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More on the little pope of Mars Hill

Those of you who read my recent post about Mark Driscoll’s revisionist history of Esther might appreciate thoughts offered by Rachel Held Evans, who also promises to devote the next few Mondays to her own exegesis of that book:

“To compare forced concubinage to an audition for “The Bachelor,” and to ascribe sexual culpability to a girl who in a patriarchal culture had no ownership over her own body and  no control over her own marriage, is as bizarre as it is disturbing. It’s just as ridiculous as turning Esther into a Disney princess, only Driscoll—being older than 10—has no excuse to project this strange reading onto the text.”

Dave Kludt, meanwhile, cautions restraint in our criticism of Driscoll. After all, there are some things Driscoll says that a thoughtful person can agree with. For example:

“[Esther] grows up in a very lukewarm religious home as an orphan raised by her uncle. Beautiful,she allows men to tend to her needs and make her decisions. Her behavior is sinful and she spends around a year in the spa getting dolled up to lose her virginity with the pagan king like hundreds of other women. She performs so well that he chooses her as his favorite. Today, her story would be, a beautiful young woman living in a major city allows men to cater to her needs, undergoes lots of beauty treatment to look her best, and lands a really rich guy whom she meets on The Bachelor and wows with an amazing night in bed. She’s simply a person without anycharacter until her own neck is on the line, and then we see her rise up to save the life of her people when she is converted to a real faith in God.“

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