Greetings!

I haven't read it, jakesmom, but a friend has recommended it to me. I am going to get it and then we are going to discuss it together. Sounds interesting.

Hope, peace, joy, love,
Beloved

I picked it up recently at Costco - having heard it recommended by our minister as an interesting read. I'm in the midst of another looooonnnnngggg book right now, so when I finish that, The Shack is next! C.

Greetings!

Hi Jakesmom, I just finished reading The Shack, and like you, I'm going to read it a second time. The first time I read it very quickly because I couldn't put it down. My immediate reactions are that a lot of the descriptions/explanations/pictures of God and what God does are where I have been lead to in my thoughts and understanding over the years. I found the book explains things on a level that all can understand. It has re-encouraged me to remember that what is important is relationship - with God and with others - not a list of rules and things that we have to or should be doing. I found it very uplifting and enlightening. I thought the whole explanation of forgiveness (our forgiveness of others) was excellent.

Hope, peace, joy, love,
Beloved

Greetings!

I bought the book for a small group of ladies (four of us) who meet weekly for Bible Study. We are going to read the book and then discuss - it will be interesting to see if they like it us much as I did. I'll let you know, jakesmom, how it goes!

Hope, peace, joy, love,
Beloved

Hi everyone!

I read The Shack this weekend, and I thought it was a wonderful book. Actually, I can't get it out of my head :)

It is very cleverly written, I thought, and it reminded me a little of Life of Pi. Both books can be read as parables or fantasy, but when you reach the end of the story, there is another way to understand it. Hmmm...

The Shack would be a wonderful book club selection. There would be so much to talk about - - both the story line and the theology it presents.

Greetings!

I really got a lot out of the book, BethanyK . . . read it very quickly the first time.  But I am going through it a second time as our little bible study group of 4 is reviewing it these next few weeks.  I don't think I felt connected more to any one specific of the three persons of God portrayed in the book - I enjoyed the differences and the likenesses and the individuality of each of Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu.

Hope, peace, joy, love . . .

I was a little confused about the Sarayu figure myself. I think her parts are some of the ones that I skimmed through the most which didn't really help.

I wish I knew of somehwere around me that was discussing this book. My church at home is but I'm at school.

I just read the book, and loved it. It is worth reading.

It was an interesting challenge- if you are going to present the three persons of the trinity as characters in a novel, how do you  personify them? I thought Young made some intersting choices. The character of God is very panentheistic. I know a lot of evangelicals are a bit wary of how God is portrayed, but most are sympathetic to such an image of God. I think a lot of Liberals should also read it, because it gives a personal  image of the kind of God many of us picture te to only on an intellectual level.  We all need new images of God if we are to let God into our lives in a meaningful way. Young's hero Mack desperately needs healing for a deep wound which is common in our world today, but most churches are too polite to address.  It will make a great study book at church, and with friends who hate church!

SPOILER ALERT:  DON'T READ THIS IF YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BOOK 

THIS MEANS YOU, NAMASTE!!!

I was waiting for Specialmom to finish the book, and forgot to come back to this thread.

Oh, I didn't think it was God who drew Mack back to the shack.  I thought the murderer had sent the note, probably in a spirit of repentance.   He would have known that Papa was the family's nickname for God, from the time he spent with Missy while she was still alive.  The plausible explanation for the story is that Mack had a dream or vision after the car accident. 

This is one reason I thought the book was so brilliant.  It reminded me of the "story within a story" from Life of Pi.  I loved the presentation of forgiveness, and the idea that it is possible to forgive while still feeling angry.  I enjoyed the images of the three persons of God, too, RevJamesMurray. 

This would be a fabulous book club selection.

Excellent point, BethanyK!  There are so many ways of looking at this story.  The logical/ rational part of me wants the rational explanation, but I can go with your interpretation, too.  

This points out how much we need "story" to reach spiritual depths, I think. 

Such a good book for discussion.

Why return to the shack? Ya can't get to Easter without visiting Calvary first! God promises us a way through the suffering, not a 'get out of jail free' card.

The author, William "Paul" Young describes the shack as the place where we store all the ugly bad things about ourselves that we would rather forget. You can read more about him at his page

http://www.windrumors.com

A book club I belong to is going to e discussing it later this month.  I haven't read it yet but hope to get it soon.  The month is flying by.

I absolutely loved the book, and would personally love to see it may into a film (though, by a reputable director. Often Christian directors make the movies far too cliche and cheesy -_-). I read it after very suddenly loosing my cousin, followed shortly after by a good friend and very respected and admired mentor.

I found God drawing Mac back to his point of pain very important, since Mac had never truely dealt with it. I know in my own life that, once I became a Christian and began my spiritual walk, God called me back to every painful point in my life that I hadn't dealt with, and I was forced to deal with it before I could move forward. All too often, we do not confront our pain, but merely push it aside. We don't want to deal with the pain; we'd rather go around it then work through it. But, as so many of us have found in our lives, and as the Shack portrays really well, we can't be the people God created us to be without working through that pain. If left unresolved, it will always fester and influence us. In order to truely let go, we first have to accept the pain. The brighest light comes in the darkest of nights.

Despite knowing this all too well, being a psychology student and DSW, this book helped me to work through the pain of lose this summer before I was able to push it aside, not wanting to deal with the pain. This is one author I would love to meet and personally shake his hand.

I loved this book to but I don't think I'd go see it in a movie. I think part of what I really like about it was being given a description of the three Jesus figures yet still being able to come up with an image myself. I wouldn't want to see tha actors that were chosen everytime I think of the book.

Yeah, I think so, too, Namaste.

Specialmom asks "Why is Mac's pain and loss deserving of special treatment while many other's pain and suffering (in some cases much more intense) go ignored."

For me, the novel is a metaphor of how God approaches each of us. God offers to meet each person in the midst of their pain, and help them overcome it. At one point Mack asks God why his wife wasn't invited- the reply is that Mack chose not to tell her about it.  Each of us can meet with God at our own shack- there is no special revelation. This novel just shows us what one such encounter might feel like.

I'm just over half way through now. Last night, I read the chapter "Here Comes Da Judge". I really struggled with it. Something about it just didn't sit right with me. Did anyone else have trouble with this? I'm also wondering who that lady was. I was kind of a bizarre chapter, IMO.

Great read ...

Imagine being forced to reflect, echo on the darkness of your life ...

God as happy Ante Je Mime awe?

Puts a whole different spin to the meaning of the Dark La Dei and the perception of ID ain't over until the phat lady sings in harmony with you. Is it a Job for you to get resonant with the duality of the spheres of the infinite ... hemi spheres like the Greek Letter Phi? Is that a symbol with meaning? How easily we forget meanings in a simple projection of reality and forget the metaphysical world of emotions and intelligence. Without a care we usually forget our intelligence ... even learn to dispise it like the sol as a glowin daemon inside!

Weird thoughts eh ... or wired like a spiritual connection! There are stranger things under the midnight son than man who moils for reality. Is Hebrew gold a chi-mere, like reptilian, cold blooded thought without a warming care?

ID's got to make a sol wonder eh?

Well deeply, it is felt there is a means to an end ... the medium of man in a destructive dimple in space!

Thanks Beloved. I will do. Honestly, I found that chapter so weird and kind of upsetting that I haven't picked up the book since.

I'm only half way through.  I must be on a different wave length than most of you - although I do agree with much that Specialmom wrote.

I don't much care for the book.  In my opinion it is poorly written - short sentences - telling us rather than showing us - its symplicity of style reminds me of the Nancy Drew books that my 11 year old granddaughter has outgrown.

And God as an African American woman.  It was probably 20 or 30 years ago when I came across:  I met God and SHE is BLACK.  It was kind of a mindblower then - God may not always be seen as male and white.  But it no longer has that element of surprise for me. 

I am picking up some on the theology.  I like some of the explanations - how Jesus was fully human - how they could all be interested in hearing Mack talk about his family as though they were hearing it for the first time - shutting off, so to speak, their 'all-knowing', as they listen to him talk.

I will read the rest of the book tonight and tomorrow and get back to you.  I do hope that it picks up for me.  I'm glad to be reading it just so I know what others find interesting, and I will be interested in hearing what people at my book club have to say.

I'm about 3/4 through the book and I have to agree with Seeler and Specialmom. 

If the book had been put way into the realm of fantasy where lots of people were having the kind of expericen that Mack had then it would seem more reasonable.  Even the fact that Mack was singled out who had a wife who dearly loved him.  What about the parents of the other girls?  Surely there was at least one who didn't have the supports that Mack had who could have used the experience more and benifited from feeling loved more.

I really didn't like the whole explaination of why people suffer.  God: "Well I made people knowing that they would choose 'independence' and turn their world into a living hell, but I went ahead and made them anyway.  Oh, and, by the way, their suffering is not my fault."

Oh seeler - thank you for commenting on the writing style!  I picked up this book while on vacation recently, having just finished reading an exquistely written novel.   I felt like I was reading something from the elementary school curriculum, in terms of the style and language.  I just couldn't stick with it at all.  Maybe I'll let some time go by and try again, to see what I think then. 

One of the things that I find strange about the way folks read stories is that more attention is paid to form instead of the depth of content. The metaphor is endless folks. Is there light buried in the darkness?

I have disturbed PHD level folks on this; who demand that a story or a poem means this or that ... it means exactly what, and how you relate to the whole of existence. We don't do that well today. If you don't believe look around you at the state of the world.

A few folks have poked fun at the way I express myself ... that's OK because I don't think most of existence is worth a plugged nickel the way it is going ... but nothing is going to change as long as we try and extract more from it than we put into the effort.

Government worships business and business hates everybody but themselves ... ordinary people ... they don't count and a lot of ordinary people think they're something other than what they are ... small pieces in the fabric which is shedding quickly. Is there fire in the ashes?

It seems like a giant comedy when you step back and look at it from afar and come to the conclusion there has to be a better tier in the infinite even if it is not in this existence. That's something that physical fundamentalists think of as limited ... oh well!

Perhaps it is why our kind is only found in a corner of the cosmos ... like a bad kid! Is a spacier existence better? I don't know but it has to make a thinking person who cares wonder like Allah, Allez, the traveller or whatever name you might place on indeterminate powers. Isn't that spooky for people that hate metaphysics and say they believe in the holy ghost. That seems to me a conflict of interest.

I like the verse that says do not declare me as your God (ideal) when you say something contrary in the next breath ... like God is just a concept or is the mind the only reality and we chose to ignore a cosmological entity. A pure God is a blind love without a balancing duality!

Can you say that God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient and then limit reactions to a very small field of interests? That sort of stuff breeds extremists and terrorism, you don't have to go far to observe it but then most deny it ... blind man's bluff!

I wish we could change things but that doen't seem to be possible in a world that lives with desire as the ideal ... mind and thught are either fears or despised. Do we like to see such qualities around us, or just self-contained? This world could do with a lot more deep thought but would we have to be a lot more introspective about literature that we don't like because of what it tells us about our own relationship with the limited ... that we have limited it?

Is passion best tempered with intelligence ... and what do we know in a limited field? It's an abstract thought that should tell you about who wins in the end. One man tells me to sit and put my mind at complete rest ... so it won't bother him? A true eastern philosophy is about becoming one with the infinite in a higher tier of awareness. How is that when people encourage us not to think  ... just be dead to things around you?

I have to take that kind of Pi-Oz talk as science fiction ... not even looking at infinite possibilities. Funny eh ... like an odd thing in the space of a thought , a higher tier than the blind sac of the heart alone? Have a vision folks! Like past writer have said this has to be a collosal comedy so don't mind me it you like to fix the unfixable. I would rather worj with a free mind and heart, both amourphus ... two out of three ain't bad eh? It's a funny place!

I have to confess a great disappointment in this book. I had heard so many positive, "must-read" comments about it. Then as a number of others have commented it was like old news to me. I guess if you have a pretty rigid view of a distant God "up there", or of a triangular shaped male trinity,it would be a welcome revelation.

The other part that was a turn off for me was the ascription to the atonement theory of salvation. That somebody had to shed blood so that the rest of us could be redeemed. Just too archaic for me!  It was a given in the book. Maybe the author in his next book could debunk that theology as he has done pretty successfully with both the concept of trinity and the idea of God's relationship to us, us to ourselves, and to each other.

Yes, the scars were a bit of a worry! As a progressive, I found the more traditional Christian ideas a little diasappointing.

Curiously, I enjoyed the book until Mac got to the shack. Maybe I'm more traditional than I thought, because the presentation of the trinity seemed wrong to me. Also, the trinity chosen seemed political - the only thing missing was  a homosexual.