The idol of Tactic

I think I've finally put my finger on one of the subtly off-putting aspects of The Shack’s depiction of God. It lies not so much in how He is depicted, but that He is depicted at all. Jesus I have no problem with, nor the Holy Spirit (though a dove would suit me better), but the Father has never appeared as Himself in bodily form and to show Him as such, even imaginatively, seems a little…..transgressive.

Young has been criticized by some for setting up an image of God and thus breaking the second commandment. Technically that is not true because a verbal description of God as in the book is not a “graven image” of Him by any stretch. In spirit I think it’s probably also okay because Young is not seriously putting forward an image of what God actually looks like but only describing how He chooses to present himself in the context of the story (this is fiction, after all). So I’m prepared to cut him some slack as an artist. After all, it’s hard to write a dialogue with God where the protagonist is talking to an empty space.

However, it’s worth thinking a little about the ancient prohibition against images. Is it still relevant today?

I've done business for years with an order of nuns and recognize their faith as a genuine belief in Christ as their Saviour. In their residences they have crucifixes and artistic representations of Jesus and Mary. Though I don’t make use of such images myself, I know they don't worship them and I personally have no issue with that. However a statue that is just a statue to me might be a stumbling block to someone else

As an example of that, I remember a Catholic church I visited in Tactic, Guatemala which in its sanctuary has a large, somewhat gruesome crucifix. The people venerate it and call it "el Señor de Xi-Ixim" (the Lord of Xi-Ixim, Xi-Ixim being the name of the place) and pray to it for miracles. A little room off the sanctuary is filled with testimonial plaques from people who have been healed or had their prayers answered.

Most of the plaques are addressed to el Señor de Xi-Ixim, but one of them gives the game away. It thanks "Señor Xi-Ixim" (Lord Xi-Ixim), which also happens to be the name of the local Mayan pre-Columbian deity. To clinch the identification, outside the church, directly in front of the main entrance, stands an altar covered with the remains of burnt offerings to Xi-Ixim.

Are the crucifixes of the gentle sisters idols? Not at all. Is this crucifix in Tactic one? I would say yes. It is a full-on idol in the old school Canaanite sense - its worship not just the mental error of uneducated peasants, it is an instrument of deception through which dark powers work to enslave the worshippers.

I don't blame the church entirely for this. I don't think it intentionally set out to create an idol in the crucifix. But its use of the crucifix as visual imagery has put a stumbling block in the way of the people which allows them to perpetuate their idolatry under the guise of a worship of Christ.

The upshot of all this is that though the old commandment given to Israel applies as a law only to them in the context of the Mosaic covenant, it does contain an important spiritual principle which God means for us to apply to our lives today. As Paul wrote:

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. (I Cor. 10:11)

True love does leave traces

I once came across a reference to a Leonard Cohen song, True Love Leaves No Traces, and became curious as to its lyrics. I obtained a recording of the song and found it disappointing, which didn't surprise me since I am not a Cohen fan.

However the song got me thinking about the truth of its statement and I realized that Cohen got it only half right. He was referring to that rare kind of love between a man and a woman which needs no physical consummation and therefore leaves no traces in the beloved. But the deeper truth is that true love does indeed leave traces - in the lover.

These marks endure. They are not replaced by other loves, because each love that is truly love is tied uniquely to its beloved.

So it is for a mother who loses a baby. She may go on to have other children whom she loves deeply, but a piece of her heart will always and only belong to the child she lost. Her love for it will not be displaced by the others because those are different loves, also dear, also loved uniquely but none in any way a substitute for each other.

So it is also with God's love. Have you ever thought about how God loves you really, personally, uniquely? That Jesus' hands were pierced and He died specifically for you?

In the same way, God's grand plan is not just one of general benevolence, but He intends His kingdom to come in your life in a way which is unique and irreplaceable. It consists first and foremost in an intimate relationship with you through Jesus Christ which at the deepest level will not be shared with anyone else.

I caught a glimpse of this in Jesus' word to the church in Ephesus:

To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him... (Rev. 2:17)

God's whole purpose in your life begins in this relationship with Jesus when you receive Him, and unfolds from it like a flower. He wants to bring it about in its fulness - not just in eternity, but as much as you allow Him to here and now.

If you have put your faith in in Jesus Christ, please know that the whole sum of your spiritual growth is measured by how you grow in this communion with Him.

If you are not yet a believer, this is the inheritance which is waiting for you today. Please don't let it pass you by!


Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.
Isaiah 49:16

The God of sloppy kisses

It doesn't really bother me that Paul Young portrays God the Father as a woman per se. George Macdonald did so with profound effect over a century ago. But.....Aunt Jemima?? Macdonald's Wise Woman, whether kind or severe, was always gracious, but never to be trifled with and certainly not a dispenser of sloppy kisses. Young's though is not merely an African-American woman; she's a stereotyped African-American woman, and as such comes across to me as cartoonish and silly.

To see God rendered this way is like coming across one of the earlier attempts to animate the Lord of the Rings; it falls so far short that one wants to cry out "Noooo! Don't even try!"

This I believe is symptomatic of a wider problem with Paul Young's view of God. And that is, how shall I say it, the trivialization of God and of the impact He has on those who encounter Him.

What I mean is this: that when men encounter God in Scripture - or better to say, He encounters them - they are never unmoved. They fall on their faces, they repent in dust and ashes, they cry woe to themselves - in short, they are undone. Job, for example, after 30 chapters of nonstop kvetching, is silenced when God finally appears to him. The man who couldn't wait to confront his God suddenly has no more questions.

In The Shack, both the order of questioning and the role of questioner seem to be reversed from Job's experience. Mack has always brooded about the absence of God, until God appears to him in order to cajole him out of his sulks and entertain any and all questions he may have. With the opening of a door, we go from the Silent God to the God Who Can't Stop Talking. While Mack is taken aback by the idea of actually speaking to God, the God he faces has all the gravitas of a talk show host and we are not surprised that Mack is not moved in any deep way by God's very presence.

It seems to me that this portrayal is a deeply unworthy view of God. I understand what Young is trying to do. He wants to give us a picture of a God who will stoop to woo us - and in a certain sense that is correct. God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice, Jesus humbled himself by "taking the form of a bondservant" and Augustine heard God's voice as that of a child chanting "take and read".

But the ingredient of awe is completely absent in Young's picture of God as a jolly, smoochy aunt. It lacks....verismilitude (to use a literary term). God is simply not like that, not in Scripture nor in my own experience.

God explains this approach to Mack as a device to disarm his resentment against God as an imagined cold and distant father and to engage him in dialogue. However, since we all know that any boy over the age of 10 would recoil from such embraces, it is hard to imagine them having much disarming effect on a grown man.

As a result, it is hard for me to enter imaginatively into the ensuing dialogue as a conversation with God. As I read it, in my mind's eye I keep seeing this scrolling disclaimer as if across a television screen: "literary vehicle for author's views".

And the whole notion of God needing to dialogue with Mack to bring him around also seems counterintuitive. This idea is encapsulated in God's statement "I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later". Again, this seems to be the wrong way around from how God really works.

In my observation, it's not the head issues which typically keep people from God. More often, it is precisely the heart issues which do - and the head issues are thrown up as a defensive screen. When the Holy Spirit is working, a single word will find the chink in the armour and the proud tower of intellectual opposition comes down.

I believe that the reason it works this way is this: when God reveals Himself to anyone, He gives them a direct (though limited) perception of His nature. If I have misperceived Him as a cold indifferent father, the misperception falls away before the direct sense of Him as someone who loves me and knows me by name. No words are needed, God does not need to cajole me or draw me into dialogue.

Nor did He need to do so with Job. That is why Job, unlike Mack, fell down and fell silent before God. He was not just awed or intimidated into ending his questioning of Him but as he said: "I had heard of You second hand, but now I have met You."

And that was enough.

The Shack: God and gender

In The Shack Paul Young does a great job of trying to address the heart issues which many hurting people have with God.

I disagree with many of the answers, though I applaud the attempt. Paul Young obviously knows the Bible well, but his weakness is that he tends to provide his own answers when those he finds there are unpalatable to him.

All the same, The Shack is a great discussion starter, and even the parts where it is off base provide a good opportunity to go back to Scripture for the real answers, which is why we are covering it in our home group.

We discussed the gender issue last night, and the conclusion was that we should allow God to speak for Himself. If he presents Himself as a male, then it is His intent for us to relate to Him as such. If one wants to be politically correct in referring to God, the essence of political correctness after all is that you refer to a person as they wish to be named.

As to why, one might observe that the first attribute God reveals to us in Scripture is that of sovereignty or authority as Creator, that He invested authority in the first man and continued to do so in his male descendants throughout Scripture, and that an instinctive desire to exert authority and leadership exists in the male personality to this day.

In speaking to us as a male then, maybe God is speaking to all of us as our proper authority, or head, in a way which would not be communicated if he presented Himself as female.

But that is speculation.

Aside from that, I personally feel that gender goes beyond biology, that there is a spiritual aspect to it as well which is reflected in our personalities as men and women. In the resurrection we will not marry, but that does not mean that we will be without gender, any more than we will be without personality.

In other words, if we are raised with glorified versions of our bodies then we will be raised up as completed men and women, not as sexless Teletubbies. And if this is so, it is reasonable to assume that after death we will remain in some sense male and female in whatever ethereal state we exist in the interim. So I question the book's statement that God should be regarded as being without gender simply because He does not have a body as we do.

The above is just a personal objection which I can neither prove nor disprove from Scripture. However, I have a more serious issue with how God is portrayed in the book which I will deal with in the next post.

Questioning God

David Porter at boomerinthepew.com questions:

"The word just, or justice seems to fail me as well. Can I presume that somehow God is unjust? Somehow, using that word makes me shudder.

All this comes about, by the way, in considering God's condemnation of a fictional Masai warrior, who lives is the depths of Africa, has never heard the gospel, has not therefore been born again, dies, and subsequently spends eternity in hell."


Any believer who has any sensitivity has or does ponder about that question from time to time. If a professing Christian did not, I would really wonder if he had any inward workings of grace.

David wonders if it is not insolence to ask such a question of God, but I don't believe that it is, if it's asked sincerely and not as an invitation to doubt God. The Bible shows that God works in very different ways with those of His people who question Him, depending on their motives. Those who murmured against God fell in the wilderness (Numbers 14:27), while Jeremiah complained bitterly to God's face, even going so far as to day, "Lord, You have deceived me, and I was fooled!" and was not punished (Jer. 20:7). Instead of being consumed on the spot, he received such grace that he was able to later say, "They [Your mercies] are new every morning: great is Your faithfulness."

The difference between the two I believe is that the Israelite directed their complaints against God to justify their disobedience and wilful alienation, while Jeremiah complained to God within the context of his faith-relationship.

Not only are such questions not "punishable", but I believe that there is a spiritual value in the questioning. We need to be honest to God about our doubts and "unworthy" thoughts to keep a free and open relationship with Him. If we do, we bring them within the realm of His grace. If we try to suppress them, they will not go away; they will just stay there under the surface and poison the relationship.

And if we find it hard to understand why God can show grace to such "affronts" to His dignity, I think it is because we really lack a conception of the humility of God. But that is a fit subject for a whole 'nother post.

In the case of the "Masai" question, I don't know the answer....and perhaps it's better that I don't. If I did - if I found some explanation to justify the lost which perfectly satisfied my reason, would not my fleshly nature use it as a rationalization to close my heart off from their fate? And if I did, how could I be said to have the mind of Christ toward them?

It may be the working of God's grace which leads the believer to care enough about a total stranger's destiny to want to know God's heart on the lost. But the believer who wants to know the answer must also be willing to become the answer.

One can debate the fate of the Masai warrior....or one can go speak to him. The link below is the fascinating story of a man who did just that.

http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/01_3_PDFs/1_3%20Christianity%20Rediscovered%20Buswell%20fixed.pdf

Thanks to this believer's obedience, we'll have to find another hypothetical hopelessly benighted person for the purposes of David's question, because such no longer exist among the Masai. As a replacement, may I suggest the present generation of Western youth? Many have heard the name of Jesus only as a swear word and have no idea what the gospel is.

It is idle for us to wonder about God's fairness when people are living in darkness within our reach. Now that is unfair. I'm convicted that we believers really need to seek the Lord more about this.

I know from my all too inconsistent experience that I tend to stop wondering about God's purposes when I know I am living in His purpose. Somehow being the answer makes it less necessary to know the answer.

Back to the Shack

We are covering William P Young's book The Shack in our church fellowship group. As we go along I will post excerpts from our discussions if I think there is anything worth sharing. However first I will give my initial take on the book:

Eugene Peterson has ranked The Shack with Pilgrim's Progress in its impact; however I think such a judgment premature in spite of the book's popularity. I would compare it instead to C.W. Sheldon's In His Steps: theologically incomplete but presenting an important truth; very popular for a season but destined to fall into obscurity until perhaps a later generation rediscovers it for a time. Move over, Prayer of Jabez.

More important than the book itself is what believers' reaction to it says about the state of the Body. It has obviously touched a nerve; the the novel has gone through our Christian community like wildfire and Mack's struggles speak to many people I know. The message to me is this: that there are many wounded believers out there and the church as a whole is not ministering to them. Many are alienated as Mack is in the book and are no longer attending fellowship; many others are still attending and doing the right churchy things, but they are inwardly alienated and their heart is no longer in it.

I have felt increasingly burdened by this state of affairs locally for some time. Just as Jesus sent His disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, I wonder who will He send to the lost sheep of the house of Canmore? Or Calgary? Or Medicine Hat?

There are some sweeping statements made by the Godhead characters in The Shack which are inconsistent with Scripture as I understand it. I will touch on them but not major in them; there are much keener doctrinal eagles than I on the internet already picking at the novel's entrails. Exploring The Shack in our group I think will really mean exploring the heart issues I see in the Body and that this book addresses.

One thing I will add: I have been to Paul Young's website and by the long queues of adulatory comments there it appears that The Shack is well on its way to gathering a cult of its own. It appears that to many Paul is a surrogate pastor - almost a guru of sorts. He will need much grace not to lose his spiritual equilibrium.

Destiny's Children (II)

A resort town has 4 concentric circles of community.

The outer circle is composed of tourists and seasonal visitors who come and go in a constant flux according to the seasons.

The next circle in comprises the transient staff who man the restaurant kitchens and serve tables, the hotel front desk and housekeeping. Most are young, kids on school break or exploring the world, and they come and go almost as much as the tourists. Few stay beyond a single season.

Those who do, if they stick around for say 5 years, enter the next circle in - that of long term residents ("long term" being a relative concept in a resort town). They tend to occupy more senior positions in the tourist industry and make up a fairly cosy self-regarding community in which everyone knows who each other is.

And then there's the aristocracy. These are the true locals, born and raised there, or the lifers who have settled and raised families there. Many are business owners, though it's not necessary to be one to qualify.

Abram and Sara came to Canaan as transient shepherds. The land was already theirs by God's promise, though the local aristocracy didn't know it. To them the couple were drifters and riffraff, not anyone they would invest a lot of time in getting to know. Not unlike resort staff. But God said to Abram, "I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger".

Diane and I drifted into Calgary 30 years ago. We had been married a year and were almost penniless, our only asset being a 1964 Rambler. We were just passing through and we stayed largely because we were too broke to travel on. One job led to another, Diane got pregnant and before we knew it we had raised a family there.

We have made a place for ourselves here in the intervening years. We have been blessed financially, though not without a lot of struggle. I suppose that by now some would call us established and perhaps even repectable. Yet when I see the movers coming through, the young people starting out or the not-so-young starting over, my mind goes back to our early days and I remember the words of God to Moses:

Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers...

Like Abram and Sara, we were strangers and God gave us a destiny. We were unknown, but we were already famous in God's eyes because like Abram, we had heard God's call in our lives and answered it by receiving Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

I'm not saying we were special. Every nameless wanderer has a name and a destiny from God, if he or she is willing to receive it. Then he too will be famous - where it counts!

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Rev. 1:5,6

Destiny's Children

To Diane:

We’re a famous couple, you and I:
I can’t say how, to whom, or why;
But know that Sarai and Abram, hand in hand,
Came nameless to their promised land,
Scarce noticed by its settled tribes,
Though the ground lay reverent beneath their feet.

- 40 on Tunnel Mountain

The world holds its breath
As ice crystals fall
And the sun pours out its mute blessings.

Israel and Gaza

I am a Zionist.

I am not a Jew, but as a Christian who takes the Hebrew scriptures seriously, I accept that just as God once took away the land of Canaan from Israel, He will once again restore it - fully, securely and finally. This ultimate restoration will not come by means of Merkava tanks or earthly means,  but by God's sovereign action.

This is bad news for the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, but not necessarily for the people themselves. The prophet Zechariah writes this of them: "The king shall perish from Gaza......But he who remains, even he shall be for our God, and shall be like a leader in Judah."

Imagine, if you can, that some who are presently among the most extreme followers of Islam, dedicated to the genocide of the Israeli Jews, might have a future as yeshiva students and rabbis? Or that a Dahlan might become a Sharon?  Stranger things have happened through the power of God.

Beginnings

1962

A throbbing rumble marks the time:
the midnight freight for Winnipeg
and points beyond.
Past swamp and lake and rock it comes
along Sir John A's gift to us: 
seven hundred miles of blueberry scrub
pushed in a line.

There is nothing here; 
one hundred souls, 
twelve cabins and a small prefab,
a log store and abandoned halftrack
long stripped of rubber by little boys.

The horn sounds, and they are here:
four bellowing diesels swaggering arm in arm,
they fill the clearing with a stammering roar
which fades to the rhythmic clatter
of steel boxes behind 
which speak their names:
CN, Soo Line, Great Northern and Santa Fe.

It moves on by, past one-armed Charlie's: 
half a sawyer, contemplating his walls, 
a past when he was whole
and what is left him now: a life 
of cigarettes, canned milk in coffee
and bundled copies of the Star;

And past the school where thirty kids 
sit in six rows for six grades; 
their elders packed off to the Sault to learn 
that they are Indian and unloved;

The place for first friendships
with Earnest and Levius and Luke, 
the boys affecting manhood 
with train-flattened nails as knives,
trading wordless taunts of effeminacy 
by tilted head;

The place where sin first showed itself within,
to one whose push caused a hurting fall
and death revealed itself 
through a missing face each spring;

And beyond that, the lake where fish once thrived
for a short lived industry
that caught and gutted trout and jack
and sent them down the line on ice;
the ice house stands, but the fish are gone
and the jobs with them,
and it's a good mile walk 
to where fish still bite;

On past the store, where flour, traps, guns and knives,
the goods of the world
move over the counter in fall
and skins move back in reciprocal tide
each spring.

The train moves on past all these things,
reminder of a coming leaving;
past one hundred huddled souls 
all folded by the woods' embrace:
from the train a fleeting break
in the flowing spruce,
but to these souls a world;
and to this soul a happy world,
a home to which its heart will hold
through many worlds to come,

One hundred souls: some turn in the night
from the crowing of a far off land
and a click-clack fading down the tracks
away from here.

What this blog is about

I have an ocean of thoughts from a lifetime of listening and not much speaking; now I feel it is time to get some on paper.  So I will drop a hook into that sea from time to time, and see what comes up.

The Forever River referred to in the title of this blog is the eternal reality upon which the world with all its ages floats like a short piece of yarn, and which also permeates this world; its presence is the immanence of a transcendent God, or Immanuel, "God with us". In John's vision it is the river which flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, bringing life and healing to all in its path. The vision of this invisible River informs my understanding of life, meaning and reality and I hope will come through in whatever I write here.

I wish for all who alight here God's blessing and a portion in the world to come through Jesus Christ, God's Messiah and our coming King.