Being back in Georgia, but still a little far from my friends without a car means I’ve had a lot of time for reading. So along with reading The Shack, I also spent last weekend also reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Like The Shack, Way of the Master Radio was not a fan of this book either. They never really explained why (at least, not in the episodes I listened to). Instead, whenever they brought it up, they just called it Red Like Communism and moved on to talking about how Rob Bell is brainwashing kids into donating money to charity or doing service projects. (I have a few issues with Rob Bell, but he and his church have done a lot of selfless things for their community.)

So my sister’s apartment is pretty far from campus, where my friends are. And before I left to stay at a friend’s cottage on campus, I spent a day at the apartment. Alone. So I read. My sister had a copy of Blue Like Jazz, and I knew Jon Acuff, writer of Stuff Christians Like, likes Donald Miller. I mean, if the guy who writes about stuff Christians like likes it, then shouldn’t I? So I read Donald Miller’s favorite book, and I loved it a lot. I could see why Way of the Master Radio called it Red Like Communism, but I really think they were being too nit-picky with that. I think they just didn’t like that Donald Miller is a Democrat. I think Miller brings up his political views a little too much in his book, but I bet if he were Republican and talked about it all the time, I wouldn’t be complaining. I’m just like that sometimes.

Anyway, Donald Miller’s writing style is incredible! I wish I could write like him. His writing style reads like a narrative since he uses dialogue (which, according to Google Chrome, is not a word. I’m gonna fix that) and very descriptive imagery, but it’s also written in an essay format. I also like how he sometimes tells stories that seem to have nothing to do with anything at first, but then it all comes full circle by the end of the chapter.

In addition, Donald Miller doesn’t use Christianese in his writing. He touches on a lot of things that other writers would consider taboo in writing such as his chapter about Ren Fayre at Reed College, an event where all the college kids go absolutely insane getting drunk, high, and even going around campus completely nude. Instead of instantly condemning these actions and calling Reed College an awful place (We all already know those are terrible things to do. We don’t need to be told), he writes about how he shared the Gospel with his fellow students during that weekend.

Donald Miller is an extremely honest writer. He doesn’t hold much back. He shares even the most embarrassing stuff that, if I did any of it, I’d never write for the world to read. Like how he sometimes wakes up in the morning and talks to his pillow as if it were his wife (Miller isn’t married). He shares a lot of stories from his past. Times when he was right and times when he was wrong. He’s also not afraid to make generalizations, like saying how many Christians are Christians just for the image. Just for cool points. Like a favorite author of Miller’s who said Muhammad was one of his heroes just to look more trendy. It can be the same way with Jesus. Sometimes, people will use they’re Christianity just to get with a certain crowd, and I’m guilty of that sometimes, too.

There’s plenty of relatable material in Blue Like Jazz, and there’s a lot of truth. I would be surprised if there’s one person, Christian or not, that can’t find anything to relate to in the book. Donald Miller goes deep. Really deep. So deep that the things I related to in the book, I’m too afraid to share on this blog since they’re so personal. Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz has such a careful balance between depth and entertainment, that I think just about anyone would be moved in some way by it. Seriously, check it out.

I just finished reading The Shack and I’d like to be able to remember every little thing it made me think about as I read it, but that would be nearly impossible. The second half of the book was exactly what I needed. It was a story of reconciliation, forgiveness, and love that spoke newly to things I had never given much thought to. It made me ask myself questions like, “Do I really love God?” and, “Do I really believe that God loves me?” I’d like to say yes to both of those questions, but there are plenty of times in my life when it’s hard to do so.

Of course, the second half of the book still had some stuff I disagreed with. There was one particular discussion between Mack and Jesus in which Jesus was basically saying how he doesn’t like church and that Christianity is an institution that only gets in the way of having a true relationship with God. Maybe I read it wrong, and he probably means the ritualistic nature of religion is what gets in the way of a relationship. If that’s what he meant, I agree with him, but I don’t really like his wording of it. But everything else seemed perfect, and I think the little cathartic release of my last blog post was very helpful as I finished the book.

The book brought up some great points about human nature and how selfish we are. We like our individuality and our autonomy. Naturally, we don’t want to have to submit our entire lives to God, especially when we see him as a control freak who will smite us if we so much as think about sinning. That’s how I used to think God was. I used to think it was good for me to feel ashamed every time I sinned. I thought by wallowing in self-pity and hopelessness, I was telling God that I can’t do it alone, but what I was really doing was exactly the opposite. By feeling bad for myself and ashamed, I was saying that I can try harder. I can do better than this. I can be a better Christian, and when I am a better Christian, that’s when I’ll be ready to have a strong relationship with God. The Shack really helped me realize that God doesn’t want me to be ashamed of myself. He just wants me to have a loving relationship with him, and there’s absolutely no way I can change unless I have that relationship.

I loved Mack’s encounter with Sophia, the personification of God’s wisdom. I always knew God loved me, but I never really internalized the fact that he loves me like a father loves his child. Mack loves his children unconditionally, and he displayed this by saying how he could never send any of his children to Hell no matter what they do. He’ll always love them. Until I read that, I never drew the comparison between that kind of love and God’s love. To think that God loves us so much that he allowed his only Son to die for us is mind-boggling. I mean, there’s absolutely no way God could love us more than he loves Jesus. I can hardly imagine how painful it must have been for the Father to watch his Son suffer on the cross. It must have been, because he had to turn away.

The part of the book that gave me some serious goosebumps was the forgiveness part. God loves murderers. He loves them no more or less than he loves me. God can forgive them, and I hold bitter grudges against people all the time. People that God loves and has called me to love, I have a very difficult time forgiving.

Despite some (or many) of its flaws, The Shack really portrayed God’s love to me in a tangible way. It’s overwhelmingly wonderful to know that God is “especially fond of me.”

Ugh … this book! Okay, I started reading Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack yesterday, and I’m about half-way through it, and I really, really want to stop reading it. I have friends who have said that it has helped them, so I’m hoping that the second half of the book will revolve more around dealing with pain than theology. Don’t get me wrong. Theology’s great, but it’s more of a bittersweet kind of great for me. I’ve taken it down bad paths that I really don’t want to revisit, and reading this book isn’t helping me avoid returning to those paths.

I really wish I could read The Shack with fresh eyes. I used to listen to Way of the Master Radio every day a few years ago. It wasn’t the central theme of the show, but there was a point in almost every show where they would cast judgment on some growing fad amongst Christians that they believed to be poisonous. The Shack was one of those fads, and because of that show, it’s been indoctrinated into me that The Shack is no good, awful, bad. I stopped listening to the show when they started attacking a certain form of ministry. I agreed with them on it, but then they made a sarcastic and very judgmental joke about it that I believed wasn’t necessary. I haven’t listened to a single episode of Way of the Master since.

Back to theology. I used to argue theology all the time. I’d go online and spend hours searching for people on forums and message boards to argue with. My biggest arguments were with people of the emerging church and Calvinists. (Then I found Mark Driscoll on Youtube, an emerging Calvinist pastor, and really liked him. But that’s another story.) Maybe over a year ago, I decided it was so useless to spend my days arguing with other Christians. I wasn’t even reading my Bible regularly, and there I was typing away like I knew it so well and so much better than those I was arguing.

Reading The Shack is bringing me back to that judgmental state that I’ve been trying to overcome. Let’s face it, the book (at least, the half I’ve read so far) is wrong on a lot of things. It says that God the Father was with Jesus on the cross, it once said that the Son was a creation (not Jesus’ body, but the Son himself), it says that authority is a corrupt creation of man and that there’s no authority in the Trinity. And see? There I go again! I mean, there’s so much good in this book, but all I see is the negative and the wrong stuff.

There’s plenty of good in The Shack. I loved reading about the relationship between the three Persons of the Trinity in the book. I mean, I know they don’t start laughing and kidding around when Jesus drops a bowl of batter on the floor. (Young just wrote it like that so it would be easier for us to relate to.) But it’s cool to think about where we, as humans, got our relational nature. It’s from God. We love being with others and having relationships because God is relationships. I love that. It’s part of the way we’re made in God’s image, isn’t it?

Another thing about The Shack that I like is that it makes me think of how I view God. I don’t usually think of God’s appearance but when I do, I think of either Dumbledore or Morgan Freeman. (Knowing now that Dumbledore’s gay, though, kinda ruins it for me.) Either way, I would probably have a hard time saying, “I love you,” to an old black man or a guy with a long, white beard. The Shack made me think about that when Papa was talking about religious stereotypes. C.S. Lewis wrote something similar in The Screwtape Letters (but with Satan instead). We imagine Satan as a red monster with a pitchfork and wings. Images like that and even images of God as an old man with white robes only hinder our belief in their existence.

So yeah, there’s great stuff in The Shack, but I’m finding myself getting frustrated because I really, really want to read the book without getting upset over it’s theology. I’m really crossing my fingers that the second half has less to do with theology. I think part of the problem is that I’m trying so hard to make up for the fact that I haven’t opened my Bible in a long time by looking for ways to make myself feel better than this book. It’s awful of me to be thinking that way. What I need to do is get back to my spiritual disciplines instead of trying to defend beliefs that I’ll lose if I don’t, but that’s hard stuff. I think this short break from reading was good, and it really helped me process my thoughts. I’m gonna go back to it, now.