage to make her frightened of him when she wasn't before.

[debrand]

I just got to the part where he got upset because his wife put 'a mom's need for convenience before being a wife' and got her hair cut

How can anyone read this book and not realize it was written by a domineering, egotistical, psychologically abusive person? Grace sounds like a woman who didn't know how to set boundaries with either her husband or her family. Mark seems to have taken advantage of her vulnerability and demands full control over her.

[Black Aliss]

Is anyone here from Seattle. Mark says that he was brought up in a neighborhood, close to the airport that resembled the wild west. He said that the Green River Killer and Ted Bundy killed women in his neighborhood.

Per wikipedia:

Driscoll was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and was raised Roman Catholic in the Riverton Heights area of Seatac, WA. He is a 1989 graduate of Highline High School in Burien, Washington

Not the wild west, by a long shot, unless going to high school with a lot of Asian/Pacific Island immigrants counts as wild west. And it's a stretch to say that Gary Leon Ridgeway and Ted Bundy picked up women in his neighborhood. They picked up prostitutes (or women they thought were prostitutes) mostly working other stretches of the Pacific Highway.

ETA: I'm familiar with Ridgeway's MO and victims. I didn't know that much about Ted Bundy's victims. Apparently Bundy killed women and girls in the Pacific Northwest as well as in many other states. Nothing more to connect them besides their XX chromosomes.

[nokidsmom]

Which airport? Paine Field? Sea-Tac?

And, no, there's no saloons or stagecoaches anywhere around there.

I don't know where the Green River Killer or Ted Bundy killed people. I don't want to know. Look it up!

Seattle was probably the only major US city without an asshole mega-church pastor. He saw the empty place in the market and is making his fortune. It's the American Way! All there is to do now is to wait for the sex and financial scandals. Because conservative mega-church preacher = sex and money scandals. It's like a job requirement.

How can an airport resemble the wild west? Very odd comment.

Also, yeah, if he's not involved in any sex and / or financial scandals, it would be a very unusual case indeed.

[salex]

I just got to the part where he got upset because his wife put 'a mom's need for convenience before being a wife' and got her hair cut

How can anyone read this book and not realize it was written by a domineering, egotistical, psychologically abusive person? Grace sounds like a woman who didn't know how to set boundaries with either her husband or her family. Mark seems to have taken advantage of her vulnerability and demands full control over her.

So what is his point, that he can't get it up with a woman with short hair? honestly , wtf is it with this kind of control, other than just a need for total control?

It is amazing more of these men are not murdered in their sleep.

[Phoenix]

The whole rant against why he didn't want to be Catholic has about as much validity as his "wild west" and "stagecoach" references about SeaTac. Seattle Tacoma International airport has never gone in for the Wild West look in the many years I have been using it.

Grew up Catholic in Seattle, (just north of SeaTac) and Driscoll's description of what it was like to attend a Catholic church was 1) Decades out of date, pre-Vatican II, a big reform effort that closed it's doors in 1965, half a decade before his birth. 2) Would have only applied to priests, not any man who walked in the door.

I haven't seen a parish priest wear a "skirt" type vestment in 30 years. Clerical blacks are slacks, shirt and Roman collar. Vestments for mass are flowing robes but not much different from graduation gowns and worn for church services or sacraments. Yes the priests in Rome tend to go for the old-style robes, but that is usually pretty high ranking such as Archbishops or Cardinals.

Bundy killed both prostitutes and college girls. He grew up quite a bit north of Driscoll around the (long closed) Sandpoint Naval Base near the University of Washington. Bundy could fit in with a more educated, wealthier group of people than Ridgeway who worked for a company that built long haul commercial trucks. Family stories claim Bundy was grandparents paper boy. That area had both modest and wealthy households. A few blocks away many households had servants in the 50's and 60's when Bundy was growing up.

Driscoll and I were both growing up in the greater Seattle area at the time Ridgeway was killing. He got his moniker because many of the bodies were dumped in or around the Green River in South King County. Yes, it was scary to be in high school and college when Ridgeway was killing, but it was widely known that if you weren't a streetwalker and didn't hang out on Highway 99 at night you were likely going to be okay. Plus he didn't go after boys.

I don't understand the prestige among Driscoll's followers. Know of a situation where a marriage he officiated at failed under horrific circumstances, yet one of the now divorced people involved still talks (brags) about how Driscoll married them. :?