Mack, The Shack, and Me

For most of the year I was dimly aware of The Shack as a run-away religious best-seller promoted mostly by word-of-mouth. What interest I had was centered mainly on its self-published nature and non-traditional marketing - always refreshing when any book (or product) succeeds outside of the “norm.”

Recently I read William P. Young’s tale of a weekend encounter with the Deity. I was happily surprised - the book is far more than I expected. The fiction centers around an unhappy and deeply stressed man, Mack, who responds to a strange invitation to meet God (a.k.a. Papa) in a remote mountain shack which was the scene of a great horror. Like James Redfield’s “The Celestine Prophecy” the book presents a simple mystery plot anchoring discussions on topics hidden, secret, and taboo.

“The Shack” provides a forum for direct question, answer, and discussion from God, in all of her Trinity magnificence. God, as Father, takes the form of a black woman who calls herself Papa; Jesus is a Middle Eastern carpenter, and the Holy Spirit displays himself as an oriental woman called Sarayu. Needless to say, it’s hardly what Mack was expecting. Nor, it seems, many of the gazillion readers. For example:

'Then,' Mack struggled to ask, 'which one of you is God?'”

“'I am,’ said all three in unison.'

An interesting read on many levels, the book is also a head-knocker. Many sacred cows are turned loose from their human created corrals and this disturbs some people. If one has a notion that God is Love, then this presentation of the Ultimate Source will be delicious. Jesus is a Jew who really, really, likes mankind and is the sort of deeply personal friend you’d love to have a beer with. The third leg of the Trinity stool is Sarayu - an ethereal essence of life that remains translucent even when Papa and Jesus present themselves in totally human form.

Although a different venue, the novel reminded me of Neal Walsch’s “Conversations with God” from the middle 1990’s, which continues to rattle theological edifices.

The Shack is ultimately a healing/forgiving/redemption story with plenty of mystical and quantum physical elements to cause a reader to wonder if such a loving and delightful supreme Being and Universe is, in fact, the reality? That is profound freedom. And, as always, there are those among us who are very uncomfortable with that.

On the other hand, there are some people who are having a good time with expanded thinking, as I wrote about not too long ago.

Thoughts from Mr. Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison in a letter dated September 6, 1789, touched on a powerful concept providing the rationale for the people to change their government:

“The question whether one generation of men has right to bind another seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water (Jefferson was writing from France). Yet it is a question of such consequence as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living” : that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it...

“What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals...

“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, over even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct...”

The passage, cited in Alf J. Mapp, Jr.’s through biography “Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity,” elaborates on a concept discussed at the time, regarding the authority of a people to enact changes in their governance - bottom up alterations. The leading bottom-up changes of the period were the revolution of the British colonies in America and the revolution in France.

The money quote: “...the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals...” This is the thinking behind Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution - No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. If a government can make war on a single person, it can make war on all. If it can single out for special punishment a group, then it can punish all.

Mr. Jefferson’s reasoning also provides impetus to abolish former laws when their purpose is fulfilled. Only recently was an onerous tax on long-distance telephone calls repealed. How many folks knew they were paying for the Spanish-American War nearly a century after the event? One must wonder how many other stealth taxes lurk? They can be examined and repealed if the current generation determined their purpose is long past. Now that’s a scary concept...