Back to the Shack

I'm an avid reader, I love books and I read every chance I get. There have been several books over the years that shaped me and changed my life, literally.  Back in 2007 one such a book was published. It was a little book called THE SHACK by William P. Young.

This year as part of our practice during Lent my mom and I decided to revisit The Shack. I've seen the movie of course, but it has been 13 years since I last read the book. I wondered whether it would pack the same punch the second time around as it did the first.

In 2007 I was spiritually in a very different place. I had always seen things differently, even as a child. I can't recall exactly how The Shack first came to me but looking back now it came along in a nick of time.

Now, this book has been very polarizing in the Christian community. Some loved it, some hated it. I loved it! This book blew my mind in the very best way. I found that I could relate to the lead character Mack's deep distrust of God. I may not have lost a young daughter in the hideous way Mack had, but I knew deep loss and I knew how it felt to be angry at God. 

What The Shack managed 13 years ago was to present to me an image of God and the Trinity which resonated deeply. The God of The Shack is both Mother and Father, but more than that this God was presented here as a thoroughly loving, thoroughly compassionate, thoroughly just Parent.

Now I have a very dear friend who does not like the book, not because she finds fault with the theology presented in it, but because she found it rather too simple. She also could not understand why so many Christians found the book so shocking.

"Surely this is all common knowledge. Surely everyone knows this." She said to me once when we were discussing the book at the height of its popularity.

To which I laughingly replied. "But that's just it, this is never talked about from the pulpit. No one in mainstream Christianity would have thought to imagine God as a Woman and a woman of color to boot, and if someone in a mainstream church ever did imagine any such thing they'd never dare say it out loud for fear of being branded a heretic."

Back in 2007, I remember feeling such a huge sense of relief and joy at being given the freedom to relate to God as both Father and Mother in the process catching a glimpse of the vast unknown of the Force we call God, a Force so vast and indefinable, a Force too big for our human minds to ever comprehend or our neat little categories to box in.

Reading the Shack now in 2020, in the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak and a world seemingly plunged into ever deeper chaos and fear, I find that this book (initially written by William P Young as a story for his children) keeps giving me hope, inviting me to trust that God is far greater and far, far better than anything our human minds can even begin to conceive.

Regards

Freeda Moon