Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Honest, a nugget and a lot of messy opinions

This is a review of Mark Driscoll and his wife's book, "Real Marriage."

First the good, the Driscoll couple are very open, honest, and leave little out in their sharing. You can;t help but applaud them for this, and be grateful for their forthright expressions. I was pleasantly surprised with Mr. Driscoll's piece on "Tender and Tough," which didn't strike me as typical Mr. Driscoll. This was the nice nugget. These couple things climb the rating to where it is.

But then there are a lot of pages that made it a book, but didn't make it worth my time. The tone just grows real old, real fast. There is never any room for discussion with Mr. Driscoll, which i find so off putting. An example, he writes with language like, "The Bibles is very plain when it says..." and yet I find that is very plain to proving Mr. Driscoll's point but not necessarily being contextually plain. There are times in the writing where it is as if Mr. Driscoll thinks the Bible was written with white, middle class Americans as the model for marriage. If the Bible was written at the popularity height of The Leave it to Beaver TV show, then this book would climb a couple more stars in rating. But it doesn't take a Biblical scholar to know that the Bible was written a little further back than the 1950's. Again, I can appreciate the honesty of the Driscoll family, but when Mr. Driscoll self diagnoses himself with a sort of depression because of a lack of sex, that wreaks of chauvinism. My wife also read this book, and she is a licensed counselor, so this part really cheesed her off.

My wife and I are also reading to other marriage books, one by Timothy Keller and his wife and the other by Craig Groeschel, and both of them are significantly more in depth and carry more wisdom. I believe that is what we need more than anything with today's marriage, wisdom, rather than strong opinions.

No comments:

Post a Comment