The Shack and the passion of God

We've just gotten through the chapter entitled A Piece of Pi in our study group and I am realizing more and more how much the book owes to the gospel of John. In fact, this chapter is more or less a fictional exposition of the relations within the Trinity as revealed to us in John.

Overlooking the elements in the book which I personally find irritating - like the anti-authoritarianism and disdain for the organized church - overlooking all that, Paul Young is on to something very important here in his emphasis on God's relational, empathic nature.

We see this first of all when Mack meets the Father and sees the nail holes in His (sorry, I just can't say Her) hand. Elousia goes on to explain that this was because He was with Jesus on the cross, that He had never actually abandoned His Son even though Jesus felt like it at the time.

Paul Young has been accused by some on account of this of the ancient heresy of Patripassianism, which I (and I suspect Young as well) had never heard of before this, but I don't think the charge will stick. The image of the Father bearing the stigmata of His Son's sufferings seems to me a very fair representation of the intimate nature of their relationship as described throughout John:

"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does..." "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." "...the Father abiding in Me does His works."

Jesus' suffering on the cross was pre-eminently a work of the Father ("God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself"); are we not to believe that His Father was abiding in Him at that time as well?

The significance of the stigmata in the book is that because of the closeness of their union within the Trinity, the Father felt through His Son the suffering of the penalties of sin just as much as Jesus did. This may be theologically unprovable but it is emotionally authentic to the description Jesus gives of His Father, and for a work of fiction, that's good enough.

So kudos to Paul Young for bringing out this neglected truth of God's love. And it is neglected. Why do we go on about the great love that God showed in sending His Son and yet at the same time believe in our hearts that the God Who is Love somehow loves less deeply than we do ourselves? We so often make of His love a hieratic, dispassionate thing rather than something that is tender, empathic and passionate. No wonder many Christians are emotionally starved and burned out.

In the group we looked at Jesus' encounter with Mary and Martha at Lazarus' tomb for an example of this empathy. Why did Jesus weep? Not for Lazarus - He was about to raise him. Not for the sisters - He was about to fill them with joy. Rather, He wept for the pain they were feeling then and there; because He loved them, He felt their pain as they did, just as we do ourselves when someone we love is suffering.

We discussed how this knowledge applies to our daily walk. We accept that God brings us through hard experiences to perfect His nature in us. But he is not just the surgeon, steady and detached, who is bringing us through sufferings that He Himself has no sense of. Because He is in us, He is in a way on the table with us and suffers along with us. Just knowing that can help us trust in His grace that much more in our trials.

In other words, because of the nature of love, "Abide in Me, and I in you" must be a two way street experientially. It is not just me partaking of Jesus' life and grace, but it is Him receiving and experiencing something through me as well. The implications of this are very deep and I'm not sure I've got to the bottom of it.

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)