The Shack

I am intrigued by the commotion over a novel approach to who God is and how She relates to the world and its people. In this blog I will not focus on The Shack and legitimacy of the provocative suggestions Young makes regarding the nature of God. I am here more interested in the background reasons for the furor that this book has caused.
Human beings are self-centered creatures whose view of the world tends to presume themselves to be autonomous deities in their own little universe, rather than as creatures accountable to a higher God. This view is not explicit, but implicit, which means that people will seldom enunciate this view, but this paradigm is operative in their function. They operate as though they were autonomous deities.
Another way of talking about this is to say that we all operate with certain frameworks in place. These frameworks are what allows us to make sense of our world, but we seldom pay any attention to the frameworks that structure our understanding of our world. When you wear rose-colored glasses your outlook is always rosy, but in a very short time you become oblivious to, and unaware of, the rose-colored glasses you wear. This problem is only exacerbated when all your friends wear the same shades.
However, when you meet someone who is wearing blue shades you encounter a worldview that presents a jarring contrast to the world you thought you knew. It is this stark contrast which alerts you to the rosy tint which your own framework imposed onto your view of your world, and genuine dialogue with your blue-hued friend shows you a whole new way of looking at your world. If you are willing to really listen to your new friend you are forced to recognize that the world is not only as you had understood it to be. Your world changes right before your eyes, because the way you look at your world has changed. Your experience is of a world that has radically changed, and as you allow new insights to change and correct the way you operate in your world, your world is radically altered.
This is both the promise and the threat of a novel approach portrayed in The Shack. We have read the Bible for many years, and we know what the Bible says. We know what it tells us about God. We know who God is because we know what the Bible tells us. It never occurs to us that we have been reading the Bible through a particular lens. We are completely oblivious to the ways in which these lenses have colored the way we see God described in the Bible. Our first reaction when someone talks about God in ways other than what we are used to is to cry “Heresy!!” We have come to believe devoutly that any characterization of God other than what we read in the Bible is idolatry, and any such other image presents the most sinister threat to our eternal well-being.
Young presents an alternative, not to biblical truth, but to our reading of biblical truth. The fact that his reading of biblical truth is different from ours does not mean that his reading, however provocative, runs contrary to biblical truth. That evaluation requires that we listen carefully to what he is saying, and become willing to get radical with our evaluation of how our own lenses have always colored our own reading of biblical truth.
In the final end, I believe that the allure of Young’s reading rests not merely on the merits of its own provocative suggestions of who God is, but it derives its strength primarily from the promise contained in its potential to broaden our understanding of biblical truth. It is powerfully appealing not because it presents an alternative to biblical truth, but because it presents a larger vision of biblical truth than our frameworks have allowed us to see. To the extent that we are comfortable with the truth we know and are resistant to larger truth, this is diabolically threatening. On the other hand, if we are willing to have an encounter with the God Who Is, beyond our feeble understanding of God as limited by our knowledge, such an alternative carries profound promise. It is the difference between having a god we can hold, or having a God who holds us. When we finally do realize that we can never hold God, it is in fact more comforting to know that it is God who holds us. This realization both relativizes previous frameworks, and it becomes a framework that facilitates a broader and deeper recognition of the God Who Is that must itself be relativized if it is not to become a similarly restricting framework as well as an enabling framework. That God will forever elude our confident grasp and exceed our anemic frameworks is our only hope, not a most threatening heresy. Thanks be to God!!

Good Friday

Why do we call it Good Friday? I know it is good news for us in retrospect, but it certainly was not a good day for Jesus. And how did the cross, Rome’s symbol of the most ignominious defeat, get turned into the symbol of a victorious Christendom that ruled the western world for two millenia? There seems to be some odd reversal going on here, a paradigm shift of stupendous proportions.
Paul said as much when he told us that Jesus cancelled the written code by nailing it to the cross, and he made a spectacle of powers and authorities, triumphing over them by the cross (Col 2:14,15). What looked to be happening was the polar opposite of what actually transpired.
However, it is precisely this radical reversal of the obvious that is one of the primary reasons for keeping the cross front and center in all Christian theology and practice. (Please understand I am here addressing the place of the cross in our thought, not the place of the cross (and all it represents) in itself. I hope to make clear that the significance of the cross as an expression of the God who relentlessly pursues his children exceeds our grasp.) It is the cross that proscribes our becoming complacent in our theology and practice. It is the profound depth of meaning in the cross that remains a constant challenge to thought and life.
When Mary and I were returning from the obligatory Good Friday morning service we were talking about Jesus’ statement on the cross “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” There has been extensive discussion about the precise meaning of this phrase, and I do not propose to answer the question here, I simply wish to attempt a response that takes note of some of the issues which must be considered in any proposed answer, if any such thing as an answer is even possible.
Interpreting this phrase to indicate that the Father turns his back on his Son, as is often done, is illegitimate on two counts. In the first place, the word Jesus uses means God, not Father. Secondly, Christian theology devoutly holds that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, and that he is so eternally from the Incarnation. Hence this heart-rending lament means neither that the Father turned his back on his Son, and it cannot mean that Jesus’ divinity was diminished in this experience.
I read this statement as an expression of the profound cataclysmic and catastrophic experience of the Author of Life tasting death; of the Holy One becoming sin; and –thanks be to God– of final defeat becoming an eternal victory. We can grasp neither the holiness of God, nor the onerous repugnance of sin, how can we hope understand their intersection? We know not the meaning of life and cannot understand the significance of death, how can we hope to make sense of the earth-shattering magnitude of the clash that transpires when Life meets death face to face?
I cannot hope to adequately understand the significance of the cross for my thought and life, but I am beginning to understand the exigence of keeping the cross front and center in all my reflections about life and relationships. The cross reminds me of who I am, and it reminds me that I need a God who loves me immeasurably more than my paltry awareness of my need for love. The cross reminds me that the way to life is through death, and that things are seldom as they appear. The cross reminds me that I and every one of my fellow human beings stands radically equal before God, and that failure to extend prodigal grace to others is the greatest obstacle to my own experience of the grace I so desperately need for my own salvation. The cross tells me that even as I do not begin to understand the enormity of my sin and the terrifying specter of death as separation from God, so I catch but the faintest glimmerings of the promise contained in the hope of salvation and life with God here and now, as well as forever, because of the cross.
Thanks be to God!!

Check out my ego!

I don't really mean that, but it just seems so egotistical to blog, putting something out there for the world to read, as if anyone on the world would care enough to read it.
I think my only justification for blogging at all is that it is a form of discipline in which I am the main (and likely the only) benefactor. I tend to think more carefully when I translate my thoughts into written word.
The other benefit of blogging is the opportunity afforded for conversation and stimulation, but that requires a community, preferably a diverse yet respectful community. Those are a rarity in cyber-space, it seems to me. It it tough to find a blog that portrays either of those qualities, it is almost impossible to have a blog that conveys both. As to community, I return to my earlier query: Why would any one read my blog? I am not even sure I will.
My reticence in blogging is not due to any lack of material. My fascination with the why's and wherefore's of all things philosophical or theological (Ok, not all things, let's go with many things) means there are almost innumerable topics I could reflect upon, but again, why blog about these in a public sphere? Who cares what I think? Certainly not my kids, not always my spouse, some of my friends sometimes, maybe, but I have not told any friends about this blog, so how would they know to check it, even if they did care?
Ok, that's enough of indulging in angst and retro-hubris. Either I blog or I don't. Right now it's not.

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