Book Review: Cross Roads

Some time ago, I read and reviewed The Shack written by W. Paul Young.  I was blessed that he found my review and left a comment.  I hope he does again, but if not, oh well.  He’s a bit busier now that he is a famous published author probably.

I just finished reading Cross Roads last night.  Like The Shack, it did not disappoint in enlightenment, and offered some new weirdness. 

Don’t get me wrong, weirdness is not bad.  I like weirdness.  But there was quite a bit of weirdness.

While The Shack offered an experience akin to an expository dream, Crossroads delves more into the realm of spiritual fantasy.  The main character Tony spends a good deal of time knocking about in other people’s minds, not just as a silent passenger, but as an active participant in their stories.

As Mr. Young seems to be able to do, this book brought tears to my eyes on several occasions.  Once or twice, I wept silently in my bed in the dark where I do most of my reading.  He very effectively presents a redemption story, though a worse human being I have rarely heard of.  Short of murder and rape, this guy was a really bad guy.  Imagine remarrying your ex-wife just so you can divorce her again, stick it in her face, and have the police escort her and your children from your own house which you bought out from under her while throwing her a get the hell out party.  This dude was mean.  There are other things that I consider even worse, but which I won’t tell you here because it’s a bit of a plot point.  He was a bad guy.

But when he suffers an accident and is laying on his death bed, his journey of redemption and salvation begins.  It’s the journey of a wicked and broken man finding out that God still loves him no matter how horrible he is.

Paul Young introduces us to Jesus and the Holy Spirit again though this time around the Holy Spirit takes the form of a different woman, a Native American.  Papa God doesn’t appear personally, but his presence is felt and spoken of thought Tony’s adventures while his body lay dying.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit live in a land through which Tony travels.  Jesus has a run down house and Grandmother (as she is called) lives in a “hovel” which is small and sparsely furnished.  But she’s still a good cook.  What these homes are supposed to represent is the space in our hearts, the space for which we have provided room for God.  I imagine in some spiritual giant’s heart, the homes would be large, well kept, and lavish.  But in Tony’s (an effective atheist) heart, only small homes were provided.

Like Paul Young’s last offering, this book provides a resource in dealing with loss.  The honest truth about the Bible is that it doesn’t offer much effective therapy for those grieving a loved one, whether that grief be due to death, disease, defect, or defection.  We mourn for those who we loved who have died, but we also mourn for those who are taken from us for some other reason, maybe Down’s Syndrome or some other genetic disorder which robs us of our full mental capacity.  A parent mourns for the lost opportunities, for lost baseball games, for lost report cards, for lost first words and first steps.  And honestly, the Bible doesn’t help us much with those.  But sometimes we meet a person who is much more in tune with how to deal with grief, and usually it's because they have grieved.  Paul Young is one such person in my eyes.

The overarching message of The Shack to me was “God’s ways are not our ways.”  For this book, I’d say it’s something like “I will never leave you.”  God is there to comfort, share pain, to love you and to hug you.  And he wants to redeem you always.  You’ll never reach a point where God gives up on you and leaves you completely even if you push him out completely.  He still wants you and he’ll always come back if you’ll have him.  Like Mr. Young said in The Shack, God is not just a better version of you.

I really enjoyed this book.  I recommend it to anyone.  Maybe it won’t keep you glued from the first page to the last and maybe it will, but it tells a story and the story has a lot of feeling and emotion and even meaning.  I hope you enjoy it too.

9/10

This thing they call a Blog.

You'll notice the types of things I often write around here are kinda off the beaten path so to speak. I'd really like to change the world, not necessarily to have my name in lights or remembered for all the future or anything like that, but I would like to have made a difference. You know, when everybody gets to my funeral I'd like people to say things like "he made a difference in my life" or "yeah, he sure helped....." or "I'd never have known about ... if he hadn't told me about it."

So I often write about things that I think are important in the world, things like renewable energy, efficiency, and more importantly, composting toilets, plus Jesus. I'd don't know of any other thing I've ever written about on here beside Jesus that has the capability to do a lot of good stuff in the world than composting toilets.

Most of the hits I get on here are about subjects regarding "The Shack" which is an important book, but that's not what gets me. What gets me is the number two search term. "What is the most accurate Bible translation?" What? There are 30,000 children dying all over the world every day and that's your question? A Christian is martyred every 30 seconds or more and you wanna know about Bible translations? Would you also like to discuss how many angels dance on the head of a pin whilst genocide goes on in the world?

Though I have for the sake of appeasing the audience written on the matter before, I don't really give a crap which is the most accurate translation. I've told you which two are bad, so just pick one of the others and freaking move on!

Does no one care that more and more people are falling below the poverty line in this country? Does no one care that people starved to death today, and yesterday, and some more will tomorrow? You really want to quibble about Bible translations?

Go to Hell. They need you more there than here.
WiredForStereo

P. S. Sorry for being harsh. But really people. Really.

Visitors Searching for "The Shack"

I just checked my web tracker, and it appears that well over half of all my visitors recently have been referred to my blog after they searched for a subject related to "The Shack" by William P. Young.

What to do about this, I don't know.

So, I am asking you. Should I blog more about it, what should I address?

Comments have been mostly positive, though as you can read, some are not. So leave me a comment, I'd like to hear from you, what should I do?

WiredForStereo

Answers to Some Concerns About "The Shack"

After "Anonymous" posted me some some comments on my review of "The Shack" by William P. Young, I decided to do a little more in depth research on the book. I had done just a little before, listening to the criticisms of my friends and and some of the pastoral staff (also friends) at my church. I had read a few negative reviews and entertained a few thoughts of what some Calvinists have said, have been told what an Arminian book it is, and as with any book, weighed all the information in my mind.

So I went perusing the internet with my trusty tool and sponsor Google because of some of the info I had found on my web tracker. Some of the people who search for reviews of The Shack also are searching for words like Sarayu and Elousia. Since I had not yet looked up the meanings of these words as I often do, I decided to do just that and was interested at what I found. First I found the criticisms of the book which I will enumerate some of as I define the words. Second, I found out what the words really meant, and their usage throughout history, which I will also explain.

Let's go.

Elousia, if you do a quick search, you will find out is Greek for tenderness. It is also the title of a Catholic icon depicting the Madonna and the baby Jesus. Critics jump all over this saying that Mr. Young is trying to sneak in some Marianism, attempting to water down God by inserting Mary. I find this interesting because it would seem to me that a book attempting to plead the case of a merciful and good God might use a name that reveals just that. We must go back to the definition of the word, tenderness. This is a trait that the God of The Shack is soaked in.

In my experience it is good to look at overall messages of a book. One thing that I have tried to do is to never read a Bible verse as Greg Koukl puts it. That means never read just one verse, not never read any verses. The technique seeks to achieve understanding of the context of a work, and not to take anything out of context. For the most part, The Shack espouses the classical view of the Trinity if you can get past the temporal physical manifestations of the normally only spiritual components of the Trinity. That is to say that the Father and Spirit appear as women, and if you can get past that, you see the classical view of the Trinity. Now you must understand one thing: Cults and heretics never never usually never espouse the classical view of the Trinity. It is often the first thing to go, and yet it appears in this book, a controversial work of symbolic fiction.

The next subject has earned The Shack and accusation of being a subversive work of Hinduism. In the book, the Holy Spirit is depicted as an Asian woman named Sarayu. Sarayu is a Sanskrit word meaning "to flow" and also wind, air, or that which streams. It is a tributary of the Ganges in India. It played a role in some great Hindu stories and myths and is mentioned in the Rigveda. Anyway, some say this means that the book is a Hindu work or at best has a message of universalism. Again we must simply look at the word itself. It means wind, just as the book says. That's all there is to it. Spirit in Greek means breath. It's the same thing.

This whole thing brings two things to mind. First, I have not found any criticisms of the character of Sophia, wisdom personified. This may be because it is a Christian concept as well as being a pagan and gnostic one. But that's the kicker, if it wasn't a Christian concept, would Mr. Young then be accused of Neoplatonic Hellenism? Though wisdom personified as a woman is a central figure in Proverbs, the concept of Sophia is much older than Christianity, Plato taught about it as well as did others. Sophia in Greek is of course wisdom, that much should be obvious by now since we are discussing the meaning of words.

But that leads me to my final point about these kinds of criticisms. If you are to subject a work of fiction to this kind of rigorous test, why not the Bible? John makes copious use of the word "word" in John. Logos (in Greek) appears as much as five centuries before the time of Christ in Greek philosophy and religion, and John has the stones to actually ascribe these pagan attributes to Jesus Christ himself!!! See what I mean? It is ridiculous for a Christian to criticize a book for word choice when the Bible uses the very same cultural references. Christianity has always done this in an attempt to reach out to the intellectuals of its day. It always will.

The Spirit is fluid, a wind, a breath, and it will get into every crack and crevice of every culture and make itself known. And sometimes it will use words.
WiredForStereo

Calvinism vs. Arminianism and Why We Shouldn’t Pledge Allegiance to Stuff Like This.

I was talking to my friend’s girlfriend about the book “The Shack” by William P. Young, and she said she hadn’t read it because from what she had heard, she thought she’d disagree with at least some of its points. Of course she’ll probably be reading this at some point, so I’ll just say that she’s a very strong Calvinist, as is at least some of her family from what I’ve heard. She’s a very bright girl, and definitely believes what she says she believes, but I kind of get the feeling like she’s one of those brutal Calvinists, which is to say, those who see God as kind of hard and strict. At the very least, I’d like to introduce her to “kind Calvinism” as Mark Driscoll would call it. So, I decided what I’d do is just to go through both Calvinism and Arminianism and see what they both mean, and offer my insights on both.

For those of you who know me, you may know that I do not adhere to models, which is to say I am not an adherent to things with titles such as Calvinism, Arminianism, Trinitarianism, Arianism, Veganism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Preterism, Dispensationalism, Mormonism, Racism, Sexism, or most other isms excepting Monotheism. The reason is this: Formulaic models often glaze over truth in order to make a text agree with a presupposed belief. The tenets of some of those isms I do believe in, especially some more than others, but I would not say that I adhere to any of them because they are models, and I believe God as bigger than human doctrinal constructs. I do not believe that we can in any way confine or define God to single words whose meanings change with time. Like I said, I do believe in Monotheism, because I believe that eternally, infinitely, and unequivocally, there is only one God, and his singular singularity can be defined in our language by the word Monotheism.

Let me start by saying that this argument is entirely an in house argument. I mean that whether you are a Calvinist or Arminian, as long as you are a Jesus Freak, you are still ok with me, and I assume with Jesus as well. I’ll be quoting Wikipedia quite a bit as a source of definitions and for general information, and I won’t use quotation marks unless Wikipedia does because of the unknown authorship or the original article anyway. I’ll start with Arminianism which is still quite popular among popular and well known preachers and evangelists, and I’ll basically be stating each belief and my view on it, and why. It should be noted that Calvinism’s five points were created not by John Calvin himself, but later by people concerned with countering five points outlined at the Synod of Dort by Arminians. Arminius was born 4 years before Calvin died and died 100 years after Calvin was born. The Synod of Dort happened a year after Arminius died in 1609. In actuality, today Arminianism does not have five points anymore, and has reverted to what Jacobus Arminius believed which actually has a bit in common with Calvinism. Some may be actually surprised to learn that Calvinism and Arminianism are not directly opposed, but are like the two circles on a MasterCard. They have overlapping belief systems.

Arminianism

1. Humans are naturally unable to make any effort towards salvation.

I’d say true to a point, and that point being God’s call. However before the rabid Calvinists jump on that one, I believe that all are called just like the Bible says. In the literal sense, ALL are called. Jesus wishes all to be saved but naturally, many will not because they will not reciprocate his love.

2. Salvation is possible by grace alone.

Absolutely agree, however, it should be easy to spot believers and unbelievers based on speech and actions, not just what they say and do in public. I have known a number of worship leaders who said and did all sorts of things in public and wrote wonderful worship songs, but in private, to the discerning eye, they were at least questionable. So, salvation is by grace alone and is evidenced by love and works.

3. Works of human effort cannot cause or contribute to salvation

Yes, see above. This one belongs to Calvinism too.

4. God's election is conditional on faith in Jesus.

Election is a big big word in Calvinism, and this one can be taken several ways. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father but by me.” Salvation is certainly conditional on faith in Jesus, if you are a Christian, this one is probably pretty close to number one on the list of essentials. However, election is a touchy subject and since God knows the future, you have to decide whether He decides whether you have faith in Jesus, or whether you decide, or whether he draws you to decide, or completely outside any choice of your own, he gives you faith in Jesus. I think an infinitely Just God draws you and gives you a choice, I don't think it's "Duck, Duck, Damned."

5. Jesus' atonement was for all people.

Here’s another separation from Calvinism. One of the creeds says that Jesus sacrifice was once and for all. Though I don’t hold to any creeds, I agree with this. I believe that Jesus died for everyone, whether or not they chose to play that card at the judgment. I believe every sin committed in the history of the universe weighed on his shoulders on the cross.

6. God allows his grace to be resisted by those unwilling to believe.

Naturally. While humans may be unable to understand the pure infinity of knowing the future and yet not making it happen, I believe God can. In the same way, I believe God can create an entirely autonomous being with perfect free will, but not with infinite free will as God has. Of course God is all powerful and if he wished, he could cause anyone to do anything, but he doesn’t do anything as far as salvation goes that we do not want. He merely ratifies our choices, if we seek him, we will find him, if we choose not to seek him, then he merely ratifies our choice of damnation.

7. Salvation can be lost, as continued salvation is conditional upon continued faith

I do not agree with this in the sense that you can lose your salvation. I do believe you can leave it. I don’t believe that a person can get saved and then live out the rest of their life with no consideration of Jesus whatsoever and stay saved. I would submit that they never knew Jesus to begin with. God does know the end from the beginning, and he can see all the future, and if a person becomes backslidden or loses the faith for a while or multiple times but returns, God knew it would happen.

Calvinism is a bit different, perhaps more popular, and definitely more defined and structured, as a Calvinistic God would seem to be. Calvinism usually has five points, often denoted with the acronym TULIP. The five points were not created by Calvin, who more simply believed that God was in all things infinitely sovereign, but created in response to Arminius’ followers’, Remonstrants as they were called, 5 points. The Remonstrants actually opposed the doctrine of Total Depravity even though Arminius and Wesley affirmed it, but they just wanted to be opposed to Calvinism I guess.

Calvinism

1. Total depravity

This one is basically the same as #1 above.

2. Unconditional election asserts that God's choice from eternity of those whom he will bring to himself is not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in those people. Rather, it is unconditionally grounded in God's mercy alone.

I would disagree based on the verse that says “those he foreknew, he also predestined.” Now what that means, I cannot say for sure. But I cannot accept the assertion that foreknew means something other than he knew before as I heard Driscoll put it today from last Sunday’s sermon. He said something like God reached out in love, and that’s what foreknew meant, but it is obvious to me that the word simply means that he knew ahead of time. I do believe the part of salvation being in God’s mercy alone, but with the context of God wanting to grant mercy to everyone. He would not have died if he did not want to grant mercy.

3. Limited atonement is the teaching that Jesus' substitutionary atonement was definite and certain in its design and accomplishment. Calvinists view the atonement as a penal substitution (that is, Jesus was punished in the place of sinners), and since, Calvinists argue, it would be unjust for God to pay the penalty for some people's sins and then still condemn them for those sins, all those whose sins were atoned for must necessarily be saved. Moreover, since in this scheme God knows precisely who the elect are and since only the elect will be saved, there is no requirement that Christ atone for sins in general, only for those of the elect.

This I mentioned up in the Arminianism section. Christ died for everyone; all sin was upon him. It leaves no room for question if anyone is elect or not, if you want Jesus, he is available. What if someone sneaks in who wasn’t elect? Then Jesus would have to go back and die again for that guy. I know it wouldn’t happen, but it serves to frame the argument. I don’t think injustice even enters the argument here for one simple reason. Jesus took upon himself our sin, there is no justice in that. There is mercy and love.

4. The doctrine of irresistible grace (also called "efficacious grace") asserts that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save (that is, the elect) and, in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to a saving faith. The doctrine does not hold that every influence of God's Holy Spirit cannot be resisted but that the Holy Spirit is able to overcome all resistance and make his influence irresistible and effective. Thus, when God sovereignly purposes to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved.

I don’t really buy this because I don’t think God would directly save someone against his will. Heaven for a demon is like hell to a Jesus Freak. This goes back to the foreknowledge and predestination stuff. It would seem that God would look down in time, see those who would be saved with the right impetus, then provides that impetus. Of course, outside of that provision, no one would even want to be saved. I do believe that it is well within God’s power to overcome any resistance to his will, like he can overcome gravity or whatever, the simple question is “does he?”

5. Perseverance (or preservation) of the saints is also known as "eternal security." The doctrine asserts that, since God is sovereign and his will cannot be frustrated by humans or anything else, those whom God has called into communion with himself will continue in faith until the end. Those who apparently fall away either never had true faith to begin with or will return. This doctrine is slightly different from the Free Grace or "once saved, always saved" view advocated by some evangelicals in which, despite apostasy or unrepentant and habitual sin, the individual is truly saved if he or she had truly accepted Christ at any point in the past. In traditional Calvinist teaching, apostasy by such a person may be proof that they never were saved.

I am ok with this one as long as it does not include the “once saved, always saved” view. Again, God knows all future, and he knows if we fall away if we will return or not. My father is a pretty heavy Arminian and would ask the question if someone were saved and falls away, if they died while they were saved, would they go to heaven? I really think that is up to God, he knows the heart. I do believe God is irresistible when he wants to be, but he has purposed freedom of choice as a part of being created in his image. I believe he designed a perfect system in which his creations could choose Him or choose otherwise.

Calvinism as a kind of racism.

Something that bothers me about Calvinism is the whole election thing. It ends up being a kind of racism, something you are endowed by God with that makes you better than people who are not, just like white skin has for so much of history. The problem is, unlike being white, a person does not really know if they are elect. They never know if they may fall away at some future time and it turns out that they were never really saved at all. Even worse is when they argue with you. They can sometimes have an air of “I’m elect, and if you are arguing with me, you obviously aren’t.” I do not like classes, especially among believers. *I just thought of something after I posted this. Since you in reality don't really know if you are elect, that means you don't really know you are saved, and if you don't know that, then you are worse off than an Arminian who has assurance of salvation as long as he stays a believer. So pure Calvinism and Election both effectively remove assurance of salvation because you can't really know if you are elect unless you can read God's mind, and if you should happen not to be elect, then you are not saved no matter what you do. So instead of a salvation based on works where you don't know if you've done enough good in say Islam or Catholicism, you now have Salvation based on having faith that you will always be a believer, which is Arminianism. Did I just disprove Calvinism altogether? Interesting.

Overall, I must again stress that I do not hold onto models because they often need to play fast and loose with interpretation to make their stuff fit. The original Arminians simply came up with their five points to counter the prevailing Calvinism, and the Five Points of Calvinism were a response to the five points of the Synod of Dort Arminians. A belief system should never be made up of a list of things we don’t do or believe in, that’s not how Jesus worked. Jesus was all about the do’s. Care for the poor, forgive, be humble, love God, love others, have faith, be faithful, take heart, give generously, and believe in me were his commands.

So I’m like a two and a half point Calvinist, and a five and a half point Arminian.

WiredForStereo

Review of “The Shack” by William P. Young

I just finished reading “The Shack” by William P. Young. You should know that as I begin to write this post it is 12:23 AM, and I’ve just spent about he last hour and a half finishing the last several chapters in the quiet of my office in the late evening. A bit of that time was spent weeping. For a time, I wept about once a page in the early parts of chapter 17. A bit of that time was also spent on my face on the floor weeping and praying, praising God, and all I could tell him was that he was good. My face is stiff from the salt in the tears, and my eyes and cheeks ache from crying, but it is an ache that I would not trade for anything. You see I know now that the God I worship is good. But more about that later.

The story is told by Willie, the author, he inserts himself in the story as a friend of Mack, Mackenzie Allen Philips. Mack’s daughter Missy was kidnapped on a camping trip while he was rescuing his son from drowning in a canoe. Evidence was later found in an abandoned shack in the woods that she had been brutally murdered. More than three years later, he receives an unstamped letter in the mail from someone named “Papa” inviting him back to the shack for a meeting. He decides to visit the Shack and what he finds changes his life forever.

That is my synopsis, it is similar to the one on the back of the book, and it really covers about four chapters of info that is important for the story, but less important for the truth contained within the story, which is what I want to talk about here.

First is the familiar term “Papa” which is used for God the Father principally by Nan, Mack’s wife. A well remembered name for the Father used in the bible is “Abba.” Abba is an equivalent to Dada or Papa depending on the language you speak. It is a term a very small child, perhaps barely speaking, might use to refer to his or her father. But let me ask this question, how many of us speak to our Heavenly Father in those terms? I think in all my (right) years, outside of people simply quoting the verse saying “Abba Father” I’ve only heard one person once call God “Daddy.” She is the very wonderful co-leader of our church youth group. And this brings such sadness to my heart, in the same way that verses in Psalms about singing and dancing with all your might and playing all sorts of instruments with all our might before the LORD are largely ignored in our contemporary church, as will most churches for the last millenniums. At least I have found a church where we can at least joke about it (“I guess we shouldn’t sing that song any more ;-). ”) All joking aside, it is a travesty that the God we love and worship, we cannot invite into our hearts far enough to be able to call him using a name which has a purely personal meaning. We evangelical Christians who believe in a personal relationship with God, largely do not live that out in our lives. It is not that I am criticizing the way we are, but begging that we change because we need so much to be embraced by Papa’s love, and that can be made more available, I believe, by using a name we might call our own father.

This book really does play with your mind, and it is meant to. Papa even explains that if he were to appear to Mack as someone who looked like Gandalf, it would serve only to reinforce his religious stereotypes. So Papa appeared as a large black woman named Elousia. The Holy Spirit appeared as a distinctly Asian woman named Sarayu, which apparently means “wind.” From what I can pick up in the book, she was difficult to look at, not because she was too bright or anything, but simply because she was difficult to see when looking right at her. She seemed to come and go as she pleased, appearing and disappearing at will but reminding Mack, that she had never disappeared at all, she was there all the time, and is everywhere all the time. Lastly, Jesus was portrayed as a slightly unhandsome average looking Middle Eastern man with a big nose, which Jesus was (likely big nosed and all.) There was much emphasis on Jesus being truly, fully and purely human, while at the same time being all that of God as well. I thought as I was reading that, logically speaking, if Jesus was a physical being when he ascended into heaven, then of course, he still is. He has not disappeared anywhere; he still is that way, up there somewhere. I believed it, but never really thought about it before.

Actually, I thought that way about much of the stuff in the book. Really, these things had never come to me in this way before, but I knew of them, and already believed them, but had never really understood them. It made God real to me in a way that he has never been real before. A major breakthrough for Mack, as it was for me, was that a huge gap created between us and God in our relationship with him is that we do not really believe that he is good. Sure, we say he is good, but deep down, most of us do not really believe that because all we can imagine of God is all our best traits to the nth degree, smashed together with all the goodness we can think of, with super powers, and God is not that way. God is in no way confined to our imaginations, because they don’t really exist, and God has no need to be a part of something that doesn’t even exist and never will. Therefore, we see things that we have decided are evil, and then judge God based on our own preexisting judgment. The truth is, the things around us are not ours to judge, to decide whether they are good or evil. Their inherent good or evil is in no way based on our perception of them. In the same way, if I look at a shiny piece of metal and say “That is obviously aluminum,” it has no bearing on what kind of metal it actually is, or even if it is a metal at all. Its essence and existence is entirely outside that of our own. Take that to the infinite power, God is the same way, which is why he says in the bible that his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.

A number of negative reviews that I have read have complained of the author doing something like creating God in his own image. I could not disagree more. God in this book is so much different from that. I think if you wanted to pare down everything he said in the entire book, it might fit into the sentence “I am nothing like you.” This is a God who cannot be predicted but can predict your every move, a God who is infinitely loving, caring, and patient and who affects change in your life. These things a human cannot do. So, no, no one made God in their image, they just stood well back and said “I still can’t see all of you Papa.”

One belief that this book specifically challenged was one of my basic beliefs about good and evil, or comfort and discomfort. When my wife and I were attending pre-marriage counseling, I told the pastor that I did not always want sunshine and roses, I was a kind of a realist, believing that you could not truly understand good unless you experienced bad. In a way, I believed that there could not be good unless there was bad, you know, to counteract it, to be the opposite of it. My belief has changed. It is the other way around. You cannot have bad unless you have good. Our infinitely good God came first. His light has always existed. His eternal good has always existed, and evil has not nor will ever overcome it because in the face of light, darkness flees. Darkness can no more resist light than I am able to come up with an apt comparison. By very nature, that is what it is, and what it does. Unimaginable distances of the pure black vacuum of space cannot erase the light of a single star. So, no, I don’t need to experience evil to truly understand what good is. Good is good, it is not confined or defined by evil, rather, like darkness to light, evil is confined and defined by good.

At one point in the story, Mack is directed to follow a trail which leads to a rock wall which he is miraculously able to walk through. Inside he finds a woman who is exceedingly beautiful, and whose words he would be happy to sit and listen to forever. We find out in the next chapter that she is Wisdom from Proverbs and that her name is Sophia, which is not a stretch since Sophia, is actually Greek for wisdom. Sophia is the one who tells Mack the way it is, not that God already hadn’t, but Mack had much to work through. Sophia told Mack that he had come to a judgment, and to his surprise, he was to be the judge. The catch was this. Mack had five children. Two of them would make it into heaven, and the other three were condemned. It was Mack’s job to decide which ones. Understandably, Mack was faced with a difficult choice, and as no father should be able, he was unable to choose which children would face condemnation, so he cried out and begged that he could take their place. We often think that God is some cosmic Judge Judy, going to sit behind a big desk on his throne and judge us for all we’ve done, and we have to find a way (Jesus) to avoid that. We end up loving Jesus, but not really loving our Father because of this misperception of him. What this part of the story says is that God no more wants to condemn us than we want to be condemned. He is our Papa, he created each and every one of us as his children, and his true love never wants us to leave him. That is why Jesus became sin for us, to take our place, because Papa loved us so much, he wanted to save us, and would sacrifice himself more than willingly to redeem us from our independent streak.

This leads to another point. Some I’ve talked to seem to catch a hint of Universalism or something in this book, but they miss what Papa says about relationships, they are a two way street. God can do all the loving in the world, he can reach out, he can perform miracles, he can redeem us from our sin, but he can never nor will never force us to come to him. That is what true relationship is, it is expectancy, not expectation. Expectations leave us hurting when they are not fulfilled, but if we live in expectancy, just waiting to see what wonderful things might happen between us, then there is no hurt, only joy.

One of the most wonderful things about this book was how it treats evil, and what happens when God works through evil to affect the best in the world. Throughout the book, Mack is overcome by what he calls “The Great Sadness,” a darkness shrouding his heart after his daughter Missy was kidnapped and murdered. Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle was talking about Calvinism and mentioned a woman he knew who had been raped who was a staunch Calvinist. She asked him “Why did God have me raped?” A similar question was asked in “The Shack.” Mack asked if his daughter was murdered so that he could be rescued as it were. God made it clear that it is not he who causes evil to happen though he is able to work good through it. This kind of human thinking causes us to be able to sacrifice a few to save many, where God’s way of doing things sacrifices only one, himself. God never works any kind of evil, and it is never in his purpose for any sort of evil to happen, what God does is to work through evil, our choices and independence from him to make good things happen for his purpose. God would never have anyone raped, or murdered, or anything else to bring about anything, no matter how good the ultimate result would be. He uses evil for good, he does not cause evil to happen.

Another complaint I’ve heard, is that Satan and his power is conspicuously absent. In fact, as I remember, Satan is not mentioned once. I don’t have a problem with this. I don’t think this is a story about Satan, I think it is a story about God’s love. It is a parable. In the same way that the parables of Jesus do not mention Satan, neither does this one because there is a specific point to be made, a hurt to be healed, and Satan is not needed to convey the love of our Father toward us. I think the only nod to Satan in this book is when one of the characters says that all sin is a result of the desire for independence from God, and that certainly fits Lucifer as much as it does us. The point of this story is to release people from sadness and anger toward God, and to show that Papa really is good, and as I mentioned before, we don’t need evil to show what good is, it is the other way around.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend reading this book, many have said that it is the most impactful book they have ever read beside the Bible, and I would tend to agree. Whether or not we know it, I think we all need the kind of healing Mack received, because we all tend to hold grudges against God whether or not we know it. We don’t understand God and in our limited human understanding, we hold that against him. We need to know him personally to understand him, all the rules we put upon ourselves do nothing to bring us closer to him unless we can realize that we are powerless to follow those rules. And that’s what the rules are for.

I dare to call him Papa,

WiredForStereo

Another Lying Email, This Time, it is About Barack Obama

I just finished reading chapter 11 of "The Shack" by William P. Young, and after crying to the point of not being able to continue reading a few times, I really don't feel like writing right now, but I feel that I must, because one thing I've done here is combat bogus email forwards, and I have another one for you.

Again, I have no political affiliations and just because this post is the second in a row in regard to Barack Obama does not mean that I am voting for him or in any way trying to support him or any other candidate.

I received the following email from a friend from church. He is a great guy, but he is a conservative after all.

Subject: MEET BARAK...A TRUE STORY ABOUT OBAMA..........OMG I WILL PRAY REAL HARD!!!!

Meet Barak

Guys we need to pray hard, our Nation is in a bad
place for the next Presidential election, in 2008.

If you do not ever forward anything else, please
forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what
lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and
pray about it and share it.

THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO. THIS COUNTRY
WAS FOUNDED, "ONE NAT ION UNDER GOD". ALMIGHTY GOD, NOT THE GOD OF THE KORAN.

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual.
Check for yourself..

Who is Barack Obama?
Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein
Obama was born in
Honolulu , Hawaii , to Barack Hu ssein Obama, Sr., a
black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel , Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita , Kansas ..

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii . When Obama was two
years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His
mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim
from Indonesia . When Obama was 6 years old, the family re located to
Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta . He also spent
two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is
a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but
that he also attended Catholic school." He does not say the Pledge
of Allegiance, sing the National Anthem, nor put his hand over his
heart when others pledge or sing.
Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that Obama's
introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was
temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya
soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over
his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husb and of Obama's mother,
Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in
a Wahabi school in Jakarta .

Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim
terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since
it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when
seeking major public
office in the United States , Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United
Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim
background.

ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID
NOT use the Hol y Bible, but instead the Koran (Their equiva lency to
our Bible, but very different b eliefs)
Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected
presidential candidacy.
The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S .
from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest
level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!!
If it comes down to being between him or Hillary .. then we REALLY are
between a rock and a hard place.

Please forwa rd to everyone you know. Would you want
this man leading our
country?...... NOT ME!!!

Please do note the multiple misspellings and especially the gratuitous mention of snopes.com where all these claims are supposedly verified.

When I first read this, it didn't look right. After all, I am a conscientious American person who has already investigated somewhat into the candidates of the upcoming election. I had heard the rumor before that Obama was a Muslim and decided to check and found that he was not, and for many reasons. So just to make sure, I actually went to snopes.com and checked out whether or not these things were actually true though I already knew they were not. You can find the page at the following url.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

What to my wondering eyes did appear but that Barack Obama was high atop the top ten list at the fabulous Snopes website. So, as has become my practice, I hit the "Reply All" button and wrote a scathing reply to aforementioned bogus email and sent it off with a hint of nervousness as per the usual. You see, as a champion of truth (that I strive to be) I cannot let things like this go, so not only do I need to tell the person who sent it the error of their ways, but I need to spread the word in like "Forward" fashion, especially to those who have already received this poison (as any lie is.) I have done the same thing several times before, each time I have documented the corrections on the blog here, but I have not enumerated the procedure I have used.

These lies are damaging to the political process, and I am embarrassed for my friend because he claims to be a believer. As a Jesus Freak, I cannot allow lies like this or any other to continue to be espoused, and I cannot let a fellow believer to spread lies especially in a religious and Christian context. It is simply wrong. It does not matter if Obama were a Muslim or a Scientologist or a Satan worshiper. To lie and to be a Christian are mutually exclusive states of being.

In conclusion, Think people! Do you think that something like a Muslim candidate for president of the United States would have slipped through the cracks? For crying out loud, there's been enough minority talk, it would be like if someone missed the fact that Hillary was a woman. There would be an uproar. So don't believe lies. Don't believe things that look suspiciously like lies. Don't believe things that are supposedly secrets yet are being broadcast wet willy (you know who you are) nilly throughout the internet. And for the love of all things righteous and good, if you are gonna tell us you looked it up on Snopes, at least have the stones not to lie about that either.

Good night to all both of you,
WiredForStereo