reflections on 'the shack'.

First of all, I always love ideas that make you completely rethink something you're totally familiar with, something you've always known and can no longer think of in any fresh way. God would definitely be one of those things. It's very difficult for someone raised in the church to read scripture or hear a sermon with a blank slate, to approach God or any aspect of faith as if you don't already have years of material on the subject at hand which is shaping what you expect to encounter each time.

But I felt like this book was able to break through those barriers and help me think about who God is and my relationship with him in a new way. It took a lot of familiar concepts and restated them in a different way, in a way which made you wonder why you had only ever thought of it the one way before.

One of the things I found most beautiful was the way he presented Jesus. As a real, relatable person, someone you could meet anywhere, but, ya know, better. All the traditional portraits of Jesus emphasize his otherworldliness. They show a serene face with saintly eyes that look upward in devotion, with a soft glow about him. And they almost always show him in "bible times" garb but with the looks of a model turned saint. When you add to that image the filtering of Jesus' words as they pass from his mouth, to the writings of the authors of the gospels, to the translation into English of whatever version, it's hard to picture him as someone you could be friends with. There's always some ethereal-ness about him, looking all old school and speaking in riddles which by our conventions of speech seem rather cheesy. Basically, he doesn't seem human. You can just as easily picture that jesus posing for that portrait as you could see him floating on clouds and hovering.

But this Jesus wore jeans. He spoke like I do. He was fun, laid back even, not all caught up on his being God. He was human. As I read further into the depiction of Jesus, I realized I've never been able to fully appreciate Jesus as a human. For all the short stories and movies and whatnot (ever see Joshua?) which try to present him as more relatable and contemporary, it never worked for me. (I usually hate those attempts) It was one of those things which you could have told me over and over again but which would never have sunk in with out some vivid picture like that. Seeing a Jesus like that made the idea of God becoming flesh so real, the idea that he could understand our pain so much more possible.

And what's more, he was a person I felt myself wanting to get to know. Not only was he human, he was all the best things about being human. Unconditional love personified by a real person means so much more than by an abstract deity. What does it mean for the force that holds the world together to love you? Theological expounding doesn't cut it when explaining this idea, no matter how deep you get. It gets lost too quickly and requires too many steps to be recognizable. We don't experience love with something conceptual; we experience love among friends, with family, for others. And try as you might, that metphor can never fully travel, no matter how many times you say it the same way in your head. I became aware that , even unconsciously, I'm always a little confused when it comes to loving God, because it involves loving some thing I don't usually practice loving.

But the picture of God, and the spririt, and Jesus as human (even though I'm fully aware that it was also metaphorical and just a guide to help us understand) and seeing the way they love each other in a perfect friendship, and even deeper, somehow that was able to get at me. While I was talking to a friend, he mentioned that this was not necessarily what stood out to him as important, so I don't know how much of this is the book's emphasis and how much is just an expression of the train of thought it set off in my head. Either way, I was moved by the image.

The biggest thing I took away from this book was that it actually portrayed God in a way that left me thinking, I would love to get to know that God. And I don't mean the image of the black woman or the Asian lady or whatever, I mean God as he was portrayed by the conversations, God who loves like that, God who humbles himself to relate to us like we would to small children, not as a limitation but because he loves us.

This book for me helps embody what Jesus said are the two most important laws in the scripture. They emphasize the desire for relationship, the inherent value in every human life.


So that's what I liked about the book, or at least those are the toughts i was thinking while reading it. I never know how to write in a way that isn't just restating (or perhaps mistating) the obvious, so i hope whatever it is i'm thinking somehow comes across in this jumble, ha.

I'm interested to hear your impressions of the book. again, you can totally go whatever direction you want with it, whether that be against mine or in a totally new direction. Or not. whatevs. Run free.

[this was an amazing reflection by my friend, Mr. Brad Goodine, himself...amazing. Please feel free to respond. i'd love to hear your views on it, too]