God is not the Defendant

I am a huge fan of Boundless Webzine. I find their writing insightful and consistent with scripture. I came across article tonight that demands your attention. Ironically enough, I am currently reading The Shack to see what all the fuss is about. Enjoy this article by Gary Thomas.

---


God's Not the Defendant
by Gary Thomas

"But what was God doing before He created the world?" a skeptic once asked Augustine, the famous 5th century bishop.

"Creating hell for people who ask stupid questions like that," the esteemed Augustine replied.
One of the many memorable lessons I learned from my theological mentor Dr. J.I. Packer was our obligation to accept the mystery of God and His refusal to answer every question we might ask of Him. The book of Job is forcefully clear: God does not feel obligated to answer a question just because we might ask it. Great thinkers such as Augustine and Packer lived with a humble, submissive willingness to accept this side of God.

Fewer and fewer today seem to be so humble. If we have a question, God must provide the answer.

How else to explain the unfathomable popularity of The Shack, a self-published novel by William Young, selling more than one million copies in its first year of publication?

The Ten Commandments begin with an overarching claim on our curiosity: Don't mess with the Godhead. It's the first commandment, and therefore of utmost importance. "Not taking the Lord's name in vain" and not creating idols in his image goes far beyond swear words and the actual construction of gold or wooden "deities." It's a call to respect the nature of God as He reveals himself, and a refusal to speculate beyond what He gives us.

Centuries of Jews have refrained from even speaking or writing out God's name, for fear of violating the respectful distance with which God asks us to think of Him — and now a Christian writer presents God the Father as a black woman who starts out talking ghetto, the Holy Spirit as a Ghost-like Asian woman, and then all but "channels" them by giving them long streams of dialogue, some of which directly contradicts long-held Christian beliefs. If this doesn't violate the letter of the first commandment, it at least impinges on the spirit.

But maybe I'm taking all this too seriously. After all, everyone says, it's fiction. Putting aside the fact that so was The Last Temptation of Christ, I want to go back and ask why anyone would want to re-depict the Godhead? God as He reveals Himself through His words and ways in the Old Testament, and through His incarnate form in the New, is so beautiful and perfect, what makes anyone think they could do a better job? God our Father is so wonderful in His love, authority, power, and rule; God the Holy Spirit first convicts us, and then comforts and teaches us; God the Son defines Himself as humble (Matt. 11:29) — imagine that; the God of the universe, humble! — and gentle (also Matt. 11:29), while bold enough to take on the Pharisees and the political rulers.

Who can do better than this? And why do so many readers say they've been waiting for this?
I don't mean to sound harsh here, but if you can't fall in love with the God of the Bible, you don't need a new depiction; you need a new heart. I understand how someone who has never known God, and whose heart is hostile toward God, can look in the pages of Scripture and despise Him. What I don't understand is how someone who truly knows God, and who has been reconciled to God, can think that a ghost-like depiction of the Holy Spirit, a re-creation of God the Father as a cliché-speaking, slap-happy kitchen cook, and Jesus as a somewhat dopey and clumsy helper makes Him more accessible and interesting.

C.S. Lewis brilliantly avoids these problems in The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan represents the incarnate Christ in another world, a Christ who occasionally strikes fear while simultaneously offering gentle intimacy. Lewis wisely avoids depicting an incarnate Father and an incarnate Holy Spirit, and he doesn't have Aslan throw out theological zingers that challenge 2,000 years of orthodox Christian teaching.

The Wrong Question

There's another serious issue in The Shack that defies the mystery of faith: In essence, the book puts God on trial. The narrator's main contention against God is this (paraphrased): "You've created and/or allowed a world that has hurt me deeply; what do you have to say for yourself? Why should I believe in you anymore?"

Tragically, and perhaps even heretically, Young has God respond, "OK; let me explain myself to you as best you can understand it."

For 2,000 years, Christians have believed that God sent His Son because He put us on trial and found us wanting. The proper response of humans is, "I have sinned and fallen short of Your glory. Have mercy on me." Today's believer and non-believer is far more likely to respond, "There's evil in the world; God, if You really exist, explain Yourself!"

As a man who has sinned and who continues to sin, how dare I judge God for allowing sin? To destroy all sin, He would have to destroy me, as I continue to sin on a daily basis. At the very least, He would have to remove all whispers of any notion of free will; and without free will, would I still be made in the image of God?

Again, I can understand how someone who hasn't been regenerated by the Holy Spirit can live in hostility and anger toward God. What I don't get is how someone can be genuinely convicted of their sin — to the extent that they see it as God sees it, in all its depravity — be truly forgiven, having the weight of this sin and rebellion removed, knowing that now, because of Christ, every thought God has toward us is one of tender mercy; and then, on top of all this, getting to walk in fellowship with God every day, being comforted in our sorrows, convicted in our sins, taught in our ignorance, encouraged by His kindness, supported in His love; how can one of God's children truly experience all this and even dare to ask God to account for Himself? Every moment we live in peace with God and outside of hell is a moment we don't deserve; the thought of taking God to task for anything else is beyond me.

I confess that I don't understand this sense of entitlement, in large part because of how brilliantly God has addressed the problem of evil. God made provision for the sin of unbelievers to be dealt with justly in hell, and for the sin of believers to be dealt with on the cross. It's a brilliant, comprehensive plan that preserves the necessary free will inherent in beings made in the image of God himself. Does anyone seriously have a better plan?

It's not just that I take issue with The Shack's answers (though I do, and vehemently so). It's that I take issue with its questions. Job had a lot of questions to ask God, and he asked them in an impertinent manner. Instead of answering Job's questions, as "Papa" does in The Shack, God responded, "Listen now, and I will speak. I will question you, and you shall answer me." And Job's holy and healthy response was, "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job. 42:4, 6).

True enough, the Psalms pose many of these same questions, but for the most part they are resolved in a spirit of humility, surrender, and worship — not with wild speculation, and not by channeling God until Papa and Jesus sound like two guests on the Oprah Winfrey show.
It is also very significant that you don't find the writers of the New Testament voicing these same questions. In the age of the church, an age in which God's own Spirit resides in us, an age in which we can be uniquely reconciled to God (in a way that even King David and the other psalm writers could not), I believe there is an opportunity for Christ-like humility and surrender that supersedes many of these questions. We can be part of the solution — bringing God's redemption to a fallen, sinful world — instead of constantly obsessing over why God allows a problem.
Nobody appointed me to be the church's guard dog when it comes to theology. For starters, I'm not qualified. So maybe I'm taking all this way too seriously. Even if I am, can we at least agree that this is as far as we need to go? I believe The Shack already crosses the line; but if I'm wrong, can we at least say "enough's enough"?

The first commandment is to respect and honor the Godhead. The beginning of all wisdom, according to Scripture, is to fear the Lord. The Shack, in my opinion, violates both. It is our privilege and duty to respect the God who made us, to humbly allow Him to reveal Himself or not reveal Himself as He chooses, and to live in the mystery that remains. We should reject any irreverent speculation as naïve ignorance at best, and flat out arrogant, speculative heresy at worse. Where The Shack falls in this spectrum isn't for me to judge, but its approach channels our culture's arrogant sense of entitlement far more effectively than it channels the never-changing revealed will and words, not to mention the nature, of God.

As for me, I'm grateful that God has given us His written word as an accurate, trustworthy account of who He is, what He has said, and how I may know Him — an account that every other account must be measured by. It is also an account, I'd submit, that places The Shack outside of appropriate Christian literature.

Let's be willing to live in the mystery of who God is. Let's remind ourselves that we are the ones who need to explain ourselves, not God. He is the judge; He is not the defendant. The real shack that keeps us imprisoned isn't our pain — it's our alienation from, rebellion against, and hostility toward God. That's the shack from which I wish William Young had sought Mack's liberation.