‘The Shack’

Recently I read ‘The Shack’ by Wm Paul Young. It is a religious book that has sold 18 million copies. It was recommended to me on the World Horizons weekend. I finally bought it and took it home and read it, several times, when I was going through a 6 week period of reflection or ‘sink’ as I called it to my children, trying to break a repeated pattern in my life and act in a totally different way.

It is a story about a family man, Mack, whose daughter is abducted and murdered. Several years later he receives a letter in the post purporting to be from God inviting Mack to visit him in the ‘shack’ where his daughter was murdered. The book is about his conversation with God there.

What did I learn from it? Remember this is my interpretation and not necessarily what the author intended.

First of all I want to say that for me the author totally answers the question of why bad things happen to good people, not that I have ever felt that humans are entitled to having it easy on the planet. I don’t see faith as praying for all the nice things I want in my life.

I love how the author made the trinity in to three different ‘people’. The visual imagery of it helps me to reflect upon and understand the multi-dimensional and supra-natural nature of God.

There is a lot in the book about submission to God.

‘When I am in your life, submission is the most natural expression of my character and nature, and it will be the most natural expression of your new nature within relationships, but apart from my life inside you’, you are unable to submit.

‘You must give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms and know God enough to trust him and rest in his inherent goodness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from me, you can only draw upon yourself’.

‘Our relationship is not about performance or having you please me’.

‘Freedom involves trust and obedience inside a relationship of love’.

‘Rights are where survivors go so they won’t have to work out relationships’.

 

It made me review my concept about ‘relationship’ and hierarchy in our relationships. ‘When you choose independence over relationship, you become a danger to each other. Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness’.

‘Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself – to serve’.

While focusing on the journey of our relationship with God, it also made me review my ‘relationships’ conducted in their narrowest sense which has been about, I hate to say this, but it’s true, wanting to and getting frustrated when I can’t mould people I want to hold closest to me. The book says It is not about changing them or convincing them, but being free to love without an agenda. Not having an agenda obviously requires a great deal of maturity, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have choice. It just means you can’t make choices for other people. I think I was getting there, but it consolidated things.

The other bit I loved was the point in the book where Jesus says ‘I don’t create institutions; that’s an occupation for those who want to play God. So no, I’m not too big on religion and not very fond of politics and economics either’. The (non-physically perfect) Jesus in the book says ‘I am not a Christian. Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, democrats, republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions……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, into my brothers and sisters and into my Beloved’. I loved this bit because I have always been anxious about in-church preaching of how God views people from ‘other’ faiths.

There is also a great bit about forgiveness which I had heard before, and find immensely healing. Although we need to forgive people who have hurt or wronged us, it does not mean we have to have a relationship with them. They have to do things which make them worthy again of our trust in them.

Other quotes I liked which don’t particularly fit into a theme or general comment include

Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again’.

Humans were designed to live in the present. When I dwell with you, I do so in the present – I live in the present.

I am with you and I’m not lost.

New words I learnt

Fractal

The colour chartreuse