Megachurch pastor: Nagging wives are like Chinese water torture

The founding pastor of a Washington state megachurch on Sunday told female parishioners that God wanted them to submit to their husbands and that they shouldn't be a "nag," likening them to Chinese water torture.

In in a Sunday sermon, Mars Hill Church Pastor Mark Driscoll said that people often misunderstood the Bible's teachings on what it meant for a wife to "submit" to her husband.

"Number one, it does not mean that the wife is less valuable, intelligent, or competent," he explained. "Number two, this does not mean that men, in general, are to be ruling over women in general. It doesn’t mean that. We’re not talking about gender issues; we’re talking about marriage issues."

"This does mean that a wife sets a pattern for others to respect her husband," Driscoll opined. "If the wife disrespects the husband in front of his coworkers, will they respect the husband? No. No. Women who publicly disrespect their husbands encourage others to disrespect their husbands. And this doesn’t mean you don’t disagree with your husband but you do so respectfully, privately."

The pastor added that women who disrespected their husband in front of others put men in a "lose-lose scenario" because "if he doesn’t argue back, he’s being weak."

"Men with men, it’s not like this. You disrespect me, we can talk about that, right? We can actually have a bit of a debate about that."

Driscoll went on to talk about how the book of Proverbs described "certain kinds of women."

"They’re quarrelsome. They’re a nag," he said. "And some women -- you’re a nag. You’re disrespectful. You’re quarrelsome. Being married to you is like a life sentence, and the guy’s just scratching on his wall every day."

"Proverbs talks about certain women—they’re like a dripping faucet. You ever tried to sleep with a dripping faucet? Plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk. It’s what we use to torture people who are prisoners of war. A wife is like that."

Driscoll concluded his discussion on submission by explaining that the husband-wife relationship was like a police officer writing a ticket to a driver.

"All right, if the police officer pulls you over, you can’t say, 'Hey, we’re equal and you have no right to write me a ticket. In fact, I’m writing you a ticket.' Actually, we’re now going to practice submission, right?"

"Ladies, to respect and submit is to be like Jesus," he advised. "You want to be like Jesus? That’s one of the ways that we learn to be like Jesus."

Earlier this year, Driscoll came under fire from fellow Christian pastors after he tweeted that President Barack Obama did not know God.

"Praying for our president, who today will place his hands on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know," he wrote on inauguration day.

Watch this video from Mars Hill Church, broadcast April 21, 2013.

(h/t: Friendly Atheist)