For any reader who hasn't read the book and intends to, you might want to skip this paragraph (just this one!) since it spoils elements of the plot. I like to read book reviews of the books I have finished reading (usually on Amazon, along with some of Amazon's related discussion boards) to observe all the differing opinions, and with this book I notice a polarized readership, even among Christians. (The term "Christian" does not mean the same thing to everyone, but here I refer to people who, one can safely assume, would consider themselves "Christian.") That a short fiction novel would stir so many in such different ways, even among Christians, is remarkable. For author William Paul Young, working within Trinitarian doctrine, to imagine the Father as a large black woman--or even just a person with a face upon with another can look--Is this blasphemy? To fill the mouths of God's three persons--most notably, I think, Jesus--with speculative statements, like Jesus' statement, "Who said anything about being a Christian? I'm not a Christian."--Is this heresy? (Or how about this one, Jesus' lines again: "[Creating institutions] is an occupation for those who want to play God. . . . [Religion, politics, and economics] are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about." Wow.) The questionable and controversial parts of the book become thought-provoking in light of what I find to be the book's most striking theme.
Despite not quite knowing what to think about some of this book, the theme of God being personal and utterly relational is what really struck me. As often as Christians throw the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," it's easy to overlook what this phrase is communicating. The familiarity of it even dulls our senses. If Jesus is in fact God, and the person of God's three persons with whom people can personally engage and to whom they can relate--the Word of God (according to the first chapter of John)--then we have an earth-shattering realization on our hands! How can it be anything less than that?
So, what does it really mean to be a "Christian"? What does it mean to love and worship God if Jesus is the Word of God made flesh? What is the essence of what "Christians" call "Christian"? If one looks at the recorded words of Jesus, the "red letters," what (or who, actually; what Jesus) does one encounter? If one reads the New Testament and even the whole Bible in a manner that allows the four gospels' recorded words of Jesus to inform the rest (because to suspend disbelief while looking at Jesus' words in the contexts they are said is to let Jesus inform everything else; e.g. John 14:6), what does the reader face? And for the reader who takes the leap of faith to believe Jesus' words to be the truth, to believe Jesus is The Truth, what happens?
I would agree with the author of The Shack that a relationship is what happens, that the "Christian" is in relationship with God by Jesus, who is in fact God (again, John 1; verses 1 and 14: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."). To believe that the Bible is true and that Jesus' words are true is to exercise faith, and faith can only be exercised when God is already there enabling it, pursuing relationship with us. (I say "enabling" in the same way that He enables the very existence of all things; I don't intend to get into Calvinism/Arminianism/etc.) But relationships are a two-way street, and we need to pursue the God who pursues us if we have entered into that relationship!
'Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.' (John 15:4,5, ESV)
No comments:
Post a Comment