Recently, Mark Driscoll referred to pacifists as pansies. I can only assume he’s not referring to the flower, as that wouldn’t make much sense (then again, we are talking about Mark D here). Apparently, he’s using the term in the sense of being a ‘fairy’, a ‘sissy’, a ‘fag’ or some other bit of ‘re-remodeling’ account of manliness.
“If this shirt’s not enough to send them running, I give them the old ‘what for’.”
Of course, we all know that Driscoll is the most manly man on the planet. All you have to do is ask him. He’ll tell ya’–right after he submits you in the not even close to being homoerotic-sport-at-all, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Don’t hate. I love grappling. Nothing like throwing a rear-naked choke on a muscular sweaty man.
I’m not really interested in going into detail as to how Driscoll misrepresents Christian nonviolence. I’m not even sure it’s possible for him to misrepresent pacifism (any of its various strands), as that would actually require him to be familiar with the object of his protest. The jock is just willfully ignorant. Embarrassingly so. It’s obvious that he’s never read anything on the subject, as there’s no critical account of the standard Messianic pacifism/eschatological nonviolence that underwrites the strongest strands of Christian nonviolence, so I’m not interested in discussing those points. I’m sure plenty of other people are taking him to task at that intersection or pointing out that Dorothy Day, the Berrigan Brothers, Gandhi, Aung Suu Kyi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. are some of the baddest mofo-ing pansies in human history. Instead, I’m more interested in talking about why it’s the case that Jesus really is a pansy. That is, if Jesus is anything, he’s the person who stands beside, with, and incarnates as those people who are deemed sissies, pansies, fags, queers, fairies, and any other derogatory term that Driscoll can use against those people who do not embody his sad little vision of what it means to be a man. Jesus does not stand with the powerful and the entitled; rather, he stands with those that are constantly berated for having the ‘misfortune’ of not being powerful and entitled.
So, stand hard pansies. Rather than buying into the subtle bigotry that follows the inevitable cry of masculine pacifists shouting, “Hey, I’m not a pansy!”, own it. Refuse to be a man. And, more importantly, listen to this song by the greatest silly-string-shooting-punk-rocking pansies ever (it’s Driscoll’s little D.O.D., I mean ditty).
Yeah, I’ll let you look up those lyrics.
(“I’ll let him guide me into my promised land.” He’s a regular Moses, that guy.)