within the pages of “The Shack” by Wm. Paul
Young; a work of Christian fiction. The Trinity
came into the world of a totally broken man,
shrouded by a life-sucking, suffocating veil of
sorrow, with the purpose of fully revealing themselves in real terms, and untangling the overgrown, dishevelled mess of the garden of his
shattered heart. This story is a portrait of God’s
love and great mercy toward us, and provides
scripturally-based answers to many of our fundamental questions about evil in this world.
judge God and humanity and given the instruction
to choose only two of his five children to spend
Eternity with God. He must consign three of
them to eternal hell. Of course he cannot do this,
though he firmly believes this is what God actually
does. Ultimately he asked to go to hell instead of
his children and eventually the light goes on when
he realises this is a picture of Jesus. He still has
trouble reconciling this with the Father until he
is reminded that the nail scars appear in “Papas”
wrists too.
We often see a cosmic conspiracy at every turn,
yet in reality, the only thing God wants to do
within the Trinity, is to offer us salvation, opening
the way to Himself in the greatest act of love and
forgiveness ever.
“Papa” tells the man that he is wrong to think
that what the Son did in obedience did not cost
all persons of the Trinity dearly. Despite Jesus in
his humanity feeling like He was abandoned at the
end, He never was as they were all there together
at the cross. We must recall when Jesus was baptised that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him and
then he went into the desert, enduring the great
temptation. I never see anywhere in Scripture
where the Holy Spirit leaves Him.
His lavish, tender, kindness toward us, demonstrated at the crucifixion and redeemed through
the resurrection, shows us His real heart. He is
not evil. He is good and unless we choose to see
everything through that eternal perspective, we
will question and rail at Him, judging Him, because
we can’t see the real God past our own pain. He
has liberated us from evil. He is the ultimate
Giver.
In “The Shack,” Mack says to “Papa” that he cannot imagine any final outcome justifying all the
evil in the world.
“Papa” simply replies, “We
are not justifying it. We are
redeeming it.”
Our vision is clouded by our limited picture of
reality. We basically come to believe that we are
alone and insignificant. This is THE GREAT LIE.
God is not the “ultimate betrayer,” or “fundamentally untrustworthy.” As human beings our understanding is so incomplete, that trying to believe
God is good, is often a struggle. We judge God
and find Him guilty.
One scene in “The Shack” sees the man put in the
judgement seat. In the end this man is told to
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In Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion of the Christ,” we
see a huge tear drop from the heavens as Jesus
breaths His last. The Bible says that God was in
Him reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), hence Papa’s s