Debriefing from Week One
I introduced The Shack last night by presenting the main characters and listing the main messages that the author W. Paul Young makes through his writing.
Here is a summary:
The Shack by William P. Young is a bestselling work of fiction that is spurring fresh conversations about the person and work of God. It narrates the life changing encounter with God that its main character “Mack” experiences on a weekend trip to the shack where his youngest daughter Missy was murdered brutally two years earlier at the hands of a serial killer. The death of his daughter brought The Great Sadness into Mackenzie’s life and damaged his relationship with God and others. Moreover, Mack was still bearing the scars of a brutal childhood. Through conversation and hands on experiences with each member of the Trinity as well as the personified wisdom (Sophia), Mack experiences a profound healing that enables him to begin anew to live as the person whom God created him to be.
Here is a preliminary list of key themes/messages built into the narrative:
1) God loves each person profoundly. People matter to God.
2) Relationships are the center of life. The Triune God models a profound relational mode of being. The divine-human relationship and human-human relationships are the true meaning and purpose of life.
3) Forgiveness heals the past and opens the future so that we can live as the people whom God created us to be. Forgiveness involves forgiving self, God, and others.
4) The past is redeemable no matter how dark or how wonderful it may be.
5) The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the most critical act in all Creation.
6) Freedom is worth the price of the possibility/probability of pain and suffering because of misused freedom. God is neither the author of sin or the cause of evil.
7) God’s immanence/nearness/presence is affirmed continually. God is even present in the darkest moments of our lives.
8 ) Our words and actions matter. The way we live either adds the problems in the world or adds value to others to draw them into the relationship that God desires. There is a missional focus for life.
9) Eternity will be an endless adventure of deepening our understanding and relationship with God and others.
What other themes would you add to the list above?
What questions do you have from last night’s conversation? Here is a link to the questions that I received from the audience.
January 16, 2009 at 3:15 am
What loss or grief did Paul Young experience as a child/young adult?
I would imagine that you have already looked this up, but if not, here is some information.
“The book, ‘The Shack’ is also a backdrop, a glimpse into Wm Paul Young’s childhood of a painful experience while joining his parents in Netherlands New Guinea (West Papua) he was sexual abused. This helped him create such a story with this type of backdrop with such similar pain as Missy, Mack’s daughter, the two characters in this book. The only difference is she was abducted by someone and he was not, He admits he is both characters because of the level of pain and the time it took him to confront them both to be able to heal from such a tragedy to help others to do the same.”
http://www.graceandmercymagazine.org/the_shack.html
“In an interview with World Magazine’s Susan Olasky, Young, who is no longer a member of a church, said “(The institutional church) doesn’t work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged. . . . If God is a loving God and there’s grace in this world and it doesn’t work for those of us who didn’t get dealt a very good hand in the deck, then why are we doing this? . . . Legalism within Christian or religious circles doesn’t work very well for people who are good at it. And I wasn’t very good at it.”[3]
An article in Maclean’s magazine in August 2008 indicated that Young, is a “Canadian raised from birth by his missionary parents in Dutch New Guinea, Young was sexually abused by some of the people his parents preached to, as he was again back home, at a Christian boarding school. Young drifted through life as an adult, buoyed a little by his faith and a lot by his wife, Kim, keeping his secrets and building his shack: “the place we make to hide all our crap,” he calls it. Until, at 38, he found himself at the nadir. “I had a three-month affair with one of my wife’s best friends. That was it, that just blew my careful little religious world apart. I either had to get on my knees and deal with my wife’s pain and anger or kill myself.”[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Young
a pod cast interview with Paul Young @
http://nourishthedream.com/2008/12/29/interview-william-paul-young-author-of-the-shack/
December 31, 2009 at 5:58 pm
That was a very powerful background on Young’s life. It does put The Shack in perspective. Thank you for the insight.
January 17, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I really enjoyed The Shack . It came at a time in my life while living day after day watching the Anthony case trying to figure out how something so horrible happened to such a little angel ! This book has helped me lay down all those emotions … I realize it is a fiction ! But it sure put somethings in prospective.