My mother purchased The Shack for me over the winter break and told me that I absolutely had to read it. Two of the secretaries at the law firm where I’ve worked off-and-on for the past two years raved about it. And yet… I was decidedly with Sarah McMillon in turning my nose up to it. However, as the clamor within Christian society about this book (not to mention the opportunity to speak to the secretaries here about spiritual things) rose to a roar, I took my mom’s offer and read it. It took three days.

The Shack is a fictional tale, yet it is clearly intended to communicate theological truths. The book was written not merely to share a story, but to communicate a theology and impact the way the reader (of which there have been a million-plus) thinks about God, suffering, the church, and a variety of other issues about faith. Christianity’s history is filled with examples of fiction meant to instruct us about the Christian life- think C.S. Lewis or Pilgrim’s Progress- but comparatively few books of this nature have created such a stir… and had such divided opinions. Eugene Peterson and Michael W. Smith laud it unabashedly. Conversely, Al Mohler commented that “this book includes undiluted heresy,” and Mark Driscoll wrote similarly. All of American Christianity seems presently affected to some degree by this simple book written by an office manager in Oregon. How should we respond? Should we throw the book out for its modalism (presenting the trinity as three different aspects of God, rather than as three different persons of God Himself), for its portrayal of God the Father as a woman (or, as Driscoll claims, for portraying God the Father at all), for denying the intrinsic hierarchy within the Trinity (John 14:28-31), or for failing to steer completely clear of universalism (p.182)? Whatever our response should be, the fact remains that, due to the present scope of its influence, we simply cannot ignore it.

Personally, I think that The Shack has a lot of great things to say, but they must be taken with a grain of salt and with a healthy study of the Scriptures to balance and weigh the statements written by William P. Young. I do not agree with Eugene Peterson in declaring it our generation’s Pilgrim’s Progress; conversely, I do not agree with Al Mohler’s disgust. Over the course of a few (likely interrupted) blogs, I will attempt to discuss some passages in The Shack that were especially pivotal. Most of them will be passages that I found particularly helpful or interesting, since I, in the paragraph above, have already outlined some of the major problems I had with the novel.

Enjoy, detest, discuss, or ignore. I leave it to you.

Papa: “The Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust. Everything is about him. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him…” (p. 95)

In a bizarre coincidence (with a sovereign God, is there even such a thing?), last night I read an excerpt of a John Updike poem in N.T. Wright’s Surprised By Hope. Though Updike’s name as a novelist and poet is an acclaimed one, it was the first time I had ever read his work. Sadly, John Updike passed this morning, but I figured, in his memory, I would post what N.T. Wright referenced. It is entitled “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

I recently breezed through Stephen J. Nichols’ book Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us About Suffering and Salvation. He examines what he sees as dissonance in the Bible- David crying out in the Psalms, Elijah asking to die, Paul lamenting his heart & its longing for sin- in what he calls “theology in a minor key.” These songs of hurt, brokenness, and sin are what Nichols refers to as “Adam’s song.” They are the songs that help remind us of the brokenness of this world, our bondage to sin, and the weight of injustice. They beg for mercy & redemption.

“In broad strokes, a theology in a minor key embraces what we so often go to extremes to try and avoid in the contemporary world, the harshness & frailty of life, the presence of sin and evil, the short comings and limitations of humanity. In short, all of the realities of life under the curse. The Blues invite us to embrace the curse through its articulation of restlessness and despair, longing and estrangement- what theologians call alienation. But theology in a minor key also sounds a note of hope, as it leads us to the Man of Sorrows and the cross” (p. 34). 

Nichols does a fine job (though he often is redundant) tracing the history of the Blues- borne from slavery & spirituals of hope, then up & out of the Mississippi Delta- alongside a Biblical history of redemption. He calls us to pause on Good Friday, lingering over our immobile Savior, pierced, scarred, and shut up in death, thinking, like the disciples must have won… lest we diminish and distort the full weight of Christ’s work, lest we fail to truly examine what it cost him to reconcile God and man…

Lastly, Nichols examines the blues as an eschatology- underneath all the despair lies a quiet hope, just as there was in the spirituals from which the blues were born, that ultimate justice & healing will be coming soon and indeed are already breaking through- and as an ecclesiology- a congregation of those who know what it means to be sons & daughters of Adam, to live under the curse, and to long for the full disclosure of promised mercy & rebirth. The blues bind people together because the blues sing true and sing for hope of resolution. Simply put, “the blues is a congregation that sings on Saturday night in expectation of Sunday” (171).

Erin sent me a piece of a post by Andy Byer recently that, in a way, ties in with Nichols:

“One of the cliches Christians readily offer to those who sit in pain and turmoil should be tossed out with the false wisdom of Job’s friends: ‘God will never give you more than you can handle.’ Behind this comment is a deeply embedded resistance to acknowledge the depth of pain and misery that sin has wrought in our world.  And in Western societies, we have devised multiple means of keeping the misery of death and pain at arms length…

We assume that His love for us guarantees our protection from evil… God certainly does protect us.  But He also afflicts us.  And, often beyond the scope of our understanding, His affliction is ultimately loving.

In the opening of 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to a scene of such affliction that he and his comrades assumed they would die–”For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (1.8, ESV).

God had given them more than they could handle.  And Paul tells us why: “…that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead” (1.9, ESV).

God will indeed give us more than we can handle.  But this is so that we may relinquish our foolish, idealistic fantasies about our own strength and ingenuity and turn instead to the only true hope we have–God, who raises the dead. God will give us more than we can handle, but He will never give us more than He can handle….”

These resonate with me deeply. These are the lessons we gain from Job, from William Cowper, from David Brainerd, and countless others. Our world is broken, but our Father is loving & capable. All is not lost; dawn is yet breaking through.

UNRELATED POINT OF THE DAY: I was in the Probate Courthouse & learned that you can legally change your name for $11 and a page and a half of paperwork… Unbelievable. Any suggestions as to what my first name change should be?

I’m in St. Louis right now, hanging out with my boys Lee Wright & Eddie Murphy  (and Lee’s studly roommates, including one I affectionaly rechristened “Joe Flacco,” being that he is the only man I’ve ever met from the state of Delaware) and seeing Anna Cushman & Katie Baird. Covenant Seminary seems fantastic, and I love St. Louis. For such an old city, it seems marvelously well designed.  It may be my new favorite city. I mean, I spent last night eating some unbelievable sushi, going to a high-class bowling alley, and enjoying the freezing cold streets of a clean city.

Yesterday, as we tramped about the city, we ventured into St. Louis’ Basilica, which was adorned with the masterful work of Wiktor Szostalo. Wow.

I’ve also been reading Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us About Suffering & Salvation by Stephen J. Nichols. It’s great… but more on that later.

Sorry that I have not yet returned to my list of lessons from 2008, but I’ve been distracted as of late. I recently reached 80% of my support goal for Campus Outreach (the percentage at which they have to tell me where I’m headed!) and my grandfather, one Arnie “Honey” Almand, lineman for the 1939 Boy’s High State Championship Football team, was in the hospital, though he appears to be on his way out now- praise God.

Brevities:

1. Go see Slumdog Millionaire

2. Play Chinook in Checkers. You will lose. Guaranteed.

3. Read about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church in Seattle in The New York Times.

4. Read Charles Spurgeon’s account of his salvation:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. In that chapel there might be a dozen or fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning: snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. The text was, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter.

There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text. He began thus: ‘My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, “Look.” Now that does not take a deal of effort. It ain’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just “look.” Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, “Look unto Me.” ‘Ay,’ said he, in broad Essex, ‘many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourselves.’ Then the good man followed up his text in this way: ‘Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look: I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O, look to Me! Look to Me!’ When he had got about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes, he was at the length of his tether.

Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. He then said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable.’ Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made on my personal appearance from the pulpit before. However, it was a good blow struck. He continued: ‘And you will always be miserable — miserable in life and miserable in death — if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.’

Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can, ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ.’ There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the Precious Blood of Christ.”

George Herbert

A DIALOGUE-ANTHEM.

CHRISTIAN, DEATH.

I realized a few days ago just how hurried my day-to-day activities and my walk had grown over the last several months, and so, in an effort to counteract that & to truly meditate upon & soak in the lessons I learned this past year, most of the next few posts will be a review of things God taught me or caused me to remember in 2008.

Round One:

Our God is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything. He needs naught. He wants naught. He by no means needs us to bring anyone to Himself. He is glorious- regardless of whether or not we honor Him in our worship. Just as the brilliance of the sun would not be diminished if I were blind, so the glory of the Lord is not diminished by one atheist.

The only way I can love Erin more in a way that honors the Lord more is to love HIM more.

God did not have to create romantic love, but He chose to do so in order to communicate something pivotal about how deeply, affectionately, and sacrificially he loves us.

If we don’t love the Word of God, if we don’t treasure it as the very keys to life, the very things that God has chosen to make known to us about Himself and His will, our very sustenance… then surely we will be a people who perish for a lack of knowledge. Let that not be said of this over-busy, over-comforted generation, O Lord.

Christ in the garden shows us a true understanding of the gravity of sin. He sweat blood for it- for the heartbreak of losing the pleasure of God, the terror of God’s wrath, and the stripping away of the deepest, most satisfying, purest intimacy with the Father. O that I would react to sin in the same way! That my heart would rather be ripped out of my chest than to be separated from my God! And how I should mourn that my heart never thus grieves over my sin… More often than not, I attempt to gloss over it, my treason, with an attitude akin to apathy. Lord, let me learn to weep over my sin, to repent, to believe in your past, present, and future grace, and to boldly fight sin thereafter.

Everything that is admirable in Erin (or anyone I admire) is perfectly admirable in Christ. Everything she (or anyone) is terrible at is, yet again, also perfectly admirable in Christ. He is perfectly, forever beyond us.

And so, great calamity comes and the “god” that has “given” us our carnal delights is called into question, because his “goodness” no longer pleases us. Instead of responding with outrage and accusatory anger, we should be crumbled in thanksgiving and repentance, asking God why we were not destroyed alongside them.

(Upon reading and discussing Habakkuk 3, the fiery furnace in Daniel, & Jonathan Edwards’ Resolution #52 with Erin): How will I be able to look back at my life and say, “I have lived to old age & have lived just as I wished I should have lived”? At first I determined that it would be okay if no one ever knew my name, but that those that I poured my life into would truly, whole-heartedly give their lives to God. A feeling of nausea and realization of sickening pride and sin came over me. Well, I thought, maybe if my kids truly follow God, then I will be able to look back at my life and say that I lived well, that my life was honoring to God.
No, no, no, no, no! If my life bears no fruit in others, if I live in darkness for the next fifty years like Mother Theresa, if God does NOT save me from the furnace, if everyone I pour myself into, my kids and wife included, turns away from the faith, STILL should my very soul sing the deepest praise to the Lord God Almighty. A life well-lived is one that is lived for Christ’s sake, regardless of the outcome. Though the fig tree fails… He who has the Son has life; He who has not the Son has nothing.

A life spent without repentance and reflection is one spent without growth.

Why should we fast & pray? Because we hunger for God’s praise to resound among the nations, for his glory to be restored in the church, and for His Son to return to His people. Let us pray and fast until the Bridegroom returns and sets all things aright!
-Edwards- It seems that God often withholds the things His people pray for, perhaps even increasing the darkness for a time, until He who continues to pray without fail, is changed.

Do we really want God? If we want Christ, we will go to the nations. If we want Christ, we will bombard his throne day & night. For Zion’s sake, I will not keep silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest and give Him no rest. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.