Return to “The Shack”
The Shack.
The book made a lifelong impression on me and now the movie has done the same.
When I read the book, I was in seminary drafting a thirty-page paper on what I believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
What was my theology?
My degree didn’t require the Systematics class but I chose to take it anyway. Always the overachiever, I wanted to pin down what I actually stood for because if I didn’t know, how could I teach others?
Have you ever figured out what you believe and why you believe it? 1 Peter 3:15 says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”
During those years of post-graduate work, I embraced the teaching of some of our forefathers; a theologian named Anselm of Cantebury especially intrigued me. In an ontological argument he determined God is “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” In other words, even if you don’t believe there’s a God, could you believe you have a finite mind and that there could be something greater than what your mind has capacity to understand?
Heady stuff, but impactful.
I began to take God out of the human box I constructed and realized he is larger and far greater than I gave him credit.
While some find The Shack sacrilegious, it further expanded my image of God. Why couldn’t God appear as a black woman or an Indian man? He spoke through a donkey in Numbers 22! Why do we limit what God can do?
Isaiah 55:8 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.
So how did The Shack movie speak to me?
The message I received from The Shack movie was a message of love.
So many of us struggle to believe God loves us when we have endured hardship. Overcoming the death of a loved one is especially difficult. However, as the movie suggests, even though we live in an evil world, that does not change God’s love for us. When “Papa” repeatedly expressed his/her love to the main character, Mack, “I wish you knew how much I love you;” “I love you, Mack;” “I have always loved you.” I felt like God was saying that to me as well.
“I wish you knew how much I love you, Lisa.”
“I love you, Lisa.”
“I have always loved you, Lisa”
Now place your name in those statements and let God speak to your heart.
God loves us through the pain. He is always with us. Jesus promised he would never leave us or forsake us. The key to this is trusting what he said is true and that eventually, God will bring good out of the hardships we’ve experienced.
Today, the challenge is to expand your image of God.
Understand he is great and awesome and he loves you with an endless love that cannot be measured. What is most mind boggling is that this God, beyond our comprehension, desires to have a relationship with us. But there is one catch. As Mack had to do in The Shack, we have to act on his request to meet with us. Out of his love, he’s waiting patiently for our response. (LBW)