1. The different appearances of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were used to help Mack break his religious conditioning.

2. You don’t get brownie points for doing something through obligation; only if you want to.

3. Life takes a lot of time and a lot of relationship.

4. How free are we really? – family genetics, social influences, personal habits, advertising, propaganda & paradigms etc. Freedom is an incremental process that happens inside a relationship with Jesus Christ.

5. When all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of God.

6. Pain has a way of clipping our wings, so we can’t fly. After awhile we forget we were ever created to fly.

7. When Jesus became a man he gave up his own ability to heal people and do miracles. His miracles were accomplished by Jesus’ (a man, a dependent limited human being) trust in the Father God. We are all designed to live like that, out of God’s life and power.

8. God exists in three persons so we, his creation, can also live in love and relationship, just like God does. If God didn’t, we couldn’t. “God cannot act apart from love.”

9. Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid wanting power is to limit oneself – to serve.

10. Sin is its own punishment, devouring from the inside. It’s not God’s purpose to punish it; it’s God’s joy to cure it.

11. When people choose independence over relationship, we become a danger to each other.

12. If people learned to regard each other’s concerns as significant as their own, there would be no need for hierarchy. God does not relate inside a hierarchy; God wants us to trust him because he will never use or hurt us.

13. When Christians don’t trust God it’s because they don’t know they are loved by him. They think God is not good.

14. Mack says: “I just can’t imagine any final outcome that would justify all this (pain, suffering etc).” Papa replies: “We’re not justifying it. We are redeeming it.”

15. The choice of God to hide so many wonders from man is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.

16. For any created being, autonomy is lunacy.

17. When something happens to us, how do we determine whether it is good or bad? By whether we like it or if it causes us pain. This is self-serving and self-centred.

18. We become the judge of good and evil; so when each person’s good and evil clashes with someone else’s, fights, even wars, break out.

19. Eating of the tree tore the universe apart, divorcing the spiritual from the physical. All of us died, expelling the very breath of God.

20. We play God in our independence. The only remedy is to give up the right to decide good and evil and choose to live in God and trust and rest in his goodness.

21. God is light and God is good. Removing ourselves from God will plunge us into darkness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from God, you can only draw on yourself. That is death, because you have separated yourself from God, from Life.

22. This concept is difficult for us because the good may be the presence of cancer or the loss of income, or even a life. Sarayu answers: “Don’t you think we care about these people who suffer too? Each of them is the centre of another story that is untold.”

23. About having ‘rights’: “‘Rights’ are where survivors go so they won’t have to work out relationships.”

24. Jesus gave up his rights so his dependent life would open a door that would allow us to live free enough to give up our rights.

25. Each of us is wild, beautiful, and perfectly in process when God is working with a purpose in our hearts. We are an emerging, growing, and alive pattern – a living fractal.

26. We tend to live either in the past or the future; dwelling on the pain and the regret of the past, instead of a quick visit to learn something from it. Or fearing the future, letting our imagination run wild with worry, and forgetting to see the future with Jesus. This happens when: a. we don’t really know we’re loved and b. we don’t believe that God is good.

27. Apart from Jesus’ life, we cannot submit one to another. Jesus’ life is not an example to be copied. Jesus came to live his life in us; so we will see with God’s eyes, hear with his ears, love with his heart, and touch with his hands.

28. Some say love grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it. Love is the skin of knowing.

29. We human beings are constantly judging others because we are self-centred.

30. We say: “Predators deserve judgment, their parents, too, for twisting them, and their parents, and on and on, until finally we go right back to Adam, and then, why not judge God? He started it all…isn’t God to blame for our losses? He could have not created, or he could have stopped the killer, but he didn’t.” If we can judge God so easily then, of course, we can judge the world. We must then (e.g.) choose two of our five children to go to heaven and three to go to hell, because that’s what we believe God does. Mack could not choose any one of his children because he loved them no matter what they did. So instead, he begged that he could go to hell for his children. This response is exactly what Jesus did. Mack judged well. He judged his children worthy of love, even if it cost him everything. This is how Jesus loves. ‘And now we know Papa’s heart.”

31. God’s love is so much larger than our sin could ever be.

32. Evil was never a plan of God’s. We must return from our independence, give up being his judge, and know God for who he is.

33. When we receive God’s love and stop judging him we let go of the guilt and despair that had sucked the colours of life out of everything.

34. God never abandons his children. We are never alone. God could no more abandon us than he could abandon himself.

35. “Live loved.”

36. When we leave the light of God and retreat to the darkness all alone, the darkness makes our fears, lies, and regrets bigger in the dark. Sometimes, as a kid, doing this is part of survival, but now we must come to the light.

37. Jesus will travel any road to find his children. But only one road leads back to heaven.

38. Stories about a person willing to exchange their life for another reveal our need and God’s heart.

39. Even though God can work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies, it does not mean God caused it. Where there is suffering, you will find grace in many facets and colours.

40. ‘Love’ bothers to keep trying to touch people and never gives up.

41. Sometimes we hide inside lies that justify who we are and what we do.

42. Ask for forgiveness and let the forgiveness heal you. Take the risk of honesty. Faith does not grow in the house of uncertainty.

43. Our transformation is a miracle greater than raising the dead.

44. All evil flows from independence.

45. God’s purposes are always and only an expression of love. God works life out of death, freedom out of brokenness, and light out of darkness.

46. Emotions are neither good nor bad. They are the colours of the soul. They are spectacular and incredible.

47. The more you live in the truth, the more our emotions will help you see clearly.

48. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control. Keeping the law grants us the power to judge others and feel superior.

49. Responsibility and expectation are dead nouns, full of judgment, guilt, and shame. Our identity becomes wrapped up in performance. The opposite is when God gives us an ability to respond that is free to love and serve in every situation, with God in us; and expectancy is alive and dynamic with no concrete expectation – only the gift of being together.

50. To the degree we live with expectations and responsibilities is the degree we fear and the degree we don’t trust or know God.

51. If God is the centre of everything, then together we can live through everything that happens to us.

52. Forgiveness is big.

53. When bad things happen, what God had to offer us in response is his love, goodness, and relationship with us.

54. God doesn’t do humiliation, guilt, or condemnation. They don’t produce one speck of wholeness or righteousness.

55. Forgiving isn’t about forgetting; it’s about letting go of another person’s throat.

56. Forgiveness does not create a relationship; it simply removes them from your judgment.

57. Because you are important to God, everything you do is important.

I gotta tell you, this book made me want to explore the idea of God a little more, and I just can’t see how that is a bad thing.

But, rest assured, you didn’t burst an important bubbles – I was actually afraid you were going to follow up that phrase with something like, “You totally missed my point, and I was actually arguing against you” somehow.

Well, anyway, the original intent was this: thank you for the support!

Hate to burst your bubble, but I am actually a woman. Don’t worry I get that a lot. I am in field right now that is slowly beginning to include other voices, and I am optimistic for the future.

Keep up the good work as an undergrad.

Word Warrior, again, I thank you for posting my comments, as well as everyone’s comments thus far (that we know of, haha), as it shows the quality of your respect and integrity when relating to those who read your articles, whether they agree or disagree.

I suppose I just want to conclude this comment by saying that I recently “re-learned” this lesson: just because Christians don’t agree on secondary and tertiary doctrine, doesn’t mean they’re not Brothers and Sisters in Christ. It’s the core doctrine that counts, and so long as we can all agree on the fundamental Christ-centered-ness of our faith, I’m more than ready to accept that we may disagree – even strongly – on many different things, especially super-tertiary “doctrine” like whether _The Shack_ is a healthy read or not!

No, I think “closed-minded conservative” pretty closely sums it up Someone else called it “a straight and narrow path”.

1)God the Father wasn’t crucified with Jesus, nor did the book say so. But, I’m pretty sure God did suffer in that He knew He was taking out all His wrath on His own Son. The scars in the book, I believe, were meant to be symbolic of God’s heart for those who suffer – even and especially His Son.

2)Love does not limit God, nor does the book say so. God has no limits, which the book does say. In fact, God “holds back” in a way, otherwise we’d all be sitting in Hell – after all, it’s technically what we all deserve, yeah? So, it’s out of love that God is not only Just but Merciful.

3)God did forgive all – Jesus Himself actually interceded on our behalf not just on the cross but also in what He said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) The book said nothing about it being okay if they decided to not accept the forgiveness, though – it said nothing about going to Heaven without repenting and accepting His grace and forgiveness first.

4)I believe the book is actually referring to how we, like the Pharisees, can become too religious, too “certain” and proud of our “certainty”, and neglect loving one another first and foremost. After all, the two greatest commandments as Jesus Himself said were to, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Luke 10:27) God isn’t about religion – we created that. God’s about relationship – He always has been. He didn’t bring our religious ancestors out of Egypt out of His desire for religion, but as a result of His abounding love for His Creation.

Before going on, I just want to note that these arguments, thus far, aren’t holding up too well for me, as I’ve just read this book myself. I would give them far more credit had they actually been statements straight out of the book, rather than what I perceive to be inaccurate paraphrases. But, I will continue, as I said that I wanted to clear misconceptions:

5)The book never said God will not judge – in fact, Mack’s character is even put in the place of judge to see an inkling of how difficult it really is for God to judge at all. No, this point is outright false, and I believe the misunderstanding comes from how gently the incarnations of God in the book relate so gently to the rough and rebellious Mack. But gentleness is not to be confused with a lack of God’s supreme judgment and sense of justice. 1 Timothy 6:11 says that a man of God should pursue 6 traits, the last being gentleness. And if we’re pursuing that which is of God, then of course that means God has “that” – “that” being “gentleness” in this case.

6)This 6th argument hardly needs arguing, as the explanation for it even says that the hierarchy doesn’t mean the Son is less than the Father or the Holy Spirit is less than either (or greater, for that matter), but that they’re simply unique and distinct from one another and at the same time being one and the same God. I believe that, too, is what the book was trying to convey. There is a part in the book where “Papa” compares the three characters in the book portraying the Trinity to a man who is a father, husband, and worker all at once – the point isn’t that there is or isn’t a hierarchy, but that the Trinity makes up and encompasses the different facets of God’s character.

Again, before going on, I think I just want to note how people seem to be going on and on about the female representations of God. I believe this and other arguments about the book to simply be petty and beside the point – God is not a man. God is not a woman. God is God, and there is no other quite like Him. He is unique, and He is beyond gender. You’ll have to forgive me French when I say, “Get over it.” Whether I agree with you guys or the author or whoever, I think we can all agree that God has shown Himself to us time and again in the Bible in a way that we might be able to perceive Him when He wanted us to perceive Him. Think burning bush – can you imagine how things might have been different if Moses had seen a talking mountain instead? Consider the possibility that God spoke to Moses through a burning bush specifically because He knew that that was just the right and personal way to get Moses’ attention –> “So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight–why the bush does not burn up.” (Exodus 3:3)

7)I’m willing to say that God did submit to us. Now, I agree that He doesn’t submit to how /we/ want things to be. But, nonetheless, are we so easily forgetting that Jesus Himself came to serve? (Matthew 20:28) And, of course, how could we forget that He washed His disciples’ feet Himself. Now, if the argument is that we’re telling God what to do and He’s actually submitting to us – that’s another false accusation. Rather than Mack demanding that God show up on His terms, “Papa” led Mack on completely, only requiring Mack’s permission to intervene in his life. Did “Papa” and “Sarayu” and Jesus stoop down to Mack’s level so he could actually understand the specific message God was trying to convey? Oh yeah. Yes, He submitted in that sense. But did He grant Mack’s every wish – was God at any time in the book ever /not/ in control? Nope. That’s a false accusation.

8)Once again, the book never says this. I believe this is a misinterpretation of what the book was trying to emphasize about God’s character – His great love for each and every once of us. Is there judgment to be had? Yes, of course! But is there grace in the midst of that? Well, Jesus didn’t die on the cross for nothing! But, more importantly, can there be judgment within the scope of Love? Yes, everything God does is out of His great love for us. This is particularly attended to in 1 John 4:8 when God is, in a matter-of-fact statement, as /being/ Love. It is, in fact, out of Love that He will allow us to be separated from Him for all eternity in Hell, as He is simply respecting the independence He also allowed us to have – an independence to choose, and a choice between Him and separation (aka, Hell).

9)This I am completely unaware of. Where in the book did it even say this? I am sorry, but I cannot really address the argument, as I’m unsure as to where it came from.

Before going on, I want to note something important that might be assumed as the tensions of the reader (aka, you) may or may not be rising and you may or may start feeling defensive: I do not use _The Shack_ as personal doctrine, nor do I see it as infallible. Are their holes? Probably. In fact, the 9th argument very well may be one of the /huge/ holes, if it’s ever proved that this book insinuates that. The real reason I am writing all of this is because I come from a side of hearing /only/ bad things about this book from people who I perceived to simply be afraid and insecure in their own belief of God, holding ever-tightly to their traditions which aren’t always indicative (at least, to me) of a personal relationship or personal belief in a /loving/ God. It is also true that I defend the position that has no defense – in this case, many people aren’t even picking up the book to get a first-hand understanding of whether it’s really “bad” or “good”. I think it is both foolish and could possibly lead to being judgmental (which is for Jesus alone) to, in a manner of speaking, “not touch it with a ten-foot pole” for two reasons: 1)if you’re always trusting everyone else’s opinion without doing your own research (if it’s, indeed, even possible to), then you’re really just as ignorant as you were before, since opinions don’t equate to facts and 2)if you think something like this book is “heretical”, then you just might start thinking anyone who reads or talks about it to be a heretic. And, tell me, how do we usually treat heretics? Do we try to correct them first? Or do we try to /love/ them first? Think about it.

10)This is another twisting of the book’s words. This is why we need to be intelligent readers, and not just objective thinkers (though, the latter is rather important when you start debates over articles like this, of course). Here’s what the book said, “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims…. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters.” Let me point something important out – “They /WERE/ Buddhists or Mormons, etc.” You are all right to say that Christ is the only way and also that Christianity is about Christ. Yet, is it important to emphasize a religion, or the god behind the religion? Even in pagan religions, just going through the motions isn’t worth a hill of beans to them – you have to be /devout/! It is the same in Christianity – what’s more important: taking communion or taking in the meaning of communion? What of singing praises or actually praising? What of bowing your head in prayer or actually praying? And so on. The Jesus character in the book is purposefully emphasizing a lack of interest in Christianity (or any religion, for that matter), and, with even more purpose, emphasizes the relationship with Him (who already acknowledges, presumably via biblical common knowledge of anyone reading, that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life).

11)This is, again, another twisting of the book’s words. Jesus doesn’t change. And the book doesn’t say He does. It does imply that He is with us wherever we go and however we are, no matter what change we’re going through. It is for these sort of word-twisting instances that I so wish that the arguments had contained direct sightings from out of the book itself so as to avoid this misrepresentation.

12)This is an outright lie – the book never once says Mack, the killer, or Missy would ever be reconciled to God without them picking up their end of the relationship. It never once says that everyone goes to Heaven, but “Papa” herself actually speaks specifically to Mack about how They (the Trinity) have already done their end of the bargain (which, one has to admit, Grace is quite a bargain for us!) and that they’re simply waiting for us to do our end – accept.

13)Lastly, the Bible is de-emphasized the same way religion was de-emphasized. The book doesn’t say the Bible’s not true – it blatantly recognizes that God gave it to us somehow (via divine inspiration, I mean) and that He didn’t lie to us. I believe that the way it’s talked about in the book, the perspective is that the Bible serves three purposes: it shows us what we need to do, what we can’t do and what we ought to do instead. We need to carry out all the laws God gave to us in order to be holy and clean and free of sin in His sight. We can’t do that because we’re independent thinkers, inevitably sinful by our very nature to choose, and because (as the book covers time and time again) we can’t see the big picture, thus always thinking about ourselves. We ought to just accept Jesus’ grace, since He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the one God love us and desire relationship with us. I think that’s what the book’s emphasizing – but it’s not discounting the importance of religion or the holy Scripture. The book talks in-depth about how we use structures to stay “in control”. I think I agree. Do I think we should trash government and religion and all the laws of society, though? Nah. I just like to think of the structures as a necessary evil of the fallen state our world is in, currently. Maybe one day, when Christ comes again, He’ll abolish such hierarchical thinking. And maybe He won’t. Oh well – guess we’ll have to wait and see.

For those of you who made it through all 13 of my rebuttals (as well as all the side notes), I so very much value the time you put into considering my different response. Thank you.

To Word Warrior, thank you for considering the posting of this. I’ll check back in a week or so – if this isn’t posted yet, I’ll re-post as a reminder. It is certainly not my intention to attack anyone, but to correct as gently and lovingly as I possibly can, God-willing.

My last thought is this – there are two bandwagons: there’s the one where everyone goes nuts over this book and reads it because the best-sellers list tell ‘em too, and there’s the one where everyone goes nuts over this book and practically burn it because the other extreme side of those who are ravenously reading it are scaring them half to death with their compliance. And then, there are those who simply walk on their own, unhindered in thought or guidance from the Spirit by either bandwagon. Good luck.