The Shack

Well, I just finished reading The Shack by William P. Young. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, mainly because it seemed like it was the bandwagon book everyone was reading at the time, and I tend to have caution with things that everyone else is doing.

Anyways, it was a good book and brought out some really solid questions to examine for yourself. I was really encouraged when I looked up the readership, and it's sold more than 2 million copies and has been #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list for 26 or something weeks now.

That's really encouraging to me that a lot of people are going through the substance of this book and finding and having time with Jesus in a different way than the institutionalized, culturized form of Jesus as they have known Him.

I totally agree with the book that Jesus is not a set of rules or an institution or an accepted status quo of how to act or what to think. God in His infinite-ness cannot be thought of fully or understood completely by finite-ness - that being US humans!! I think it's an amazing premise - that God is so huge and His love so great, even the love that we can actually understand and get an idea of -- the reality is that there's even that much more to His love than we know.

For this, as the book pointed out, Jesus deserves the center of attention and the entirety of our lives.

Another point that I really enjoyed about the book was the emphasis on reconciliation. To get a bigger grasp and a better sense of that huge huge love of God that we have a hard time experiencing because of our own selfishness and stupid independence -- a great way to get that love is via reconciliation. Reconciliation for friendships, marriages, relationships with family members, and acts of reconciliation with those who have hurt us or harmed us.

The power of reconciliation is incredibly great. After all, in doing so, we are seeking to follow God's example of how He worked on us, to make things right through Jesus. I don't think we can go wrong genuinely trying to emulate God's act of reconciliation in our own earthly relationships.

As Paul writes...
"If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:13-21 NIV)

One thing I felt was missing from the book was the importance of Scripture. The Shack never really included or talked about in the character conversations, anything about the primacy of the Word. I think it's great that a relationship with Jesus is going to look differently for each person, but I think that the Holy Scriptures are an inherent part of that relationship, since in the beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was God...(John 1). Overall, a good book and a solid read!