Well all, this is something I have been postponing long enough. I was asked by several people to read the popular work of fiction "The Shack" and give my opinion on its content. I managed to put it off all summer but now I have finally taken on the challenge and read through it. After much highlighting, underlining, and annotation, here it goes.I will begin with the good. "The Shack" very tactfully addresses the issues of God's compassion and understanding of our suffering because He has similarly experienced levels of this. But now we must evaluate at what cost we came to this truth. Shakespeare phrased it best when he said the following, "And oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths; win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence."
What I discerned as I read through "The Shack" was that it was devoid of masculinity and all the many roles of masculinity. There is a wondrous and magnificent aspect to God that is embodied in His masculinity. There is also a beautiful, fluid, and empowering aspect of God that is embodied in His femininity. But these two aspects that make up the image of God cannot and do not exist independently. They coexist. In their coexistence they bring forth a level of productivity and abundance that is Christ. When you do not have the masculinity and femininity of God in their fullness you will not see Christ. What do I mean by that?
All throughout the book there was a common theme; an underlying misunderstanding to the point of being hatred towards the concept of authority, rules, institution, order, and structure. These elements are part of the concept that is the masculinity of God. As our understanding in the past of God has taken on a view of total masculinity we can see the dangers in holding to this philosophy with no femininity. We end up being a Church focused on ritual and are devoid of relationship. But there is also another extreme and it is full experiential emphasis on relationship with no structure. To put that into context for you, it is much the mentality of "free love" we faced in the 1960's and 70's. Full femininity with no masculinity will kill just as full masculinity without femininity will also.
The masculine elements of love are wrapped up in the act of giving. The feminine elements of love are wrapped up in the act of receiving. This Trinity I saw portrayed in the book was bent on expressing their experiential elements of receiving but cared not for the magnificence that accompanies the love of authority which is giving. The interpretation of the hierarchy of the Trinity was grotesquely distorted also as the ideal of equality absolved the true design of authority and submission which is vital to the proper functioning of love. The existence of submission does not function without her counterpart that is authority. They are one. However, as the author mentioned at one point we have become preoccupied with authority. That is true; it is an extreme. Authority cannot function without submission. They are ONE! If authority attempts to exist without submission he turns into domination. To suggest that authority is not a part of who God is, is to tear away at His masculinity. The clear and blatant hatred of rules was also without support. The idea that God created us to function without rules is unbiblical. God created Adam in the beginning, male and female and declared him good (i.e. perfect). In man's state as perfect he was given two rules: do not eat of the tree... and be fruitful and multiply. Those are rules. To say that God has no rules, structure, definition, or substance is to attempt to strip away His masculinity.
How can we see if we are stripping away at God's masculinity? We look at our spiritual development. The perpetual state I saw all of the humans in in "The Shack" was a state of spiritual childhood. Spirituality is to work just as our physical growth functions. We are to be born of the Spirit. We are to become as children. And then, we put aside childish things and we become adults. We grow into spiritual adults. In the physical realm, a child will never fully come into adulthood unless a Father figure pulls them up into adulthood through the act of affirmation. Affirmation is a quality of masculinity. When we are trapped in the state of spiritual childhood we have lost sight of the affirmation of the Father and we are refusing to move out of the emotional and experiential comfort of the Mother.
The last part I will mention is the philosophy the author attempted to convey concerning the "ousia" of God; mainly "I am". Here is the problem with his philosophy of "I am" as the author writes it. He emphasizes the need for the verb "am" to bring things to life. He says that nouns in and of themselves are dead without the verb. That is true. But the opposite is also true. Without nouns a verb has nothing to act upon. The verb, action, is the femininity of God. The noun, the substance, solidity and foundation of God is His masculinity. The Hebrew word for "I am" is "Hayah". It means "to exist". The odd thing about it though is that God does not use the infinitive form when He names Himself. He conjugates this verb into 1st person singular "I". "I" is a noun, a pronoun to be exact, but a noun nonetheless. "I" is the substance, foundation, rule, principle, authority, and masculinity of God. "Am" is the life, fluidity, action, submission, and femininity of God. But He is not just "I" a noun, or "am" a verb. He is "I am". He is a noun and a verb. (If you wish to revert to this conversation in the book it is on page 204.) What the author has done, unintentionally I believe, is emphasize the femininity of God in His verb form and strip Him of His masculinity in His noun form. Without your subject - noun, and your predicate - verb, you will never arrive at the fullness of Christ - a sentence; a complete thought.
Unfortunately, and I hate to say this about someone I do not know, but it appears the author may suffer from a form of dysfunction in his understanding of true masculinity and how that is a reflection of the image of God. He has done exactly what he hated in his own writing: "The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God."
What does this all mean for the Church? Nothing if you accept it at face value as fiction. It, however means everything if you accept this man's interpretation of God as truth. In throwing out the underlying masculinity of God, he has pulled out the floor of his faith that rests on the security and safety of God's masculinity. What does that leave us with? A wondrous, experiential, feminine sensation of...flying? No... falling. It may feel like flying for a time, but it is not really. It is an illusion. We will fall and we will spiritually die without our foundation. The proper context for flight is a safe place to land.
I know this is all harsh and some may hate my view on this but I am accountable to those I love to speak truth. And so I speak what I believe is truth. There are a few more notes I have pertaining to the content of the book but these were the loudest issues I felt I needed to speak to. If you would like to comment, then by all means do. If you wish not to comment publically you may email me privately at dbasehore@msn.com.
