Seems like the blog has run it's course.
I have one other question.
I came across this yesterday in Christianity Today:
"I have one caution for Young and all those who read The Shack: Let us be cautious of speaking too harshly about Jesus' bride, the church. She has stains on her dress, she often embarrasses him, and she has hurt many throughout history. Yet Jesus loves her still and gave his life for her. The local church is still the hope of the world by being his witness in the midst of broken humanity"
That sparked a problem that I did have with the book - I know that the church is an easy target. But what do you think about Young's portrayal of the church?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I strongly disagree with the portayal of the church in The Shack. Young portrays the church as mere structures. The important thing is a relationship with Jesus. The institution of the church seems to impede this more than it aids it. In fact, look at the entire premise of the book: healing comes not in the church community but in a one-on-one experience of God. This is ironic considering how much the book emphasizes that the Trinity is all about community.
Unfortunately, I think this kind of individualism and de-emphasis of the church are very much characteristic of Protestantism as a whole. I have been reading a very challenging book called Liturgical Theology. It is written by Simon Chan, a Pentecostal professor of theology in Singapore. He argues that evangelicals need to recover a better doctrine of the church. Here are a few challenging quotes:
"The church, unlike creation, is not 'external' to God but is, as it were, 'internal' to the life of the triune God...It is, according to Sergius Bulgakov, a 'divine-humanity.' It is a divine-humanity because of its organic link with its head, Christ" (23).
"We are not saved as individuals first and then incorporated into the church; rather, to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the church by baptism and nourished with the spiritual food of the Eucharist. Failure to understand this fact has led to a reduction of the church's role to a largely sociological one of a service provider catering to individual believers' spiritual needs" (24).
"Like a person whose history and memory shape his or her identity, the church as the body of Christ cannot be understood apart from its history and collective memory of Jesus Christ. Tradition is the means by which the church understands its true identity. We can make sense of what the church is now only because it exists in historical continuity with the church then. To repudiate this historical link is to put our own identification with the 'one holy, catholic, and apostolic' church in serious doubt" (31).
Chan argues that many of the current problems in evangelicalism stem from an inadequate understanding of the church. His book is very challenging, and it is making me rethink a lot. I think we have a lot to learn from Catholics and the Orthodox.
Oh yeah, this post was supposed to be about The Shack. Oh well.
I finally got The Shack in mp3 version. I listened to all 8 hours of it. I guess I should have bought the book. Listening to it .. umm did I miss something? It was a nice story but perhaps by the time I got to it, I had heard and read enough to be easily guarded in my hearing.
I agree that Young's portrayal of the Church was too negative for me. I came away from the story thinking that the Church gets painted with the cultural understanding of a social club you can choose to join or not. I think he oversells the individual relationship with God to the detriment of the story. It would be so much more powerful in the context of his family and friends and especially a community of faith.
However....
As a diary of one man's journey through grief, from the anger to reconciliation, I think the book does capture some key moments of the emotional healing. Grief can be so inward and personal as to feel like no other human can understand or walk through it with us. So perhaps he was trying to capture that isolating feeling of grief and therefore, as the author of the novel, he dismisses the church from the story so as to focus the story more narrowly.
I find this book less illuminating about the nature of God or the Church and more illuminating about the various confrontations/reconciliations with a thought-life/emotions that one must go through to deal with deep loss, grief and guilt. I am glad that Young found that faith in God holds precious keys for those moments.
Post a Comment