unless you’ve been hiding from the internet over the last 24 hours (or you don’t give a rat’s about this type of story), you’ve probably watched or seen reference to a new video of mark driscoll (and yes, that website is real life…) preaching at mars hill.

in a nutshell, our favorite protector of truth and all around swell guy, pastor mark, informs his congregation, his legions of devoted followers and the rest of the world (thanks to something we call the interwebs) that all this “god is love” talk is a bunch of hooey. yes, i (and, apparently he) realizes that 1 john 4:8 literally says that, but it obviously can’t be trusted because it sounds like that hippy, limp-wristed jesus that you keep hearing about.

the truth (and i quote, “it’s my job to tell you the truth and your job is to make a decision.”), we learn, is that

god.

hates.

you.

yep, that’s it. that’s what he lets us know. over and over. in every conceivable way he can muster it.

quite frankly, i’m not going to offer much commentary or deconstruction of his comments. plenty of others have done that already. i don’t think i need to. i hope that the video is enough commentary in and of itself.

for a very long time, mark driscoll has said things that were, at minimum, incredibly frustrating. i’ve been hopeful that people will begin to see that many (but certainly not all, in fairness) of his theologies are harmful and a distortion of the way of jesus and the nature of god. this time, though, my response is greater than frustration. it’s nearly anger. why such a strong response? because i can’t tell you how many people i’ve met that have accepted the lie—because of some event or person or teaching in their life—that they are hated by god. because of that, and for good reason, the way of jesus simply isn’t a viable option. quite frankly, a god who hates isn’t worth serving. and a god of hate creates a series of biblical contradictions that just aren’t worth parsing through (in fact you might start being tempted to do original language study and pastor mark doesn’t like that: “You can find a Christian on the run when they start doing word studies”).

so, you can watch the video. maybe i’m overreacting. maybe he’s spot on. but i think you’ll see that “pastor mark” has crossed a line that i didn’t think he’d cross.

[videoplayer file=”http://beingryanbyrd.com/blogimg/video/mark_driscoll-god_hates_you.mp4″ width=”580″ height=”350″ autostart=”false” bufferlength=”3″ /]

p.s. this is a tweet by my friend kim that i’ve been trying to remember since watching this video yesterday afternoon:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/arkychicky/status/123530140528541696″]