The Shack

SHACK:

We lived in what some would consider shacks in our day. I might add that we did not suffer much for it.

Most of our houses in the bush of Alaska had a shack out back. Here our boys and a native girl are giving one of them a new paint job.

I also had various areas in our houses I called my shack. I have a ham radio license and the room or area we operate from is called a "shack".

Carol and recently attended a book lecture by author William Paul Young who wrote a christian best seller (over 1 million copies and growing). It was held in the local christian supply store.

The book title is "The Shack'. I read this novel when Merlin told me about it a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed it, although it is an allegory and allegory is not my favorite form of story telling. But I do like Bunyan, C.S. Lewis because they try to help us understand the mysteries of God. I especially enjoyed and grew by reading Pilgrim's Progress.

So the allegory in The Shack is to try to explain pain and suffering and how God wants to meet with us in our "shacks" of pain. It is not a book of theology, nor as Young pointed out the other night, anything more than a story to try to explain how God wants us to understand how He as the Trinity ministers to each of us in our pain. It is a story he wrote for his kids.

Young has not only been successful in this as evidenced by the popularity of the book, but he has been the object of some serious criticism. I recommend you reading the book if you read it as a story (a pretty good one).It might help you undeerstand a little better the mystery of the Trinity.

Collin Hansen wrote in "Christianity Today" recently:

"The Trinity reminds us that God did not create us because he was lonely. God even draws believers into fellowship with himself through the work of Christ and the agency of the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is no mere abstraction. It is God's plan of salvation in action. God the Father, desiring to restore fellowship between himself and his Creation, sent his incarnate Son, who willingly gave his life as a substitute for sins. After defeating evil by raising his Son from the dead, God sent his Holy Spirit as the seal of salvation for all who believe. So what? Nothing less than fellowship with God is at stake."