Thousand Acre Church

Shack-Shack-Bo-Back-Banana-Fana-Fo-Fack!!!! FACK! I got to admit… I like to think “I’m too cool for school.” (as Zoolander puts it) when it comes to trendy books that get passed around churches. The Prayer of Jabez? HA!! Never touched it! Please. The Purpose Driven Life? Whatever! (see my last post on “Whatever,God!”, okay I read that book, but only b/c the small group I was leading wanted to read it together… apparently I wasn’t REALLY leading that small group, huh?) Soooooooo… when I was told that we HAD to read The Shack in order to participate in the discussion we’re having about it in our Sunday school class, I cringed. My business coach gave Ang and I a copy several months ago… she bought a box of ‘em and was passing them out to friends and strangers alike. She’s not the type that would do that flippantly, so I should have given it more thought at the time; but it went on the shelf. Luckily, now that it was resurfacing in our class, I found it on iTunes in an unabridged format for $5.95. I listened to all 8+ hrs. of it during work last week. Now, I’m ready to admit I enjoyed it.

There were a few things that I thought were distracting, especially the way the older white male narrator on the audio changed his dialect when speaking Papa’s lines. Makes me shiver to think of it again. I was most intrigued by all of the “heresy” buzz. It was mentioned in class that there were several websites we might be discussing that discussed the heresies found in the book (Google “13 heresies of the Shack“). There are (as of right now) 2313 reviews on Amazon… a few hundred of them are not so flattering. It’s interesting to hear the author respond to accusations of “heresy” in interviews because, it seems, he couldn’t care less.

William “Paul” Young wrote the book for an audience of about six people as a favor to his wife. She had been asking him to write down his thoughts on life and theology because she thought they were unique, and she wanted their children to profit from having their father’s thoughts on paper. The deadline for the first edition was to make it to Kinko’s by Christmas so that he could present the book to his children as a gift. The book got passed around, and eventually he started getting calls from people who wanted to get more copies, meet Mack, make a movie, etc. After it was given as a gift to his children, the author had no ambitions or agenda. Interestingly, several folks out there feel an obligation to save the rest of us mindless sheep from buying in to the doctrinal garbage hiding in the belly of this literary Trojan horse. Personally, I’m amused (sorry if that sounds condescending) by the whole response.

I’ve found it easier to let the guardians of truth and virtue in the church (sarcasm intended there) to speak freely and limit my response in these kind of situations. While I’m confident in my ability to articulate a defense of a lot of positions that are considered “out-of-bounds”, I think that too often in these situations I’m living in a different Story… at least I would tell the Story in a different way. The whole discussion seems fruitless, and the exercise of our lips seem to leave us both more entrenched in our commitments and less open to loving one another. Besides that, usually those kind of folks tend to not have time to hang out for long… and it sometimes takes a lot of time and a lot of sharing to articulate our respective versions of the Story. So I just leave it. I think, “You tell your version of the Story of God’s people, I’ll tell mine. We’ll let the proof be in the pudding, eh?” But still… I’m left shrugging at the tendency that a lot of people have to use the word “heresy” to refer to something that they don’t like or that makes them feel uncomfortable. That pattern seems to be repeating with The Shack.

I didn’t really have anything to say about The Shack. Wait, that’s not true. I mean… I have a lot to say, of course, but I’m not sure if the joy of sharing my thoughts on the book is worth all of the misunderstanding and relational tension that would result. Then today, I was listening to a lecture given by N.T. Wright at Regent College on Phillipians 1:1-18. I love that guy, and I love my days doing paperwork that allow me to listen to him in the background. That’s what he was for the most part this morning, background noise. Then I heard him say,

“Note the sequence of what he prays… Love, Knowledge, Insight, Decision, Purity. How often the church has put that sequence some other way ’round. How often the church has taught Knowledge, being able to distinguish truth from heresy, then if you’ve got any time and energy left, stick in a little bit of Love. For Paul, Knowledge and Insight and Discernment flow out of Love.”

I stopped working, listened to it again, and looked it up. Sure enough, it was right there in Phillipians 1:9-11 “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” Shazam! There it was. Love, love, love! N.T. Wright, in his English accent and wacky sentence structure, said what I was feeling in my gut but couldn’t articulate. It all starts with love! Heresy-schmeresy! Start with love; understanding (if it ever comes) will come behind love.

So The Shack(or any other “fluffy”, liberal, postmodern, emerging, you name it, heretical, etc. book) goes on about love. The guardians of truth and justice (and the American way) go on pushing back that God is holy and just (cause, you know, God certainly must be at least a little pissed off at us so we don’t get too comfortable around him). And me… I’m gonna just try to keep my mouth shut when that conversation happens. I’m gonna use Paul’s prayer from Phillipians 1:9-11, and count on our God, who IS love, and our King Jesus, who embodied compassion and love, to grow our love to overflowing so that we might have a little understanding and insight. Lips zipped. Throw away the key.