no spoilers here. just wanted to drop some personal notes on this phenomenom that has brought us all here together. this blurring wonder we have come to know as: THE SHACK.
here's what i liked about william p. young's first opus:
- THE SHACK was short. once i finally got to reading it, i cranked through it in, like, two days. this makes me happy. the more books i crank through in two days the more books i get to boast for reading in a month's time, which makes me sound wicked smart at a dinner party.
- THE SHACK was encouraging. many of you may know (most of you may not), that i am a fan of violence in media. i like seeing people die on the television set - particularly in bizarre, creative ways (ie. christian bale dropping the chainsaw on the prostitute in the stairwell - baker's got my back on this). with that in mind, i found the story of THE SHACK encouraging. it made me feel good and calm and rested. reading THE SHACK tasted like sipping chamomile tea with my eyeballs.
- in THE SHACK, i liked how the trinity laughed so much. and i liked that their joy kinda peeved mack. i think the religious world went and got all bothered about many things concerning this book - and right there near the top of their pissy list it says "God don't laugh that much!" well, i think God does laugh that much. i think life more abundant means that we will all ride skateboards and fingerpaint and climb giant red oaks and wrestle 'gators and drink all the hoppy ale we want without getting drunk because Heaven will be all the fun we could not have on earth. that might be juvenile, but, dang, what else will we be doing? floating? playing harps? sitting on clouds looking dumbfounded? i think God has a tremendous Father's heart, and when God gets all the kids home one day, i think He's going to have a backyard party that don't stop. why else does seth haines want to roll on the floor and wrestle and tickle and laugh with his three sons? because God the Father wants to roll on the floor and wrestle and tickle and laugh with seth. it's simple. so william p. young hit that nail smack on the head.
- on that note, i also really liked it when Jesus told mack that He was not a christian. i also liked it when Jesus said that He did not come so that people could be like Jesus. instead, Jesus came to reveal the Father. CHA-CHING! jackpot! great stuff. when i read that, a little ball of agreement exploded in my gut. beautiful moment. totally great.
- i like how every chapter in THE SHACK had a quote at the front. when i write a book one day, the one about my pheonix tattoo and the day i shot out of the yellow sea like a cannonball from a submarine, i'm gonna put a bunch of boss quotes at the beginning of every chapter. there'll be stuff by ani difranco, mike ness of social distortion, isaac brock of modest mouse, my wife, my dad, my friend aubrey who lived next to me in china, thom yorke of radiohead, chad pollock, neil young, bruce springsteen, and a schlew of other folks that showed me God, not in a shack, but in a little communist owned apartment complex. i'm stoked to see it happen.
- i like how the Holy Spirit looked like lucy liu in my head the entire time i read THE SHACK. mainly because i think lucy lui is phenomenally gorgeous, but i'm totally not attracted to her in that way. ya know?
- i like how God kept rebuking this idea that something bad happened for a reason. instead, God was all like, yea, the bad thing happened - and I could have stopped it, but I didn't - and now that it's done I can make something awesomely beautiful out of it. this is good, in my opinion, because i've seen myself and other people waste a lot of years and faith searching for "the reason" or "the purpose" of why something happened. it's ten times easier, and quicker, to relinquish our need to know and to start praising God in the midst of all the shit. God promised to inhabit praises - God never promised to answer our questions. God promised to comfort those who mourn - God never promised to tell us why we mourned. that's a hard truth, but it's truth nonetheless. relinguishing our furious desire to know why is a pivotal step to trusting God as the Hopeful Redeemer of all things hopeless.
- i love that this book is blowing everybody's mind. that's great. i love that people are wrestling and trembling with their views of God in light of this very simple, good, hopeful story. that is so like God to stick His finger down in the middle of something totally benign and then swirl it up like a water park ride. eugene peterson might actually be right about THE SHACK: this book might shake some foundation in modern christianity that needs to be shaken, and then drop it to the floor in a devastating crash. i hope so. you just never know where God's gonna infuse His heart into His kids. i love the Lord for that.
- there were a couple times, only a couple, when billy young tried to give black mama Papa a hint of ebonics in her speech. that was just plum cute. it was only a couple lines, and it almost seemed like he was nervous to take it too far, but i laughed straight outloud when i saw it. i said, you go, whiteboy! and he did. and i'm glad.
alright, alright, that's all i got for now. i'm done with THE SHACK. now i'm reading olivia's recommendation, SILENCE. olivia knows what she's talking about. this SILENCE is wicked good. i'm only five chapters in, but i'm already giving it five samurai swords out of five. will keep you all posted.
ps. i writ this over on my other site today. you probably shouldn't read it.
12 years ago
7 comments:
THANK YOU! You put into words so much of what I loved and felt about the book!
Right on Hamsta! I loved the post and had many of the same feelings! Couldnt help reading "wicked smart" with a Boston accent. SO it should have been written "wicked smat". Like in Rounders! :) One of my favorite movies btw.
clarks - high five!
schell - my wife has a giganto crush on edward norton. she has a list printed off from imdb of all his movies. recently we found PRIMAL FEAR on the vhs clearance rack at half priced books for a dollar - and we simply HAD to get it. yet, i am stoked to no end that my wife digs hard on the edward norton - he is way easier to watch in excess than say ben affleck or mario lopez. with that said, she highly recommended ROUNDERS to me as well. i seem to have missed it. but now i have two glowing reviews. thanks.
kev, i thought of your wife as papa plus another hundred pounds.
on that note, a barnabas friend of mine's birthday was yesterday and i was looking through old photos to find some to make a shirt for him. i came across several pictures of you and your lovely wife. i wanted to show you, but you are far away.
let me know if you are interested. i think your wife is super great.
also, does she have a sister in stl, because i could have sworn i met a girl who looked a little like, but really talked just like her.
Never saw "Roundahs". Kev, maybe you should give this a run on 3 hands.
notes from a skeptic
I found it difficult to be encouraged by the SHACK. I am encouraged more by real world events that positively change people. The SHACK is one man's ideas about God and I could not quit thinking this throughout the book. It all seemed so ephemeral. The ideas in the SHACK that challenge much of typical Christian thought (like God laughing so much, God being black, God being Asian) seemed contrived and novel. The novelty of these concepts in no way stirred awe or appreciation in me, just skepticism.
The idea that Jesus did not come so we could be like him, but rather came to reveal the father, seems to be another novelty, if the author is suggesting Jesus "only" came to reveal he father. Romans chapter one is clear, I think, that God has revealed himself to man since the beginning of time and therefore man is already without excuse if he rejects God, which suggests that Jesus' arrival here may not have merely a revealing purpose but something more, like a redeeming purpose, so we can be like Christ in that we can be with God.
Lately, I have really been struggling with "the problem of evil." I cannot be satisfied with throwing my hands up and worshiping a God who allows so much suffering. I cannot relinquish my desire to know why. That is just not doing it for me anymore. The acts of horror that you enjoy on TV are often very real for people in other countries (that was not a personal jab - I love the movie review blogs you guys post). Watching an al-Qaida member struggle to pass his rusty knife blade between the vertebrate of my fellow service member's neck, and hearing this grown man squeal like a pig through his severed neck as his final breaths are sucked into an exposed stump of a trachea, brings a certain reality to what is possible when opposing faiths come face to face and each one holds fast that his God is the real God and his book is the true book. Watching the Sunni and Shia mercilessly torture one another over issues of faith makes it really difficult to not ask WHY. And the SHACK seems to offer nothing but a few glib cliches in terms of clarifying the matter in any real way.
The children of the Ammonites surely had questions as the swords of God's chosen people slashed their parents and then them. And I am certain the eager response from the proud Hebrews, "I do this in the name of Yahwey and at his command, " was not any consolation for these children bleeding their last drops at the feet of the confident chosen. I am sure the first born sons of Egypt also had questions about Yahwey's divinity as they each were killed by the great God of the Israelites. We call this infanticide and genocide today, and we prosecute people for it. I don't know how to excuse God for this behavior. The SHACK only seemed palatable while sitting in the comfort of my middle class home, in the skin of my healthy body and full belly with all my limbs, far removed from the cruel and bloody existence lived by so many others around the world who daily face the blunt swords, rusty metal rods, bone chipped drill bits, and cold rifle muzzles of the doubtless faithful who do not hesitate to worship their Gods in ways not unfamiliar to the God of the Bible and his chosen people.
We may not need the comfort of the SHACK to fit God into our peace loving perceptions, when it's quite possible the Bible story is as much fiction as is the SHACK. I can't prove it, but it's possible. And it certainly relieves the pressure of having to justify God's actions. If he is a story, a character, then innocent children did not die at his omniscient benevolent hand. They died at the hands of tribal men who's myths were used to create meaning and promote cohesion within the group at a time when extended family cooperation was vital to survival, quite like we see today in tribal cultures. Maybe.
Jeremy
jeremey allen - i liked you when your alarm clock in the next room kept me and aaron bell awake for three nights straight our freshman year of college, and i like you now. this is good stuff you wrote. necessary stuff, and i am bowing out of the blog to write to you on email. thanks for stopping by.
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