Response to The Shack

I have just finished reading a book, The Shack, which has some controversy attached to it. Without giving away the story a man, Mack, has a devastating event in his life which forces him to battle what he believes about God. The event caused Mack to succumb to what he called the Great Sadness. It is a depression that encompasses his entire life and affects his relationships with his wife, children and friends. The question the book is trying to answer: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? It seems like a fair question. When something bad happens we all want to scream out to God and ask why. It seems only normal to blame the Creator for the mess of the world.
The book does a good job at answering this question and one of the more interesting parts was about what God expects of us. We all live in a world of expectations; whether we are failing, meeting or exceeding them is another story. Someone in your life has failed your expectations. Sometimes we pray to God and He fails our expectations. When we sin we feel as if we have failed God’s expectations. But what does God really expect of us? This is the part where we list all of our great spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, Scripture, worship and any number of things we try to do. We might even get on the 10 Commandments wagon and say, “God expects me to keep those in my life.” I find it interesting that when it comes to God and what he expects of us, the Bible is pretty quiet. I think we see a lot of rules in the Bible that tend to confuse us into thinking God is conditional and wants us to serve him and do all kinds of acts of service in His name. This would be the time to say not by works shall you be saved so that no one may boast…it is only by (God’s) grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even though we know this, there are times when we feel as if we have not been living the life God has planned for us and something bad happens to us and we feel judged by God. What did I do (or not do) to deserve this?
What God wants from us is relationship with Him. This is not a thing, but a verb an action. We set rules because rules are a lot easier to deal with than relationships. Rules tell us where the boundaries are, but in relationships it may be hard to define boundaries. Rules give power those who set them to enforce and judge those who fail to carry them out. God is all-powerful please don’t miss that, but He is not about lording guilt and shame over us when we don’t follow the rules. The Scripture says that anyone who calls on the name of Christ will be saved Acts 2:21). We are set free and because Jesus came down from his throne to dwell and have relationship with us that through His death and resurrection we are forgiven. The only thing we need to do is accept the free offering of God’s grace. We enter into a relationship with God through the acceptance of Jesus in our lives.
I stated above that relationships take work, but not works. To have relationship with God we need to spend time with Him. Not just some time, but all of our time. Our lives need to be about building relationship with God. Everything we do should revolve around this relationship with God. The Bible doesn’t teach us to follow rules; it is a picture of Jesus. While reading God’s word gives us a picture of God’s character and what He may want from you, we have to remember that none of it is possible all on our own. Life and living are in Him and in no other. We cannot live the righteousness of God all on our own. Rules may seem a lot cleaner than relationships, but rules will never be able to love you and rules will never answer the deep questions of the heart. Relationships were instituted by the very presence of God. Before there was any creation, there was a relationship in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Before we get all down on ourselves for not having enough relationship with God, remember that God is not into guilt. And finally the only one to get this right was Jesus when he came down to earth, yet this is the potential we all have, because Jesus was one of us, but had perfect relationship with God in the same chaotic world in which we live.