It's the driving force in their life. It dominates their conversation if you get them with like-minded others. It gives their life meaning. It can be ideological, or theological, or psychological, or sociological...
Let me give you some examples: I grew up with a group
of sincere Christian people called the Plymouth Brethren (they preferred 'Open
Brethren) for whom the 'End Times' was their 'theory of everything'. They read
newspapers and found verses in Daniel or Zechariah which connected with
something happening in Iran, or Russia, or especially Israel. Some of those
Brethren are still alive and at my mothers' funeral, just after we'd buried her
in Woronora cemetery near Sutherland in Sydney - just twenty metres from
her grave, I overheard a couple of them talking animatedly about their
latest theory about who the Antichrist might be.
Every major sporting club has a core group of diehard
supporters for whom the fortunes of their club is the be-all-and-end-all of
their existence. Our grandchildren barrack for Collingwood (Australian
Football) Club and so we sometimes watch their matches. There's a guy there who
runs their cheer squad who wears a gold jacket and a funny yellow hat and bushy
white hair and the TV cameras always pan around to him whenever they want a
spectacular individual's reaction to something amazing or disastrous in the
game. (Read all about him in the Wikipedia article headed Joffa Corfe: did you
know they've made a movie about him - the most passionate football supporter in
Australia).
Regarding sporting achievements, sometimes a parent's self-worth will be linked to their children's sporting success: and this can be pathological in the case of parents-from-hell who abuse referees at their children's games etc.
Regarding sporting achievements, sometimes a parent's self-worth will be linked to their children's sporting success: and this can be pathological in the case of parents-from-hell who abuse referees at their children's games etc.
I have counselling clients whose thinking is dominated
by their low self-esteem. Everything they plan or do or which motivates them
when they're trawling the dating sites online is driven by the question: will I
be attractive to this person? Will they like me?
This year Americans are remembering the Civil War -
150 years on - and the commentariat are opining about whether it was about
slavery or something else. If you look under United States Military Casualties
of War in Wikipedia you'll discover that an astonishing 625,000 persons
were killed for an 'us versus them' idea between Union and Confederate forces
based on whether it's OK to have slaves or not. Of course, you all know that
the 'theory of everything' for the South African apartheir regime centred on
the idea of the 'curse of Ham' on people whose skin happens to be black, and
that idea is still around in the fundamentalist backblocks of
Alabama...
Then there are others whose vocation or job or
ministry is all-consuming. I've spoken at hundreds of pastors' conferences, and
in some of them I overhear this sort of conversation: 'How're going Ben? How's
the church doing?' And Ben's response will be in terms of four criteria for
success which pastors in this denomination (and there's something of this with
most pastors of course) - those four criteria are numbers of people attending,
or dollars in the offering-plates, or if those aren't newsworthy, maybe some
terrific program they've started in their church, or their building program:
these four - numbers of people, offerings, programs, buildings - are all
measurable, and the pastor's self-worth is linked to their perceptions of
failure or success in these areas...
Some churches become known/famous for something which
becomes their theory-of everything. It's the 'Toronto Blessing' in one, where
pilgrims come to be prayed for and be 'slain in the Spirit'. I'm thinking of
another, a large church, to which people migrate if they're fed up with the
fundamentalist preaching of their home-church or denomination and they want
something much more 'progressive'.
People become famous for their proposal of a
theory-of-everything - e.g. Karl Marx with his theories about society's
progress in terms of the dialectic of class struggle: if you had to summarize
his thinking 'the capitalistic system and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie'
would be in there somewhere.
Then there's Freud: how would you summarize his
theory-of-everything? It would have something to do with the power of
repression - especially of bad sexual stuff - and what it does to the
unconscious mind - and how to deal with all those bad ideas in psychoanalysis:
talking about your dreams, perhaps with free-association in the company of a
therapist.
Well, you get the idea.
This morning I want to explore Jesus' 'theory of
everything'. Do you mean he had one? Certainly did, and will you please turn in
your Bibles to...
~~
the Word of God says: the Greeks sought to find truth logically
by means of human reasoning (Paul must have been quite familiar with Plato,
Aristotle etc.), while the Jews sought truth phenomenologically i.e. asking for
signs and wonders to prove God's existence. Nothing has really changed. In this
post-modern age of uncertainty and relativism, people still react to
uncertainty by either proving truth by means of logical, rational argument
(evangelicals), or by experience (Pentecostals). But the Bible tells us truth
is arrived at by a completely different process that transcends both human
reason and human experience: FAITH! And that faith is only arrived at by divine
intervention, ie. by means of the Holy Spirit. This is why Jesus says that
"no-one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above."
(John 3:3). We can never arrive at ultimate truth without a supernatural
intervention. Human reasoning is finite and always will be. It needs to be made
subservient to the Spirit, otherwise we fall into idolatry (just look at the
arrogance of scientists who believe they can come up with a Theory of Everything).
However, in no way does that mean that the born-from-above Christian leaves it
behind (despite what Joyce Meyer says). In fact, reason, in becoming
subservient to Spirit, together with all our other faculties (imagination,
emotions, the will etc) is enlivened and sharpened and made to serve its true
purpose, which is to glorify God.
~~
~~
This morning I want to explore Jesus' 'theory of everything'.
Do you mean he had one? Certainly did, and will you please turn in your Bibles
to...
Mathematicians, scientists esp physicists, and
philosophers
T.O.E.—the ultimate explanation of the universe at its
most microscopic level
On one side is Albert Einstein’s theory of
general relativity. Einstein saw the large-scale universe as a smooth, curved
surface in four dimensions (the three dimensions of space plus time). The
gravitational force that binds us to the earth arises from the very structure
of that space-time continuum.
On the other side is quantum theory. Beginning in
the 1920s, a generation of scientists defined the small-scale universe as a
collection of fuzzy phantoms. These subatomic particles couldn’t be precisely
located in space and time, but their interaction could be described in
statistical terms.Both theories are proven successes — but taken together,
they’re out of joint. The equations that describe the gravitational field are
completely different from those for electromagnetism and subatomic interactions.
Moreover, each theory is incomplete by
itself. Relativity cannot tell us how the big bang gave rise to the universe as
we know it, or what lies within the black holes created by the collapse of
massive stars. Quantum theory, meanwhile, only describes an assortment of
particles, mathematical constants and equations — without divining the sense
and symmetry underlying them all.
4 Nov 2007
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of
the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received
rave reviews from scientists.
Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university
affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii In winter, he
heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and
intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional
mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year
- 2007 - after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover
an area the size of Manhattan.
The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he
has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20
new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large
Hadron Collider starts up.
THEORY TO END THEORIES
For the first time in the history of physics we
therefore have a framework with the capacity to explain every fundamental
feature upon which the universe is constructed. For this reason string theory is
sometimes described as possibly being the "theory of everything"
(T.O.E.) or the "ultimate" or "final" theory
String theory, chaos theory,
Einstein was simply ahead of his time. More than half
a century later, his dream of a unified theory has become the Holy
Grail of modern physics.
the layers of nature may be like the layers of an
onion, and that the number of layers might be infinite. This would imply an
infinite sequence of physical theories.
Stephen Hawking was originally
a believer in the Theory of Everything but, after
considering Gödel's Theorem, concluded that one was not obtainable.
|
“
|
Some people will be very disappointed if there is
not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of
principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind.
Three decades ago, Stephen Hawking famously declared
that a "theoryof everything" was on the horizon, with a 50 per
cent chance of its completion by 2000. Now it is 2010, and Hawking has given
up. But it is not his fault, he says: there may not be a final theory to
discover after all. No matter; he can explain the riddles of existence
without it.
The Grand Design,
written with Leonard Mlodinow, is Hawking's first popular science book for
adults in almost a decade. It duly covers the growth of modern physics
(quantum mechanics, general relativity, modern cosmology) sprinkled with the
wild speculation about multiple universes that seems mandatory in popular
works these days. Short but engaging and packed with colourful illustrations,
the book is a natural choice for someone wanting a quick introduction to
mind-bending theoretical physics.
****
A Theory of Everything:
An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality by Ken Wilber Published by Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA. 2000. $21.95. ISBN: 1-57062-724-X
If you have been following progress in theoretical
physics, you know that a “theory of everything”—from which could be
derived “every known particle and force in the cosmos”—has been the
physicist’s holy grail for some years now. Unfortunately, although such
a theorywould shed light on primary physical processes, it would do
little to help us understand the complex milieu that developed out of those
processes. In his latest book, A Theory of Everything,
Ken Wilber draws on several decades of insightful model building (his own
models and those developed by others) to create a much more comprehensive “theory of everything.”
Wilber’s map of reality embraces the entire mental-physical “Kosmos,” not
just the particle-physics aspect of it. Wilber uses this wordKosmos because
it meant for the Greeks “the patterned Whole of all existence, including the
physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual realms. Ultimate reality was
not merely the cosmos, or the physical dimension, but the Kosmos, or the
physical and emotional and mental and spiritual dimensions altogether.
Not just matter, lifeless and insentient, but the living Totality of matter,
body, mind, soul, and spirit.”
***
Wilber fails to distinguish 'philosophy' from his
own Vedantic and Buddhist religion; Wilber has been categorized as New
Age due to his emphasis on a transpersonal view
|
It's the driving force in their life. It dominates
their conversation if you get them with like-minded others . It gives their
life meaning. It can be ideological, or theological, or psychological, or
sociological...
Let me give you some examples: I grew up with a group
of sincere Christian people called the Plymouth Brethren (they preferred 'Open
Brethren) for whom the 'End Times' was their 'theory of everything'.
They read newspapers and found verses in Daniel or Zechariah which connected
with something happening in Iran, or Russia, or especially Israel. Some of
those Brethren are still alive and at my mothers' funeral, just after we'd
buried her in Woronora cemetery near Sutherland in Sydney - just twenty
metres from her grave, I overheard a couple of them talking animatedly
about their latesttheory about who the Antichrist might be.
Every major sporting club has a core group of diehard
supporters for whom the fortunes of their club is the be-all-and-end-all of
their existence. Our grandchildren barrack for Collingwood Football club and so
we sometimes watch their matches. There's a guy there who has a silver jacket
and funny hair and the TV cameras always pan around to him whenever they want a
spectacular individual's reaction to something amazing or disastrous in the
game... Regarding sporting achievements, sometimes a parent's self-worth will
be linked to their children's sporting success: and this can be pathological in
the case of parents-from-hell who abuse referees at their children's games
etc.
I have counselling clients whose thinking is dominated
by their low self-esteem. Everything they plan or do or which
motivates them when they're trawling the dating sites online is driven by the
question: will I be attractive to this person? Will they like me?
This year Americans are remembering the Civil War -
150 years on - and the commentariat are opining about whether it was about
slavery or something else. If you look under United States military casualties
of War in Wikipedia you'll discover that an astonishing 625,000 persons
were killed for an 'us versus them' idea between Union and Confederate forces
based on whether it's OK to have slaves or not.
Then there are others whose vocation or job or
ministry is all-consuming. I've spoken at hundreds of pastors' conferences, and
in some of them I overhear this sort of conversation: 'How're going Ben? How's
the church doing?' And Ben's response will be in terms of four criteria for
success which pastors in this denomination (and there's something of this with
most pastors of course) - those four criteria are numbers of people attending,
or dollars in the offering-plates, or if those aren't newsworthy, maybe some
terrific program they've started in their church, or their building program:
these four - numbers of people, offerings, programs, buildings - are all
measurable, and the pastor's self-worth is linked to their perceptions of
failure or success in these areas...
Some churches become known/famous for something which
becomes theirtheory-of everything. It's the 'Toronto Blessing' in one,
where pilgrims come to be prayed for and be 'slain in the Spirit'. I'm thinking
of another, a large church, to which people migrate if they're fed up with the
fundamentalist preaching of their home-church or denomination and they want
something much more 'progressive'.
People become famous for their proposal of a theory-of-everything -
Karl Marx with his theories about society's progress in terms of the dialectic
of class struggle: if you had to summarize his thinking 'the capitalistic
system and he dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' would be in there somewhere.
Then Freud: how would you summarize his theory-of-everything?
It would have something to do with the power of repression - especialy of bad
sexual stuff - and what it does to the unconscious mind - and how to deal
with all those bad ideas in psychoanalysis: talking about your dreams, perhaps
with free-association in the company of a therapist.
Well, you get the idea.
This morning I want to explore Jesus' 'theory of everything'. Do you mean he had one? Certainly did, and will you please turn in your Bibles to...
Well, you get the idea.
This morning I want to explore Jesus' 'theory of everything'. Do you mean he had one? Certainly did, and will you please turn in your Bibles to...
It's the driving force in their life. It dominates
their conversation if you get them with like-minded others. It gives their life
meaning. It can be ideological, or theological, or psychological, or
sociological...
Let me give you some examples: I grew up with a group
of sincere Christian people called the Plymouth Brethren (they preferred 'Open
Brethren) for whom the 'End Times' was their 'theory of everything'.
They read newspapers and found verses in Daniel or Zechariah which connected
with something happening in Iran, or Russia, or especially Israel. Some of
those Brethren are still alive and at my mothers' funeral, just after we'd
buried her in Woronora cemetery near Sutherland in Sydney - just twenty
metres from her grave, I overheard a couple of them talking animatedly
about their latest theory about who the Antichrist might be.
Every major sporting club has a core group of diehard
supporters for whom the fortunes of their club is the be-all-and-end-all of
their existence. Our grandchildren barrack for Collingwood (Australian
Football) Club and so we sometimes watch their matches. There's a guy there who
runs their cheer squad who wears a gold jacket and a funny yellow hat and bushy
white hair and the TV cameras always pan around to him whenever they want a
spectacular individual's reaction to something amazing or disastrous in the
game. (Read all about him in the Wikipedia article headed Joffa Corfe: did you
know they've made a movie about him - the most passionate football supporter in
Australia).
Regarding sporting achievements, sometimes a parent's self-worth will be linked to their children's sporting success: and this can be pathological in the case of parents-from-hell who abuse referees at their children's games etc.
Regarding sporting achievements, sometimes a parent's self-worth will be linked to their children's sporting success: and this can be pathological in the case of parents-from-hell who abuse referees at their children's games etc.
I have counselling clients whose thinking is dominated
by their low self-esteem.Everything they plan or do or which motivates
them when they're trawling the dating sites online is driven by the question:
will I be attractive to this person? Will they like me?
This year Americans are remembering the Civil War -
150 years on - and the commentariat are opining about whether it was about
slavery or something else. If you look under United States Military Casualties
of War in Wikipedia you'll discover that an astonishing 625,000 persons
were killed for an 'us versus them' idea between Union and Confederate forces
based on whether it's OK to have slaves or not. Of course, you all know that
the 'theory of everything' for the South African apartheir regime
centred on the idea of the 'curse of Ham' on people whose skin happens to be
black, and that idea is still around in the fundamentalist backblocks of
Alabama...
Then there are others whose vocation or job or
ministry is all-consuming. I've spoken at hundreds of pastors' conferences, and
in some of them I overhear this sort of conversation: 'How're going Ben? How's
the church doing?' And Ben's response will be in terms of four criteria for
success which pastors in this denomination (and there's something of this with
most pastors of course) - those four criteria are numbers of people attending,
or dollars in the offering-plates, or if those aren't newsworthy, maybe some terrific
program they've started in their church, or their building program: these four
- numbers of people, offerings, programs, buildings - are all measurable, and
the pastor's self-worth is linked to their perceptions of failure or success in
these areas...
Some churches become known/famous for something which
becomes their theory-of everything. It's the 'Toronto Blessing' in
one, where pilgrims come to be prayed for and be 'slain in the Spirit'. I'm
thinking of another, a large church, to which people migrate if they're fed up
with the fundamentalist preaching of their home-church or denomination and they
want something much more 'progressive'.
People become famous for their proposal of a theory-of-everything -
e.g. Karl Marx with his theories about society's progress in terms of the
dialectic of class struggle: if you had to summarize his thinking 'the
capitalistic system and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' would be in there
somewhere.
Then there's Freud: how would you summarize his theory-of-everything?
It would have something to do with the power of repression - especially of bad
sexual stuff - and what it does to the unconscious mind - and how to deal
with all those bad ideas in psychoanalysis: talking about your dreams, perhaps
with free-association in the company of a therapist.
Well, you get the idea.
This morning I want to explore Jesus' 'theory of everything'.
Do you mean he had one? Certainly did, and will you please turn in your Bibles
to...
~~
THE SHACK
Part I: A Preamble
Religious books become best-sellers when they connect with our deep
questions and tragic/meaningful experiences. Some become classics,
others may be left behind with the detritus of literary or theological
history.
Wm. Paul Young's The Shack (2007) is a best-seller (over 1 million
copies by June 8, 2008, translation into 40-plus languages, and has knocked the 'Left Behind' and Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven books off a few perches) but probably won't be a classic. He's nowhere near the brilliance of apologists like Oxbridge don C S Lewis or Soren Kierkegaard.
But when many ordinary folks tell their friends 'You gotta read this' I think they have two questions in mind which Young is trying to answer:
* 'Where is God when tragedy crashes in on us, when the innocent suffer,
when a "Great Sadness" overwhelms us?' (Theodicy) and
* 'What sense can we make of it all?' (Theology).
Addressing the second issue first, my 'conservative self' wants a
coherent theological system where 'truth' is clear, and questions are
answered to my satisfaction with a theory of EverythingImportant which
'adds up'. Young tries to do this in his own way, but Christians at both ends of the theological spectrum (Fundamentalist/Conservative, Progressive/Liberal) will take issue with some of his ideas.
More of that later.
My 'moderate/progressive/skeptical self' can live with some paradox,
ambiguity, antinomy, and has real problems wallowing in 'simplicity this side of complexity'. I'm prepared to live with stuff happening which I can't explain, and believe that verifiable 'miracles' are very rare. I know humans can't easily cope with cognitive dissonance, but some of my reservations about The Shack's approach is that too little is left to mystery. The Judeo-Christian God suffers with us, acts for us, speaks to us, but (as in Job, for example) doesn't always give us nifty answers to our deep and urgent questions.
Without revealing too much of the plot, Young takes us on a journey into
another, fantastic (in both senses) world, complete with out-of-body
experiences - a journey which, to say the least, stretches credulity.
Liberals/progressives are rarely at home in realms-beyond-the-rational.
Many books have been written about evil/suffering: Philip Yancey's
'Where is God When it Hurts?', Harold Kushner's 'When Bad Things Happen
to Good People', C. S. Lewis's 'The Problem of Pain' come to mind.
The Shack tries to contemporize (and soften) C. S. Lewis's approach,
especially the in-your-face question that Lewis asks if one objects to
the notion of human freedom issuing in the possibility of our inflicting
evil on others, and God's allowing rebellious humans to choose hell:
'Well, what are you asking God to do?' The Shack is an attempt to put
into words God's response...
The Problem of Pain has these famous lines which might serve as
commentary on Young's approach:
'ALL YOUR LIFE AN UNATTAINABLE ECSTASY HAS HOVERED JUST BEYOND THE GRASP
OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. THE DAY IS COMING WHEN YOU WILL WAKE TO FIND,
BEYOND ALL HOPE, THAT YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT, OR ELSE, THAT IT WAS WITHIN
YOUR REACH AND YOU HAVE LOST IT FOREVER.'
Except that Young is not as prescriptive about hell as was C S Lewis.
There's much more about the joyful certainty of a loving relationship
with God in The Shack than in The Problem of Pain (which C S Lewis wrote
before he fell in love, and married, Joy Davidman. You'll have to read
'A Grief Observed' to get in touch with that side of Lewis).
Indeed Young is sometimes accused by fundamentalists of being a
universalist. He isn't, unless you want to read that into this
interesting exchange:
[Jesus]: 'Those who love me come from every system that exists. They
were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats,
Republicans... Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no
desire to make them Christian...' 'Does that mean,' asked Mack, 'that
all roads will lead to you?' 'Not at all,' smiled Jesus... 'Most roads
don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to
find you' [p. 182].
As I write, Paul Young's evening with a group of several hundred of us
in Melbourne recently is still fresh. He told us that the paragraph
above is his favorite, but has attracted the most 'flak'. (He didn't mention hell either, which no doubt disappointed the fundamentalists among us!).
I would urge anyone to read this little page-turner, and suspend your
simplistic fundamentalism or sophisticated skepticism, and allow
yourself to be bathed in God's love - an experience beyond creeds or
explicable rationalities, whether conservative or liberal. If you can offer a more coherent apologetic send it to me, and I'll put a selection on our website, but I for one applaud Young for, as we Australians say, 'having a go'...
Now let's look in more detail at the man and his book, and examine
some of the facile-to-excellent answers he offers to life's Big Questions.
******
Part II: The Author and his Book
Knowing an author's life-story offers many keys to understanding what
and how they write. At Paul Young's Melbourne meeting I jotted down these summary- points about his amazing journey:
* He was brought up among the stone-age Dani people of New Guinea. His missionary-father was cruel/abusive, and the boy Paul had lots of questions he was not allowed to ask.
* Because he understood the Dani language better than his parents (as
children do in these situations) he knew about their conspiracies to
kill his family: which, understandably, produced terrible nightmares.
His bad dreams were made worse by aspects of the Dani's highly
sexualized culture, and some sexual abuse he received at a boarding school.
* Paul attended 20-something different schools before graduating from
high school, so he didn't have a 'missus': he trained himself not to
'miss' anybody.
* Until he worked on his shame-based approach to life over a period of
11 years (after a brief extra-marital affair) Paul reacted to conflict
by 'compartmentalizing' his responses to each person/situation. He
didn't know the difference between an observation and a value-statement.
For example, when his wife said 'Don't mix colored clothes with whites' his life-experience taught him to regard that as a dire condemnation of him as a person. He'd planned his suicide (in Mexico, so his children wouldn't find his body). But his wife never gave up on him (hence the tribute 'To Kim, my Beloved, thank you for saving my life!').
* Paul had confused God with his own father: so he could never win God's
approval either, and became a religious perfectionist. His were 'golden
addictions' - being significant, pleasing others, etc.
* Paul has only been his 'free self' the last four years: especially
after intensive therapy (until his counsellor-friend was accidentally
shot dead by a meth-addicted son). After a life full of religious and
psychological 'crap', God showed up! His secrets were exposed - all of
them - and he finally realized he couldn't heal himself.
* Paul is an 'accidental author': he didn't set out to publish a book, but to write a story - in 2005 - for his children and grandchildren. He
notes wrily: 'It's as if God wanted someone to speak to Balaam!' Paul
was not well-off (three jobs, rental housing) and when a few friends urged him to get it into print, 26 publishers rejected it. So they set up 'Windblown Media' and published it themselves, despatching books around the world from a friend's garage.
* The Shack is a parable. 'Does that mean it's true?' 'Yes,' responds
Paul, 'It's just not "real": it's a story!' Is the geography real? Yes
(except for the stop-light): people are now hiking that route in the
U.S's Pacific North-West. (The story-line is so 'real' that two forensic
detectives asked for a briefing on the case-file!).
* The Shack's key question: 'In a world of unspeakable pain, where is
God?'. Paul says he's reacting against the angry God he grew up with. He
wants people to bring their own paradigms to the story, and be open to a
loving Father/Son/Spirit God. Performance-based religion is the worst
way to relate to God.
* And the imagery? The 'shack' is the human soul, filled with good stuff or junk by the good and evil inputs of others; it's the house one builds out of one's own pain: until God ('Papa') emerges and gives us an 'Almighty hug!' It took Paul 11 years to renovate his 'shack'.
* The essential message? 'There is nothing from which you cannot be
redeemed!'' 'You are the one the shepherd will leave the ninety and nine
for...!'
* Paul's conclusion last night? 'It took me 50 years to become a child:
I'm not going back to being an adult again!' 'Remember: God doesn't use
shame or guilt or condemnation to heal us!'
Part III: SOME KEY IDEAS.
The Shack opens in the context of tragedy. Four years have passed since the cruel murder of Missy, Mack's precious six-year-old daughter.
The heart of the book is a series of extended conversations between Mack and the various members of the Trinity about how God could possibly allow such pain in his creation. Throughout these conversations, God reveals deep secrets about both his character and the nature of the universe that slowly heal Mack's grief, anger and pain.
The Big Questions:
1. WHAT IS GOD LIKE? 'The door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. Instinctively he jumped back, but he was too slow. With speed that belied her size, she crossed the distance between them and engulfed him in her arms....' The Shack's feminized 'God' has caused widespread consternation. What's in Paul Young's mind? Here's one explanation: 'For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.'
My response? The first time I visited Harlem in New York a Presbyterian minister told me that most fathers there were cruel and/or absent, so they rewrote the Lord's Prayer: 'God in heaven, who cares for us like our grandmother does...' The person most-like-God for those kids was their grandma.
Brilliant!
Jesus in The Shack as a thirty-ish man of Middle Eastern appearance: no problems there!
The Holy Spirit - the creative Sarayu - is an Asian-looking woman (seen more clearly when you aren't looking directly at her).
Mack asks, 'Which one of you is God?' '"I am," said all three in unison.'
And what is God like? 'I'm not a bully, not some self-centered demanding little deity insisting on my own way. I am good, and I desire only what is best for you. You cannot find that through guilt or condemnation....'
In other words - a healthier God than the one espoused in guilt-ridden legalistic religion. (As the Jesus Freaks used to say 'If God is like Jesus, nothing is too good to be true!')
2. WHERE IS GOD? 'God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things'. The panentheism implicit here has also been attacked by conservative Christians. But we ask: 'Where do you suggest an omnipresent, loving God is *not*?' As the old aphorism has it: 'God, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.'
3. THE CRIME. A friend writes: 'Do you think the author downplayed the severity of the crime against Missy? When the climatic dialogue happened and he was told the little girl coped a better than the dad might imagine, and she was worried about him... I thought that section was trite actually.' We'll make our own judgments there.
4. MYSTERY AND THE BOOK OF JOB. The same friend: 'And the other thing that I felt was overlooked, was the book of Job - the only story in the Bible anything like The Shack: where God comes and talks to the person suffering. And there.... well... God is not some cookie-making happy and patient middle aged woman. In Job God is very "Who are you to ask me this?" kind of God. (Or am I misreading Job?)'. No, Jim, you're not. And further, in Job God doesn't finally answer the Big Questions (as Job's 'comforters' tried to do), but invites the suffering Job to trust him anyway. Dialogues about meaning and The Great Sadness in The Shack sometimes come across as too simplistic. Nowhere (that I can recall) does The Shack's God say something like: 'On that one, Mack, you'll just have to trust me!'
5. JESUS' CHURCH is 'all about relationships and simply sharing life... being open and available to others around us. My church is all about people, and life is all about relationships.' One of the key tests of a healthy theology is to ask 'What, essentially, is a Christian?' If the reply begins 'A Christian is someone who believes that...' and love is not at the top of the list, I become very wary. Sure, as 1 John teaches us, there are three tests of authentic Christianity: belief, obedience, love. But love is, for John, as for Jesus his master, the 'greatest of these' (as another Jesus-follower, Paul, put it).
6. FORGIVENESS. Not only does Mack learn to "forgive" all who have hurt him, he also forgives "God." Conservative critiques? 'As if God had done something wrong!' Such a simplistic response ignores both human nature (asking, reasonably, why if God is both loving and powerful the world isn't a happier place) and the enunciation of this complaint in the Psalmic laments.
7. NEW AGE? Literalists have problems with phenomena like (what The Shack calls) "flying" - something akin to astral travel. 'Such a powerful ability, the imagination!" says The Shack's fictional "Jesus." That power alone makes you so like us.' My experience of rationalist theological conservatives is that they have immense problems validating God's gift of imagination.
8. ANTI-INSTITUTIONALISM. '...enforcing rules' [says Sarayu] '...is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.'
9. MACK'S JESUS ISN'T A 'CHRISTIAN'. '"Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian." The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. "No, I suppose you aren’t."' (For my take on this see 'Was Jesus a Christian?' http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9664.htm).
SUMMARY. As many have noted The Shack has a quietly subversive stance, not-so-subtly attacking conventional, orthodox Christianity. The book will appeal to the 'Jesus Yes Church No' _majority_ (yes!) of Western Christ-followers. The response everywhere in the many reviews by 'the Doctrine Police' - whose God isn't as 'nice' - decry the absence/ paucity of references to a hierarchical Trinity, hell (sinners are always 'separated from a holy God'), Satan, repentance, salvation, sin and guilt, a physical 'resurrection', and doctrinally 'correct' belief-systems. Such wooden literalism doesn't cope with this genre of imaginative fiction (though note that The Shack has a literal Adam). One of the problems of course is that Paul Young doesn't 'proof-text' everything with Scripture references. 'At its core the book is one long Bible study as Mack seeks to resolve his anger at God,' writes Paul Young's friend and advisor Wayne Jacobsen [1].
ENDORSEMENTS. When a highly-respected Evangelical scholar such as Eugene Peterson says 'This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" did for his. It's that good!' the rest of us had better sit up and take notice. I agree with this sentiment, in an Amazon.com review: 'Don’t miss this! If there’s a better book out there capturing God’s engaging nature and his ability to crawl into our darkest nightmare with his love, light and healing, I’ve not seen it. For the most ardent believer or newest spiritual seeker, the shack is a must-read.'
Buy it and read it with an open heart and mind, disagreeing here and there if you wish, but above all prayerfully asking The Shack's God to give you a little taste of the amazing love practised in the Community of the Trinity.
More:
[1] For more helpful material on this idea, Google 'Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity.'
[2] 'Is The Shack Heresy?' by Wayne Jacobsen (one of Paul Young's friends / theological advisors):
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
* * * * *
We realize folks will disagree. We planned on it. We appreciate the interaction of those who have honest concerns and questions. Those who have been captured by this story are encouraged to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so and not trust us or the ravings of those who misinterpret this book, either threatened by its success, or those who want to ride on it to push their own fear-based agenda.
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
*****
A review of The Shack. By William Young. Part One.
Windblown Media, 2007. (Available in Australia from Koorong Books)
The two mega-themes of this novel are the love of God and human suffering. Those are about the two biggest topics around. As such, this book is an attempt at theodicy, that is, justifying the ways of God in the face of suffering and evil in the world. It is no small task.
Before I share my assessment of this book, let me begin by laying my cards on the table. I am not a great fan of fiction. Probably 97 per cent of my reading is non-fiction. Thus the literary merits of the book will not here be discussed. Also, I happen to think that theology is quite important, especially today when so much of the church is anti-intellectual, ahistorical and theologically illiterate. Thus I read this book with a careful theological eye as much as with an eye to an intriguing novel.
Finally, as mentioned, this book is in fact an exercise in theodicy. Since my PhD is actually in an area of theodicy, I have read a fair bit on the subject over the years. And with at least several millennia worth of material written on the topic, one can ask whether anything new or substantial can be said about it all. Does this book contribute anything new or of value?
So these three factors obviously colour how I have read this book. And I realize that different books will grab people differently. Some would rather get their theology and biblical understanding through a work of fiction than a large tome of systematic theology. And some people are gripped more by their emotions than by their intellect. God is able, in other words, to speak to us in different ways through different means, and we must appreciate such diversity.
Positive considerations
Many people have found this to be a life changing book, a mind-blowing experience, and a spiritual stick of dynamite. So what about me? All in all I think it is a helpful volume that may well speak to many, bring about healing and understanding, and minister in pastoral and spiritual ways. By using the medium of fiction, complete with a gripping and emotive story line, it may be able to convey truths that for some would not be forthcoming in a work of nonfiction.
The plot quite simply is this. Three and a half years after a man – Mack - loses his young daughter to a vicious serial killer, he gets an invitation to meet face to face with God; indeed, with all three members of the Godhead. The weekend encounter takes place at the very same secluded shack where the attack on his daughter took place.
The encounter with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will forever change his life as he directly challenges God about the pain, grief, bitterness and anger which he is carrying, along with the millions of unanswered questions he has had to struggle with for so long.
So what does one tell a devastated father who has had about the worst thing that can possibly happen to him? Or more specifically, what can God tell such a person? How can God break into this man’s life, and both comfort him as well as help him to make sense of his nightmare?
That in part is the stuff of theodicy, and is as old – at least – as the book of Job, penned perhaps three millennia ago. And just as Job did not have all of his questions answered, or at least not in the way that he expected, so too here with Mack. In fact, he experiences an encounter with God which in itself is much, if not most, of the answer.
Indeed, God’s presence in times of trouble has always been a large part of the answer. Individuals whys and how comes are often not answered, but a bigger understanding and awareness of who God is tends to be the more important outcome. Job could say that before his troubles, he had heard about God, but after his suffering, he had seen God.
So what then is God’s answer to Mack? Or more specifically, what is God’s answer as understood and represented by the author, William Young? As I said, it is hard to come up with anything radically new on such age-old questions. And Young generally reiterates some basic Christian truths that evangelicals for quite some time have tried to present. He just may have done this in a new, more forceful and moving fashion.
The heart of this is that God is overwhelmingly a God of love, and everything he does is done out of supreme love. There is an eternal love relationship between the three members of the Trinity, and that love oozes out toward us, his creatures.
Of course love by its nature cannot be coerced or forced upon someone, and it can be rejected. Somehow, as theologians have tried to argue over the centuries, the God of the Bible is a God of love, and yet is also a sovereign God. Thus He is in charge of all that happens, and nothing surprises him or is outside of his knowledge or purposes.
But he is not directly the author of evil. God hates evil and injustice and cruelty far more than we ever will. Yet somehow he is able to work his purposes out of what seem to be the most dark and hideous situations. God can and does bring good out of evil.
And as the supreme example of this, consider the worst horror ever to have happened in human history – the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It in fact turned out to be the greatest good ever undertaken by God. It is an unfathomable mystery, yet a clear teaching of Scripture.
Why did Mack’s six-year-old daughter have to go through this hellish abduction and murder? We may not know the specific answers to such questions, but we can know of God and his character, as revealed in Scripture, and as revealed in his Son. The incarnation gives us a God who is close to everyone of us, and who shares our grief and sorrows.
Suffering is something which God knows all about. Any questions we might have about the presence of evil and suffering in this world are questions which God himself has dealt with, as the eternal Trinity was somehow temporarily broken up, and in some way, put to death, for our wellbeing.
These are deep truths which none of us mere mortals can begin to understand, but somehow God had been there and done that. Jesus is a man acquainted with grief and familiar with sorrows. Why particular tragedies and horrendous evils occur we cannot know, but we can know that a God of infinite love never leaves us, never forsakes us, and is with us during every moment of our tests and trials.
Indeed, the incredibly, unfathomably, deep, deep love of God for us is a major theme of this book. Again, it is an old Christian truth, but one vividly rendered even more real in the form of this work of fiction. God is absolutely crazy about us. Even if I was the only person on the planet, Jesus would still have died in my place to save me from my sins and to restore me to an intense love relationship with God.
But knowledge and awareness of this love is greatly distorted and clouded by our own selfishness, sin, and sense of independence. We think we can find joy anywhere but with our creator and redeemer. But that is just not possible. Only in Him is life in all its fullest. And often it is the hardships and agonies of life that drive us away from self, and to the source of true joy, peace and happiness.
Thus suffering has a real soul-making function, as many believers have argued over the centuries. It is often in our greatest pains that we draw nearest to God. God of course has not drawn closer to us – he has never left us. But we stray from God by our selfish striving for complete independence. But that only makes things worse.
Only by surrendering to his love, and renouncing our own waywardness and spirit of independence, can we experience the love relationship that God so much desires for us. That is unfortunately perhaps the hardest thing we can do: to let go of self and selfish ambitions, and surrender to the one who made us and loves us, and knows what is best for us.
Of course all this is a mere broad brush theological summary of the traditional Christian understanding. These points are made much more vividly, powerfully and directly in this moving and transforming novel. Thus I am not doing real justice to the book here. One will have to read it for oneself, and see what impact it might have.
But an important part of the book’s value, I suppose, lies in something almost all Christians must have desired upon many occasions: to have a face to face encounter with the living God. Not just a dream, or a vision, or a meditative communion with God, but an actual, in the flesh meeting, just as the early disciples of Jesus had enjoyed. Imagine just what that would be like!
Indeed, the hiddenness or seeming absence of God is a very real dilemma for most believers. We follow a God who is spiritual, while we are material. Thus we meet with God in prayer, or reflection, or the Sacraments. But it often seems that in our daily walk, we must hold on to his presence by faith. And that faith is sorely tested in times of grief, sorrow and tragedy. Indeed, it often seems that during these dark times God is most absent, or at least appears to be.
Thus we may all long to have such an encounter as Mack had. And of course one day, in the next life, we will. But Young seeks to paint a picture of what such an encounter might look like here and now. And thus the value of the fictional approach – to make more real certain spiritual realities which we already know through works of non-fiction.
Conclusion
For many this book will bring them much closer to God, by revealing more carefully what the wonderful triune God we serve is really like. It is hoped that many will benefit from this book, and that it will indeed serve a purpose much as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did over three centuries earlier.
This then is my general positive endorsement of the book. But that is not to say that it is without problems, or areas of concern. I thus invite the reader to peruse the second part of my review for some particular critical assessments of this book.
A review of The Shack. By William Young. Part Two.
Windblown Media, 2007. (Available in Australia from Koorong Books)
I have offered my general (and positive) assessments of The Shack in part one of this review. Here I wish to address a few areas of concern I had with the book. They should not deter potential readers of this book, and they are not meant to detract from the overall value of the book. But they must be stated.
Obviously no one is perfect, and we are all fallen and finite. Thus we must be careful here, especially when we dare to write about such huge topics as God and the problem of suffering. None of us have all the truth, and our knowledge in partial. We see through a glass darkly, as Paul informs us. So humility and care is needed whenever we seek to talk about such matters.
Thus William Young has taken a stab at some of the harder topics to cover, and he deserves credit for trying. Yet we must all acknowledge that he will not geteverything right, and there will of course be areas in which fellow believers may wish to disagree with him. These then are some of the concerns I noted as I read through the book.
Negative concerns
One might ask whether a work of fiction can even do justice to such topics. But God has often used fiction in the past to help convey biblical, theological and spiritual truths. I already mentioned The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. It has served believers well for centuries, and still blesses many. More recently The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis have also been mightily used of God to teach biblical themes. So without question there is a place for fiction in dealing with such theological and apologetic tasks.
Let me first deal with Young’s depiction of God. Although a work of fiction, Young is seeking here to represent actual biblical and theological truths about God. Much of this book in fact is Young’s attempt to try to portray God aright, and to deal with misunderstandings and distorted views of the Biblical picture of God.
I must say I initially found myself thinking that Young’s depiction of God the Father is much like the way he is represented in the two recent films, Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. That is, God is a joke-telling Black American with a great sense of humour. Indeed, the Father is presented in this book as a large, jovial Black American woman. The Spirit is presented as a wispy Asian female, and Jesus is presented as a male of Middle Eastern appearance.
Now this need not necessarily cause problems. True, God in Scripture is primarily represented as male, but of course ultimately God is spirit, and is above sex or gender. Yet he has created us – male and female – in his image. While some feminine images are used of God in the Bible, overwhelmingly God is presented in male terms, imagery and language.
Later in the book the Father does appear as a male to Mack. It is because Mack had a horribly abusive father when he was a child, so he needed a maternal presentation of God at first. So no real damage is done here. Again it is a work of fiction. And in reality God can appear to us in any form that he chooses to.
Another possible area of concern is that by so stressing the love of God, there is always the tendency to get the Biblical portrait of God out of kilter. That is, God is love to be sure, but he is also holy, just, righteous, and so on. Often these other attributes get lost or minimised in a strong emphasis on the love of God.
And Young at times seems to move in this direction. Fortunately, he will balance things out on most occasions, thus preventing any real concerns about heresy (which already some are expressing about this book). For example, an unbalanced emphasis on the love of God, to the exclusion of his hatred of sin, or judgment on ungodliness, has led some believers into embracing a type of universalism, the idea that in the end everyone will be saved.
It is true that God through Christ has made a way for all of us to be accepted in the beloved. But we still must take the steps to realize that invitation. And that involves repentance and turning from ourselves, and submitting to God. Fortunately Young seems to include this, when it looks like he is just about to go over the theological edge.
For example, at one place (p. 182) Jesus is talking of all sorts of people coming to Him, and he says “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa”. To which Mack rightly asks, “Does that mean that all roads will lead to you?” But then Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere”.
Or consider another episode where the Father tells Mack that because of the work of Jesus, “I am now fully reconciled to the whole world”. This could be understood as a case of universalism, but fortunately the statement is then qualified by God saying that “reconciliation is a two way street, and I have done my part”. The inference is that sinners then have to do their part (repentance and faith, eg), which presents the balanced Biblical picture. And on pages 225-226 we finally hear such talk of the need for repentance and trust. So a potentially unbiblical position is here at least brought back into some kind of balance.
A related concern is that this important emphasis on love and relationships as being the heart of what Christianity is all about can lead to antinomianism and an unbalanced view of the workings between law and grace. For example, God tells Mack to not worry about following rules: “The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus. . . . Don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship – a way of coming to be with us” (pp. 197-198).
Of course one wants to take the spirit of this, and see the importance of a love relationship over against legalism and so on. But a fine line needs to be trod here, and it is unhelpful to set law against grace. Both are given by God, and both are used in his purposes. Young’s idea here seems almost to be that we must choose one or the other, that they are polar opposites.
But Scripture has a very high view of law. Sure, law cannot save us, but law is from God, and reflects who he is. To argue that we not concern ourselves with any rules means that we not only dismiss the 613 laws and commands given in the Old Testament, but that the many commands given in the New Testament are also to be treated as irrelevant and something to not worry about.
No one is saved by keeping rules, but once saved, and out of gratitude, we do seek to keep the rules that Christ and the apostles have laid down for us. By so emphasising love relationships (which admittedly, many evangelicals need to hear again, and hear in clear and forceful terms), Young seems to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes loving relationships are at the heart of what God wants for us, but it is not at the expense of holy living, and/or seeking to please God in all that he asks of us.
Other potential concerns crop up. Three times in the book Mack tells us of the paucity and general unhelpfulness of his earlier theological training in seminary. Compared with his encounter with the living God, it fades in comparison, which would be expected. But it seems that Young is taking a bit of a dig at seminaries and theological training here. Hopefully he is not, but it seems to come out that way, both here and elsewhere in the book.
But of course there should be no dichotomy between knowledge of God (which is what theology seeks to do) and experiencing the presence of God. The two should reinforce each other. Both are important. Right living (orthopraxy) and right belief (orthodoxy) go together, and the one feeds off the other. Paul warns us to watch our lives and our teaching carefully. It is not one or the other, but both.
And while theology seems to be mildly scoffed at in this book, the book in fact is one big exercise in theology, albeit in fictional form. Young is seeking to present a theology of God, with an apologetic spin. That is the same sort of thing all good evangelical seminaries seek to do. So this may have been an unnecessary slight to theological education and seminary learning.
Another area which will bother some (at least those with some theological background) is the way the Trinity is presented in the book. The idea of any sort of hierarchy in the Trinity is slammed here. “Hierarchy would make no sense among us” the Father tells Mack, for example (p. 122).
Now that happens to be a position that some good evangelicals hold to. Most however would probably argue that there is some sort of hierarchy in the Trinity – certainly not a hierarchy of essence or nature, but of role or function.
Theologically conservative Christians tend to argue that just as there is a hierarchy of roles or functions in the Godhead, so too God has ordained such a hierarchy in human relationships, for example with the husband being the head of the wife and family, as Scripture suggests. Young would evidently reject both types of hierarchy.
All this is being debated in evangelical circles, as I mentioned. So Young is simply taking one side on this debate here, and not all evangelicals will be happy with his position. Young is insisting that his view is the way it is, but other believers might beg to differ.
Other related issues arise. Since Young is so against hierarchy and power, and sees them as antithetical to love and relationship, he seems to again go too far in one direction. Thus he says all human institutions – be they government, economies, marriage or family – are built on hierarchy and power, and therefore are all counter to his ways and purposes.
But it would seem that God in fact created many of these institutions, so we should not be so quick to dismiss them or rubbish them. God has ordained the institutions of the state, and of the family, for example. Clearly there is hierarchy in the state, and the use of power is God-ordained. So not all cases of human hierarchy and power are wrong. Again, believers can debate whether there should be any hierarchy in the home (as between husband and wife) but surely some hierarchy should exist between parent and child.
Other points of concern could be mentioned. On page 120 we find the Father telling Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment…” Well, yes and no. Sin brings bad consequences on us, and this seems to be Paul’s train of thought in Romans 1 when he speaks of homosexuality as being both sinful, and in a sense, its own punishment.
But we also have many clear texts telling us that there is a separate punishment for sin (which Jesus of course took upon himself) and future punishment, which unbelievers will experience eternally in the form of hell. So Young seem to be unnecessarily downplaying some clear biblical truths here, in the interests of stressing the love and relationship side of things.
Conclusion
Defenders of the book – and perhaps Young himself – might argue that sometimes a push to extremes is needed to correct long-held wrong understandings and theologies that evangelicals have held to. Thus the emphasis on love and relationship may tend to go too far, at the expense of other biblical truths, but these defenders might argue that this is necessary, as we need to wake believers out of their slumber, and get them to realise once again the wonder of a deep, intimate love relationship with God.
I agree with the aim, but I am not sure if I am happy with the means. Yes church history tends to be a pendulum swing, of one extreme being matched by another extreme, and so on, in the hopes of finding the biblically balanced middle ground. While sympathetic to what Young is trying to do here, as one who feels we must pay attention to the whole counsel of God (as Paul exhorts us), and as a theologian and one who want to let Scripture speak in all its fullness, I cringe at times at some of the lack of balance presented here.
But having said all that, I think that on the whole this book may achieve a lot of good for the Body of Christ. As I said at the end of Part One, this book may well help many. I hope it does. As with all things, let the reader beware. The reader needs to read with critical eyes, testing everything that is being said according the word of God. We all need to be like the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily to see if what was being told them was true (Acts 17:11).
But get the book if you are interested, and give it a read, being open to what God may seek to achieve in you in the process. I invite readers of this book to share their thoughts here with us in the comments’ section. Let the discussion begin.
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/04/11/a-review-of-the-shack-by-
william-young-part-two/
TheShack official website - http://www.theshackbook.com/
Is The Shack Heresy? By Wayne Jacobsen (one
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
Well-written 'Reformed Evangelical' critique - http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/briefing/library/5395/
Rowland Croucher 27/11/2008
Part I: A Preamble
Religious books become best-sellers when they connect with our deep
questions and tragic/meaningful experiences. Some become classics,
others may be left behind with the detritus of literary or theological
history.
Wm. Paul Young's The Shack (2007) is a best-seller (over 1 million
copies by June 8, 2008, translation into 40-plus languages, and has knocked the 'Left Behind' and Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven books off a few perches) but probably won't be a classic. He's nowhere near the brilliance of apologists like Oxbridge don C S Lewis or Soren Kierkegaard.
But when many ordinary folks tell their friends 'You gotta read this' I think they have two questions in mind which Young is trying to answer:
* 'Where is God when tragedy crashes in on us, when the innocent suffer,
when a "Great Sadness" overwhelms us?' (Theodicy) and
* 'What sense can we make of it all?' (Theology).
Addressing the second issue first, my 'conservative self' wants a
coherent theological system where 'truth' is clear, and questions are
answered to my satisfaction with a theory of EverythingImportant which
'adds up'. Young tries to do this in his own way, but Christians at both ends of the theological spectrum (Fundamentalist/Conservative, Progressive/Liberal) will take issue with some of his ideas.
More of that later.
My 'moderate/progressive/skeptical self' can live with some paradox,
ambiguity, antinomy, and has real problems wallowing in 'simplicity this side of complexity'. I'm prepared to live with stuff happening which I can't explain, and believe that verifiable 'miracles' are very rare. I know humans can't easily cope with cognitive dissonance, but some of my reservations about The Shack's approach is that too little is left to mystery. The Judeo-Christian God suffers with us, acts for us, speaks to us, but (as in Job, for example) doesn't always give us nifty answers to our deep and urgent questions.
Without revealing too much of the plot, Young takes us on a journey into
another, fantastic (in both senses) world, complete with out-of-body
experiences - a journey which, to say the least, stretches credulity.
Liberals/progressives are rarely at home in realms-beyond-the-rational.
Many books have been written about evil/suffering: Philip Yancey's
'Where is God When it Hurts?', Harold Kushner's 'When Bad Things Happen
to Good People', C. S. Lewis's 'The Problem of Pain' come to mind.
The Shack tries to contemporize (and soften) C. S. Lewis's approach,
especially the in-your-face question that Lewis asks if one objects to
the notion of human freedom issuing in the possibility of our inflicting
evil on others, and God's allowing rebellious humans to choose hell:
'Well, what are you asking God to do?' The Shack is an attempt to put
into words God's response...
The Problem of Pain has these famous lines which might serve as
commentary on Young's approach:
'ALL YOUR LIFE AN UNATTAINABLE ECSTASY HAS HOVERED JUST BEYOND THE GRASP
OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. THE DAY IS COMING WHEN YOU WILL WAKE TO FIND,
BEYOND ALL HOPE, THAT YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT, OR ELSE, THAT IT WAS WITHIN
YOUR REACH AND YOU HAVE LOST IT FOREVER.'
Except that Young is not as prescriptive about hell as was C S Lewis.
There's much more about the joyful certainty of a loving relationship
with God in The Shack than in The Problem of Pain (which C S Lewis wrote
before he fell in love, and married, Joy Davidman. You'll have to read
'A Grief Observed' to get in touch with that side of Lewis).
Indeed Young is sometimes accused by fundamentalists of being a
universalist. He isn't, unless you want to read that into this
interesting exchange:
[Jesus]: 'Those who love me come from every system that exists. They
were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats,
Republicans... Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no
desire to make them Christian...' 'Does that mean,' asked Mack, 'that
all roads will lead to you?' 'Not at all,' smiled Jesus... 'Most roads
don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to
find you' [p. 182].
As I write, Paul Young's evening with a group of several hundred of us
in Melbourne recently is still fresh. He told us that the paragraph
above is his favorite, but has attracted the most 'flak'. (He didn't mention hell either, which no doubt disappointed the fundamentalists among us!).
I would urge anyone to read this little page-turner, and suspend your
simplistic fundamentalism or sophisticated skepticism, and allow
yourself to be bathed in God's love - an experience beyond creeds or
explicable rationalities, whether conservative or liberal. If you can offer a more coherent apologetic send it to me, and I'll put a selection on our website, but I for one applaud Young for, as we Australians say, 'having a go'...
Now let's look in more detail at the man and his book, and examine
some of the facile-to-excellent answers he offers to life's Big Questions.
******
Part II: The Author and his Book
Knowing an author's life-story offers many keys to understanding what
and how they write. At Paul Young's Melbourne meeting I jotted down these summary- points about his amazing journey:
* He was brought up among the stone-age Dani people of New Guinea. His missionary-father was cruel/abusive, and the boy Paul had lots of questions he was not allowed to ask.
* Because he understood the Dani language better than his parents (as
children do in these situations) he knew about their conspiracies to
kill his family: which, understandably, produced terrible nightmares.
His bad dreams were made worse by aspects of the Dani's highly
sexualized culture, and some sexual abuse he received at a boarding school.
* Paul attended 20-something different schools before graduating from
high school, so he didn't have a 'missus': he trained himself not to
'miss' anybody.
* Until he worked on his shame-based approach to life over a period of
11 years (after a brief extra-marital affair) Paul reacted to conflict
by 'compartmentalizing' his responses to each person/situation. He
didn't know the difference between an observation and a value-statement.
For example, when his wife said 'Don't mix colored clothes with whites' his life-experience taught him to regard that as a dire condemnation of him as a person. He'd planned his suicide (in Mexico, so his children wouldn't find his body). But his wife never gave up on him (hence the tribute 'To Kim, my Beloved, thank you for saving my life!').
* Paul had confused God with his own father: so he could never win God's
approval either, and became a religious perfectionist. His were 'golden
addictions' - being significant, pleasing others, etc.
* Paul has only been his 'free self' the last four years: especially
after intensive therapy (until his counsellor-friend was accidentally
shot dead by a meth-addicted son). After a life full of religious and
psychological 'crap', God showed up! His secrets were exposed - all of
them - and he finally realized he couldn't heal himself.
* Paul is an 'accidental author': he didn't set out to publish a book, but to write a story - in 2005 - for his children and grandchildren. He
notes wrily: 'It's as if God wanted someone to speak to Balaam!' Paul
was not well-off (three jobs, rental housing) and when a few friends urged him to get it into print, 26 publishers rejected it. So they set up 'Windblown Media' and published it themselves, despatching books around the world from a friend's garage.
* The Shack is a parable. 'Does that mean it's true?' 'Yes,' responds
Paul, 'It's just not "real": it's a story!' Is the geography real? Yes
(except for the stop-light): people are now hiking that route in the
U.S's Pacific North-West. (The story-line is so 'real' that two forensic
detectives asked for a briefing on the case-file!).
* The Shack's key question: 'In a world of unspeakable pain, where is
God?'. Paul says he's reacting against the angry God he grew up with. He
wants people to bring their own paradigms to the story, and be open to a
loving Father/Son/Spirit God. Performance-based religion is the worst
way to relate to God.
* And the imagery? The 'shack' is the human soul, filled with good stuff or junk by the good and evil inputs of others; it's the house one builds out of one's own pain: until God ('Papa') emerges and gives us an 'Almighty hug!' It took Paul 11 years to renovate his 'shack'.
* The essential message? 'There is nothing from which you cannot be
redeemed!'' 'You are the one the shepherd will leave the ninety and nine
for...!'
* Paul's conclusion last night? 'It took me 50 years to become a child:
I'm not going back to being an adult again!' 'Remember: God doesn't use
shame or guilt or condemnation to heal us!'
Part III: SOME KEY IDEAS.
The Shack opens in the context of tragedy. Four years have passed since the cruel murder of Missy, Mack's precious six-year-old daughter.
The heart of the book is a series of extended conversations between Mack and the various members of the Trinity about how God could possibly allow such pain in his creation. Throughout these conversations, God reveals deep secrets about both his character and the nature of the universe that slowly heal Mack's grief, anger and pain.
The Big Questions:
1. WHAT IS GOD LIKE? 'The door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. Instinctively he jumped back, but he was too slow. With speed that belied her size, she crossed the distance between them and engulfed him in her arms....' The Shack's feminized 'God' has caused widespread consternation. What's in Paul Young's mind? Here's one explanation: 'For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.'
My response? The first time I visited Harlem in New York a Presbyterian minister told me that most fathers there were cruel and/or absent, so they rewrote the Lord's Prayer: 'God in heaven, who cares for us like our grandmother does...' The person most-like-God for those kids was their grandma.
Brilliant!
Jesus in The Shack as a thirty-ish man of Middle Eastern appearance: no problems there!
The Holy Spirit - the creative Sarayu - is an Asian-looking woman (seen more clearly when you aren't looking directly at her).
Mack asks, 'Which one of you is God?' '"I am," said all three in unison.'
And what is God like? 'I'm not a bully, not some self-centered demanding little deity insisting on my own way. I am good, and I desire only what is best for you. You cannot find that through guilt or condemnation....'
In other words - a healthier God than the one espoused in guilt-ridden legalistic religion. (As the Jesus Freaks used to say 'If God is like Jesus, nothing is too good to be true!')
2. WHERE IS GOD? 'God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things'. The panentheism implicit here has also been attacked by conservative Christians. But we ask: 'Where do you suggest an omnipresent, loving God is *not*?' As the old aphorism has it: 'God, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.'
3. THE CRIME. A friend writes: 'Do you think the author downplayed the severity of the crime against Missy? When the climatic dialogue happened and he was told the little girl coped a better than the dad might imagine, and she was worried about him... I thought that section was trite actually.' We'll make our own judgments there.
4. MYSTERY AND THE BOOK OF JOB. The same friend: 'And the other thing that I felt was overlooked, was the book of Job - the only story in the Bible anything like The Shack: where God comes and talks to the person suffering. And there.... well... God is not some cookie-making happy and patient middle aged woman. In Job God is very "Who are you to ask me this?" kind of God. (Or am I misreading Job?)'. No, Jim, you're not. And further, in Job God doesn't finally answer the Big Questions (as Job's 'comforters' tried to do), but invites the suffering Job to trust him anyway. Dialogues about meaning and The Great Sadness in The Shack sometimes come across as too simplistic. Nowhere (that I can recall) does The Shack's God say something like: 'On that one, Mack, you'll just have to trust me!'
5. JESUS' CHURCH is 'all about relationships and simply sharing life... being open and available to others around us. My church is all about people, and life is all about relationships.' One of the key tests of a healthy theology is to ask 'What, essentially, is a Christian?' If the reply begins 'A Christian is someone who believes that...' and love is not at the top of the list, I become very wary. Sure, as 1 John teaches us, there are three tests of authentic Christianity: belief, obedience, love. But love is, for John, as for Jesus his master, the 'greatest of these' (as another Jesus-follower, Paul, put it).
6. FORGIVENESS. Not only does Mack learn to "forgive" all who have hurt him, he also forgives "God." Conservative critiques? 'As if God had done something wrong!' Such a simplistic response ignores both human nature (asking, reasonably, why if God is both loving and powerful the world isn't a happier place) and the enunciation of this complaint in the Psalmic laments.
7. NEW AGE? Literalists have problems with phenomena like (what The Shack calls) "flying" - something akin to astral travel. 'Such a powerful ability, the imagination!" says The Shack's fictional "Jesus." That power alone makes you so like us.' My experience of rationalist theological conservatives is that they have immense problems validating God's gift of imagination.
8. ANTI-INSTITUTIONALISM. '...enforcing rules' [says Sarayu] '...is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.'
9. MACK'S JESUS ISN'T A 'CHRISTIAN'. '"Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian." The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn’t keep himself from grinning. "No, I suppose you aren’t."' (For my take on this see 'Was Jesus a Christian?' http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9664.htm).
SUMMARY. As many have noted The Shack has a quietly subversive stance, not-so-subtly attacking conventional, orthodox Christianity. The book will appeal to the 'Jesus Yes Church No' _majority_ (yes!) of Western Christ-followers. The response everywhere in the many reviews by 'the Doctrine Police' - whose God isn't as 'nice' - decry the absence/ paucity of references to a hierarchical Trinity, hell (sinners are always 'separated from a holy God'), Satan, repentance, salvation, sin and guilt, a physical 'resurrection', and doctrinally 'correct' belief-systems. Such wooden literalism doesn't cope with this genre of imaginative fiction (though note that The Shack has a literal Adam). One of the problems of course is that Paul Young doesn't 'proof-text' everything with Scripture references. 'At its core the book is one long Bible study as Mack seeks to resolve his anger at God,' writes Paul Young's friend and advisor Wayne Jacobsen [1].
ENDORSEMENTS. When a highly-respected Evangelical scholar such as Eugene Peterson says 'This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" did for his. It's that good!' the rest of us had better sit up and take notice. I agree with this sentiment, in an Amazon.com review: 'Don’t miss this! If there’s a better book out there capturing God’s engaging nature and his ability to crawl into our darkest nightmare with his love, light and healing, I’ve not seen it. For the most ardent believer or newest spiritual seeker, the shack is a must-read.'
Buy it and read it with an open heart and mind, disagreeing here and there if you wish, but above all prayerfully asking The Shack's God to give you a little taste of the amazing love practised in the Community of the Trinity.
More:
[1] For more helpful material on this idea, Google 'Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity.'
[2] 'Is The Shack Heresy?' by Wayne Jacobsen (one of Paul Young's friends / theological advisors):
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
* * * * *
We realize folks will disagree. We planned on it. We appreciate the interaction of those who have honest concerns and questions. Those who have been captured by this story are encouraged to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so and not trust us or the ravings of those who misinterpret this book, either threatened by its success, or those who want to ride on it to push their own fear-based agenda.
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
*****
A review of The Shack. By William Young. Part One.
Windblown Media, 2007. (Available in Australia from Koorong Books)
The two mega-themes of this novel are the love of God and human suffering. Those are about the two biggest topics around. As such, this book is an attempt at theodicy, that is, justifying the ways of God in the face of suffering and evil in the world. It is no small task.
Before I share my assessment of this book, let me begin by laying my cards on the table. I am not a great fan of fiction. Probably 97 per cent of my reading is non-fiction. Thus the literary merits of the book will not here be discussed. Also, I happen to think that theology is quite important, especially today when so much of the church is anti-intellectual, ahistorical and theologically illiterate. Thus I read this book with a careful theological eye as much as with an eye to an intriguing novel.
Finally, as mentioned, this book is in fact an exercise in theodicy. Since my PhD is actually in an area of theodicy, I have read a fair bit on the subject over the years. And with at least several millennia worth of material written on the topic, one can ask whether anything new or substantial can be said about it all. Does this book contribute anything new or of value?
So these three factors obviously colour how I have read this book. And I realize that different books will grab people differently. Some would rather get their theology and biblical understanding through a work of fiction than a large tome of systematic theology. And some people are gripped more by their emotions than by their intellect. God is able, in other words, to speak to us in different ways through different means, and we must appreciate such diversity.
Positive considerations
Many people have found this to be a life changing book, a mind-blowing experience, and a spiritual stick of dynamite. So what about me? All in all I think it is a helpful volume that may well speak to many, bring about healing and understanding, and minister in pastoral and spiritual ways. By using the medium of fiction, complete with a gripping and emotive story line, it may be able to convey truths that for some would not be forthcoming in a work of nonfiction.
The plot quite simply is this. Three and a half years after a man – Mack - loses his young daughter to a vicious serial killer, he gets an invitation to meet face to face with God; indeed, with all three members of the Godhead. The weekend encounter takes place at the very same secluded shack where the attack on his daughter took place.
The encounter with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will forever change his life as he directly challenges God about the pain, grief, bitterness and anger which he is carrying, along with the millions of unanswered questions he has had to struggle with for so long.
So what does one tell a devastated father who has had about the worst thing that can possibly happen to him? Or more specifically, what can God tell such a person? How can God break into this man’s life, and both comfort him as well as help him to make sense of his nightmare?
That in part is the stuff of theodicy, and is as old – at least – as the book of Job, penned perhaps three millennia ago. And just as Job did not have all of his questions answered, or at least not in the way that he expected, so too here with Mack. In fact, he experiences an encounter with God which in itself is much, if not most, of the answer.
Indeed, God’s presence in times of trouble has always been a large part of the answer. Individuals whys and how comes are often not answered, but a bigger understanding and awareness of who God is tends to be the more important outcome. Job could say that before his troubles, he had heard about God, but after his suffering, he had seen God.
So what then is God’s answer to Mack? Or more specifically, what is God’s answer as understood and represented by the author, William Young? As I said, it is hard to come up with anything radically new on such age-old questions. And Young generally reiterates some basic Christian truths that evangelicals for quite some time have tried to present. He just may have done this in a new, more forceful and moving fashion.
The heart of this is that God is overwhelmingly a God of love, and everything he does is done out of supreme love. There is an eternal love relationship between the three members of the Trinity, and that love oozes out toward us, his creatures.
Of course love by its nature cannot be coerced or forced upon someone, and it can be rejected. Somehow, as theologians have tried to argue over the centuries, the God of the Bible is a God of love, and yet is also a sovereign God. Thus He is in charge of all that happens, and nothing surprises him or is outside of his knowledge or purposes.
But he is not directly the author of evil. God hates evil and injustice and cruelty far more than we ever will. Yet somehow he is able to work his purposes out of what seem to be the most dark and hideous situations. God can and does bring good out of evil.
And as the supreme example of this, consider the worst horror ever to have happened in human history – the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It in fact turned out to be the greatest good ever undertaken by God. It is an unfathomable mystery, yet a clear teaching of Scripture.
Why did Mack’s six-year-old daughter have to go through this hellish abduction and murder? We may not know the specific answers to such questions, but we can know of God and his character, as revealed in Scripture, and as revealed in his Son. The incarnation gives us a God who is close to everyone of us, and who shares our grief and sorrows.
Suffering is something which God knows all about. Any questions we might have about the presence of evil and suffering in this world are questions which God himself has dealt with, as the eternal Trinity was somehow temporarily broken up, and in some way, put to death, for our wellbeing.
These are deep truths which none of us mere mortals can begin to understand, but somehow God had been there and done that. Jesus is a man acquainted with grief and familiar with sorrows. Why particular tragedies and horrendous evils occur we cannot know, but we can know that a God of infinite love never leaves us, never forsakes us, and is with us during every moment of our tests and trials.
Indeed, the incredibly, unfathomably, deep, deep love of God for us is a major theme of this book. Again, it is an old Christian truth, but one vividly rendered even more real in the form of this work of fiction. God is absolutely crazy about us. Even if I was the only person on the planet, Jesus would still have died in my place to save me from my sins and to restore me to an intense love relationship with God.
But knowledge and awareness of this love is greatly distorted and clouded by our own selfishness, sin, and sense of independence. We think we can find joy anywhere but with our creator and redeemer. But that is just not possible. Only in Him is life in all its fullest. And often it is the hardships and agonies of life that drive us away from self, and to the source of true joy, peace and happiness.
Thus suffering has a real soul-making function, as many believers have argued over the centuries. It is often in our greatest pains that we draw nearest to God. God of course has not drawn closer to us – he has never left us. But we stray from God by our selfish striving for complete independence. But that only makes things worse.
Only by surrendering to his love, and renouncing our own waywardness and spirit of independence, can we experience the love relationship that God so much desires for us. That is unfortunately perhaps the hardest thing we can do: to let go of self and selfish ambitions, and surrender to the one who made us and loves us, and knows what is best for us.
Of course all this is a mere broad brush theological summary of the traditional Christian understanding. These points are made much more vividly, powerfully and directly in this moving and transforming novel. Thus I am not doing real justice to the book here. One will have to read it for oneself, and see what impact it might have.
But an important part of the book’s value, I suppose, lies in something almost all Christians must have desired upon many occasions: to have a face to face encounter with the living God. Not just a dream, or a vision, or a meditative communion with God, but an actual, in the flesh meeting, just as the early disciples of Jesus had enjoyed. Imagine just what that would be like!
Indeed, the hiddenness or seeming absence of God is a very real dilemma for most believers. We follow a God who is spiritual, while we are material. Thus we meet with God in prayer, or reflection, or the Sacraments. But it often seems that in our daily walk, we must hold on to his presence by faith. And that faith is sorely tested in times of grief, sorrow and tragedy. Indeed, it often seems that during these dark times God is most absent, or at least appears to be.
Thus we may all long to have such an encounter as Mack had. And of course one day, in the next life, we will. But Young seeks to paint a picture of what such an encounter might look like here and now. And thus the value of the fictional approach – to make more real certain spiritual realities which we already know through works of non-fiction.
Conclusion
For many this book will bring them much closer to God, by revealing more carefully what the wonderful triune God we serve is really like. It is hoped that many will benefit from this book, and that it will indeed serve a purpose much as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did over three centuries earlier.
This then is my general positive endorsement of the book. But that is not to say that it is without problems, or areas of concern. I thus invite the reader to peruse the second part of my review for some particular critical assessments of this book.
A review of The Shack. By William Young. Part Two.
Windblown Media, 2007. (Available in Australia from Koorong Books)
I have offered my general (and positive) assessments of The Shack in part one of this review. Here I wish to address a few areas of concern I had with the book. They should not deter potential readers of this book, and they are not meant to detract from the overall value of the book. But they must be stated.
Obviously no one is perfect, and we are all fallen and finite. Thus we must be careful here, especially when we dare to write about such huge topics as God and the problem of suffering. None of us have all the truth, and our knowledge in partial. We see through a glass darkly, as Paul informs us. So humility and care is needed whenever we seek to talk about such matters.
Thus William Young has taken a stab at some of the harder topics to cover, and he deserves credit for trying. Yet we must all acknowledge that he will not geteverything right, and there will of course be areas in which fellow believers may wish to disagree with him. These then are some of the concerns I noted as I read through the book.
Negative concerns
One might ask whether a work of fiction can even do justice to such topics. But God has often used fiction in the past to help convey biblical, theological and spiritual truths. I already mentioned The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. It has served believers well for centuries, and still blesses many. More recently The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis have also been mightily used of God to teach biblical themes. So without question there is a place for fiction in dealing with such theological and apologetic tasks.
Let me first deal with Young’s depiction of God. Although a work of fiction, Young is seeking here to represent actual biblical and theological truths about God. Much of this book in fact is Young’s attempt to try to portray God aright, and to deal with misunderstandings and distorted views of the Biblical picture of God.
I must say I initially found myself thinking that Young’s depiction of God the Father is much like the way he is represented in the two recent films, Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. That is, God is a joke-telling Black American with a great sense of humour. Indeed, the Father is presented in this book as a large, jovial Black American woman. The Spirit is presented as a wispy Asian female, and Jesus is presented as a male of Middle Eastern appearance.
Now this need not necessarily cause problems. True, God in Scripture is primarily represented as male, but of course ultimately God is spirit, and is above sex or gender. Yet he has created us – male and female – in his image. While some feminine images are used of God in the Bible, overwhelmingly God is presented in male terms, imagery and language.
Later in the book the Father does appear as a male to Mack. It is because Mack had a horribly abusive father when he was a child, so he needed a maternal presentation of God at first. So no real damage is done here. Again it is a work of fiction. And in reality God can appear to us in any form that he chooses to.
Another possible area of concern is that by so stressing the love of God, there is always the tendency to get the Biblical portrait of God out of kilter. That is, God is love to be sure, but he is also holy, just, righteous, and so on. Often these other attributes get lost or minimised in a strong emphasis on the love of God.
And Young at times seems to move in this direction. Fortunately, he will balance things out on most occasions, thus preventing any real concerns about heresy (which already some are expressing about this book). For example, an unbalanced emphasis on the love of God, to the exclusion of his hatred of sin, or judgment on ungodliness, has led some believers into embracing a type of universalism, the idea that in the end everyone will be saved.
It is true that God through Christ has made a way for all of us to be accepted in the beloved. But we still must take the steps to realize that invitation. And that involves repentance and turning from ourselves, and submitting to God. Fortunately Young seems to include this, when it looks like he is just about to go over the theological edge.
For example, at one place (p. 182) Jesus is talking of all sorts of people coming to Him, and he says “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa”. To which Mack rightly asks, “Does that mean that all roads will lead to you?” But then Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere”.
Or consider another episode where the Father tells Mack that because of the work of Jesus, “I am now fully reconciled to the whole world”. This could be understood as a case of universalism, but fortunately the statement is then qualified by God saying that “reconciliation is a two way street, and I have done my part”. The inference is that sinners then have to do their part (repentance and faith, eg), which presents the balanced Biblical picture. And on pages 225-226 we finally hear such talk of the need for repentance and trust. So a potentially unbiblical position is here at least brought back into some kind of balance.
A related concern is that this important emphasis on love and relationships as being the heart of what Christianity is all about can lead to antinomianism and an unbalanced view of the workings between law and grace. For example, God tells Mack to not worry about following rules: “The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus. . . . Don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship – a way of coming to be with us” (pp. 197-198).
Of course one wants to take the spirit of this, and see the importance of a love relationship over against legalism and so on. But a fine line needs to be trod here, and it is unhelpful to set law against grace. Both are given by God, and both are used in his purposes. Young’s idea here seems almost to be that we must choose one or the other, that they are polar opposites.
But Scripture has a very high view of law. Sure, law cannot save us, but law is from God, and reflects who he is. To argue that we not concern ourselves with any rules means that we not only dismiss the 613 laws and commands given in the Old Testament, but that the many commands given in the New Testament are also to be treated as irrelevant and something to not worry about.
No one is saved by keeping rules, but once saved, and out of gratitude, we do seek to keep the rules that Christ and the apostles have laid down for us. By so emphasising love relationships (which admittedly, many evangelicals need to hear again, and hear in clear and forceful terms), Young seems to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes loving relationships are at the heart of what God wants for us, but it is not at the expense of holy living, and/or seeking to please God in all that he asks of us.
Other potential concerns crop up. Three times in the book Mack tells us of the paucity and general unhelpfulness of his earlier theological training in seminary. Compared with his encounter with the living God, it fades in comparison, which would be expected. But it seems that Young is taking a bit of a dig at seminaries and theological training here. Hopefully he is not, but it seems to come out that way, both here and elsewhere in the book.
But of course there should be no dichotomy between knowledge of God (which is what theology seeks to do) and experiencing the presence of God. The two should reinforce each other. Both are important. Right living (orthopraxy) and right belief (orthodoxy) go together, and the one feeds off the other. Paul warns us to watch our lives and our teaching carefully. It is not one or the other, but both.
And while theology seems to be mildly scoffed at in this book, the book in fact is one big exercise in theology, albeit in fictional form. Young is seeking to present a theology of God, with an apologetic spin. That is the same sort of thing all good evangelical seminaries seek to do. So this may have been an unnecessary slight to theological education and seminary learning.
Another area which will bother some (at least those with some theological background) is the way the Trinity is presented in the book. The idea of any sort of hierarchy in the Trinity is slammed here. “Hierarchy would make no sense among us” the Father tells Mack, for example (p. 122).
Now that happens to be a position that some good evangelicals hold to. Most however would probably argue that there is some sort of hierarchy in the Trinity – certainly not a hierarchy of essence or nature, but of role or function.
Theologically conservative Christians tend to argue that just as there is a hierarchy of roles or functions in the Godhead, so too God has ordained such a hierarchy in human relationships, for example with the husband being the head of the wife and family, as Scripture suggests. Young would evidently reject both types of hierarchy.
All this is being debated in evangelical circles, as I mentioned. So Young is simply taking one side on this debate here, and not all evangelicals will be happy with his position. Young is insisting that his view is the way it is, but other believers might beg to differ.
Other related issues arise. Since Young is so against hierarchy and power, and sees them as antithetical to love and relationship, he seems to again go too far in one direction. Thus he says all human institutions – be they government, economies, marriage or family – are built on hierarchy and power, and therefore are all counter to his ways and purposes.
But it would seem that God in fact created many of these institutions, so we should not be so quick to dismiss them or rubbish them. God has ordained the institutions of the state, and of the family, for example. Clearly there is hierarchy in the state, and the use of power is God-ordained. So not all cases of human hierarchy and power are wrong. Again, believers can debate whether there should be any hierarchy in the home (as between husband and wife) but surely some hierarchy should exist between parent and child.
Other points of concern could be mentioned. On page 120 we find the Father telling Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment…” Well, yes and no. Sin brings bad consequences on us, and this seems to be Paul’s train of thought in Romans 1 when he speaks of homosexuality as being both sinful, and in a sense, its own punishment.
But we also have many clear texts telling us that there is a separate punishment for sin (which Jesus of course took upon himself) and future punishment, which unbelievers will experience eternally in the form of hell. So Young seem to be unnecessarily downplaying some clear biblical truths here, in the interests of stressing the love and relationship side of things.
Conclusion
Defenders of the book – and perhaps Young himself – might argue that sometimes a push to extremes is needed to correct long-held wrong understandings and theologies that evangelicals have held to. Thus the emphasis on love and relationship may tend to go too far, at the expense of other biblical truths, but these defenders might argue that this is necessary, as we need to wake believers out of their slumber, and get them to realise once again the wonder of a deep, intimate love relationship with God.
I agree with the aim, but I am not sure if I am happy with the means. Yes church history tends to be a pendulum swing, of one extreme being matched by another extreme, and so on, in the hopes of finding the biblically balanced middle ground. While sympathetic to what Young is trying to do here, as one who feels we must pay attention to the whole counsel of God (as Paul exhorts us), and as a theologian and one who want to let Scripture speak in all its fullness, I cringe at times at some of the lack of balance presented here.
But having said all that, I think that on the whole this book may achieve a lot of good for the Body of Christ. As I said at the end of Part One, this book may well help many. I hope it does. As with all things, let the reader beware. The reader needs to read with critical eyes, testing everything that is being said according the word of God. We all need to be like the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily to see if what was being told them was true (Acts 17:11).
But get the book if you are interested, and give it a read, being open to what God may seek to achieve in you in the process. I invite readers of this book to share their thoughts here with us in the comments’ section. Let the discussion begin.
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/04/11/a-review-of-the-shack-by-
william-young-part-two/
TheShack official website - http://www.theshackbook.com/
Is The Shack Heresy? By Wayne Jacobsen (one
http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html
Well-written 'Reformed Evangelical' critique - http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/briefing/library/5395/
Rowland Croucher 27/11/2008
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