The Shack Session 2 "Our Images and Understanding of the Triune God"

Conversation around the book “The Shack” Session #2

August 10, 2008 Read pages 67-103 Our Images and Understanding of the Triune God

Chapter 5 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described 5 stages of grief in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying”: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Which of these stages do you see in Mack. Is he stuck in any one stage or is he moving through the stages of grief? (page 78/79)

“’I’m tired of trying to find you in all this.’ And with that, he walked out the door. Mack determined that this was the last time he would go looking for God. If God wanted him, God would have to come find him.” (page 80) Who finds who? Do we find God or does God find us? Remember the story of Zaccheus (“Hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today. Luke” 19:5) or the story of Jesus intrusion into the disciple’s life, “Follow, I will make you fishers of men.” In chapter 6 Mackenzie says “I feel totally lost” and Papa says “Then let’s see if we can find you in this mess.” (page 97) Notice hwo God finds Mack in the chaos and not the other way around.

How would you explain the Trinity if someone asked you to? A black women named Elousia (“God is salvation”) or Papa who smelled like Mack’s mother, a Middle Eastern Jewish man dressed like a laborer and an Asian women named Sarayu (Hindi for common wind) who tended the garden. “Since there were three of them, maybe this was a Trinity sort of thing…Which one of you is God?... ‘I am,’ said all three in unison.” How does this “Trinity” force or allow or challenge you to think about the triune God?

Chapter 6 A Piece of Pi

“Calling you Papa is a bit of a stretch for me” (page 91)…I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature…To reveal myself to you as a very large white grandfatherly figure with flowing beard, like Gandalf, would simply reinforce your religious stereotypes, and this weekend is not about reinforcing your religious stereotypes.” What are your religious stereotypes for God? What are the good things about those ways of imaging God and what are the difficulties? Jesus called God “Abba”. What was the purpose of this personal name for God? Genesis 1:26,27 says: “Then God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us create humankind in our image, according to our likeness….so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” What do you think of this passage in light of the parable we are reading? Did you know that in the Old Testament there are several names for God including Elohim, Yahweh, El Shaddai, Adonai?

“If you couldn’t take care of Missy, how can I trust you to take care of me?” (page 92) When Mack asks this question he is entering into the question of “theodicy”- questioning the righteousness of God. If God is all powerful and all good and yet bad things happen how can all this fit together? This is the question that Rabbi Harold Kushner asks in “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. Kushner’s conclusion in a nutshell is that God isn’t as all powerful as we think. What is the answer or conversation that is offered in “The Shack”. A couple other books to read on this subject are by two Christian authors C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed”, Philip Yancey’s “Where is God When it Hurts” or another Jewish author Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie”.

“You knew I would come, didn’t you?” Mack finally spoke quietly. “Of course I did.” She (Papa) was busy again with her back to him. “Then, was I free not to come? Did I have a choice in the matter?” …”Good question- how deep would you like to go?...”Do you believe you are free to leave?” “I suppose I am. Am I?” “Of course you are! I’m not interested in prisoners” “Or if you want to go a wee bit deeper, we could talk about the nature of freedom itself. Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or we could talk about all the limiting influences in your life.” (And Papa goes on to talk about genetic heritage; your souls sickness that inhibits and binds you (ie. sin); and the cultural influences of advertising, propaganda and paradigms.) What is freedom really? “Only I can set you free, Mackenzie, but freedom can never be forced.” How does this passage affect your understanding of human freedom? How do these readings on freedom resonate with what Papa says in the parable? “Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17); “For freedom, Christ has set you free” (Galatians 5:1); “We have heard with our ears, O God (Elohim) our ancestor have told us…you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but you set them free.” (Psalm 44:1,2)

“Mackenzie, the Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust. Everything is about him. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him. Then all the stuff you find churning around inside will start to work its way out….Mack noticed the scars in her wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his. She allowed him to tenderly touch the scars.” (page 95) What do you make of the fact that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all part of our redemption on the cross?

“You were created to be loved. So for your to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around.” (page 97) God uses the image of a bird not flying as an image of human living as if we are unloved. “Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.” (page 95) “Love and relationship. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exisits within Me. Within God myself. Love is not a limitation; love is the flying. I am love.” (page 101) This statement by Papa is from 1 John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”