I’ve noticed a few interesting items lately, and felt the need to at least mention them here.

First, Daniel Larison has been skewering our incumbent junior senator, Rick Santorum, over his rather curious speeches regarding the vast importance of the conflict in Iraq. I considered, briefly, actually voting for Robert Casey, Jr. this year, in the apparently vain hope that he is cut from the same mold as his father, but alas, he is not, and I have increasingly disillusioned with politics, so I will not likely be at the polls next Tuesday.

Second, Rod Dreher has been flapping in the wind over his support of Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, who is apparently a member of the long lost species of Democratic reactionaries. The problem? Webb is, as most good democrats are, pro-choice. Now Dreher is forced to explain why someone who is stridently pro-life would support a pro-choice politician. The whole situation makes me wonder: why is Dreher voicing opinions on a Senate candidate a thousand miles away from his state?

Third, the Ted Haggard scandal. Poor man. When Christianity receives a black eye, it is generally self-inflicted. Again, I’m not sure I care much about the man’s guilt or innocence (it is not my church). The speck-plank bit is quite relevant, though. I do want to comment on this post by Mark Driscoll, specifically this bit:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors? wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband?s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Now, Driscoll has some other good things to say about the “scandal,” but this…I’m not sure where he’s coming from. It’s a rather dangerous bit that assigns some blame, though it’s likely Driscoll knows absolutely nothing about the Haggard’s relationship (it is worth noting that Driscoll is not writing directly to the Haggards). He wants to “take one for the team” but truthfully, he is just perpetuating stereotypes and shifting blame. There is also the not-so-matter of spiritual discipline–Driscoll appears to believe that if the man has “physical needs” his wife must satisfy them (after all, that’s in the Bible, right?). I would like to think, however, that Driscoll fired off this salvo without thinking through it completely. Driscoll is a bit of Pied Piper for young, reformed pastors and pastors-to-be, and this exactly the sort of statement that gives the wrong advice.

Posted on 6 November 2006