Viewing “The Shack” through the Lense of Truth

Perhaps you have heard of the book The Shack by William Young.  Apparently, there are Christians who are going completely ga-ga about it.  Here’s how Eugene Peterson (the sole author of The Message) endorses it:

“When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!”

Really?! Are you really making that assertion, Mr. Peterson?  John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a cross-generational work of art because it contains cross-generational truth.  Does this book contain truth?

Here’s Jay Leno, exemplifying the pagan culture, giving it a shrugging endorsement:

I have never read it.  I might in the future.  But many men for whom I have great respect because of their godly, biblical, Christ-exalting committment have given it a big thumbs-down.

Dr. Russell Moore, for example, in one of the Albert Mohler programs during late July, said that he was about 100 pages into it, and he couldn’t help but think that he could spend his time much better than reading “this heresy.”

Tim Challies, a Christian Reviewer whom I respect has released his review of the book.

This person posts Challies’ defense of that review after receiving his responses from those who disagreed.

Lastly, Mark Driscoll let’s us know what he thinks about the book:

You know, I completely understand the argument that says that I have no right to endorse these critiques of a book of which I have not read.  Yet the idea remains: Could your time be spent better? Does it deliver what it promises? Does it deliver what it promises in a God-exalting, Christ-centered, biblically faithful way?

I guess that you will have to decide that, but I exhort you to understand how quickly Satan can use anything to turn your eyes from the truth.  I DO NOT give you a recommendation to read the book.  In fact, I will quickly say that I can give you a great onslaught of titles to read which I believe will serve you far better.

Nevertheless, I have read some reviews who have favored the book (swing a dead cat and you’ll hit a thumbs-up review for this book), and I am mostly amazed at many who loved it because of their intimate and personal identification with suffering.  That is the very subject which prompted the writing of the book, and also chronicles the book’s main subject.  (It’s Job without the four friends and the one true God.)

It’s just one man who faced tragedy speaking directly to a god called the God of Christianity inside a Shack.  USA Today gives us some insight here about that issue.

I am deeply moved to empathy by the way Mr. Young faced tragedy in his own life.  I am not distant or cold to that truth, yet I cannot say that I would be responding in love if I were, maybe as his pastor,  to respond to his situation in a way that compromises truth.  This is not love.  “Love…rejoices with the truth.”

The only way to minister to a weary soul facing tragedy is not through allegory or symbolism.  It’s through God’s revealed word which tells us this:

“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Hebrews 2:18

“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

The Lord is not distant from your suffering.  He’s been through it before, and his suffering was the worst there could be.  Most of all, by this suffering, we are brought near to God by grace through faith in Christ.

People like Mr. Young who face the tragic realities of a fallen world will do better for themselves if they find faithful loving pastors and teachers who stay true to Scripture and the one true God.  It is far better than any “fiction” because it is eternal truth that calls us to reconcile and fellowship intimately with the Most High God. That’s the lense through which we must view any suffering.

Working with you to consider carefully what you read,

Vince R.

What does it mean to be in “Union with Christ?”

That very title deserves many books and a whole week of seminars from theologians much more qualified than I, but perhaps I could enlighten you with some thoughts I had on this question recently.  What is “Union with Christ?”

First, I propose that the Bible teaches the Gospel is good news for sinners because it tells them of an alien righteousness.  The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is central to the message of the gospel.  The doctrine of justification through faith is central to our response to the gospel.    But in addition to faith, repentence must precede and follow it.  While repentence is most defintely a turning away from sin, it must include knowledge of sin.  Then, it must go to contrition for sin.  Then, it must go to confession of sin.  This whole process, which happens only by grace through the movement of the Spirit and by the hearing and seeing of the Word of God, then leaves a sinner totally cast off from all remnants, specks and spots of self-righteousness.  He then searches desperately for an alien righteousness, a righteousness apart from him.

The sinners stands trembling as he recognizes his total guilt and unjustified sinfulness.  He is alone and without help.  But, oh, herein is the good news of the gospel:

“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing riches on all who call on him.  For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13

That means EVERYONE who does this will be saved.  But one cannot take this verse alone. Why does one call on the Lord?  He must know why, or he will not be saved.  God does not save them who have no need of him.  Or at least, think, feel, act, and live as though they don’t need him.

A man with repentence in his heart can do Romans 10:13 and so be saved.

So then, Jesus says, “repent and believe the Gospel of God.”  Mark 1:15

For, you see, the Gospel of God demands obedience.  Too often the church has thought that God’s Old Testament demand for obedience has somehow dwindled or slackened in the New Testament.  As though, God somehow took “a happy pill” between the Old and New Testaments.  The immutability of God tears down such a heretical idea.  He does not change!

He was, He is and He will always be HOLY!

A holy God demands you to be holy, too.  Thus, when Jesus came, I dare say, he took God’s demand for obedience and made it only more difficult!  No longer is adultery wrong, but even lusting after a woman is adultery!  He made a matter of the heart.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?  I the LORD search the heart and mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.  We just plain need new ones.  God give us new hearts!

But here is the gospel!

The difference the New Testament does bring is exactly the meaning of the words “New Testament.”  It brings a “New Covenant.”  Oh, friends, here is the grace of God so wonderfully exposited.  Notice these awesome words I read yesterday in the reading calender:

“And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the (new) covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Matthew 26:27-28

My mind immediately went to Jeremiah 31:31-34.  But I remembered, first, that God means for us to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures with the New Testament Scriptures (namely, through the lense of the person of Jesus Christ).  I, therefore, remembered Hebrews 8.

“But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.  For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.  For he finds fault with them when he says:

‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.  For they did not continue in my convenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.  For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be thier God and they shall be my people.  And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.  For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’

In speaking of a new covenant, he made the first one obsolete.  And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” Hebrews 8:6-13 (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

These verses mean that now, in Christ, by the Spirit, for the Father, we can be obedient.  God doesn’t write the law on tablets of stone, he writes it on our hearts!

Notice Ezekiel’s words:

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.  And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has bee profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.  And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.  I will take you from the nations and gather you into your own land.  I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

That’s the essence of obedience to the gospel: God creates in us what he demands from us. That’s good news!

Only because of the finished work of Christ (his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and intercession) is our obedience righteous.  Before it was stained with sin! Now, It is righteous because we are hidden in Christ.  When the Father sees us, he sees Christ.

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3

I love Ephesians 1:3-14.  It is so precious to me.  But the other day I noticed how all the truths of it emphasize the phrase “In Christ” either by the proper noun or the pronoun “him.”  Note the awesome truths of those people whose God is the Lord:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, when he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.  In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.  In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

And, again, note Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.  That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.  And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has annointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” 2 Corinthians 1:20-22

Oh my brothers and sisters, are you “in Christ?”  How many times does John, the one whom Jesus loved, exhort us to “abide in Him?”  I leave you with an imperative from God through that apostle’s first letter:

“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” 1 John 2:28

Working with you to be In Union with Christ,

Vince R.

What Does It Mean to “Love” God?

 It was asked of me recently on the way home from a bible study.  I had dealt with this concept only this past Spring 2007 and into the Summer.  How so?  I heard a sermon on Romans 8:28 by John Piper.  I was heartily convicted when I was exhorted to examine myself in light of its massive, overwhelming promise, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (KJV).

In his Desiring God Radio broadcasting on March 22, 2007, John Piper said, “Day by day, there are people that walk through painful experiences and do not trust God to help them get through these things then turn them for good.  And those painful experiences then, will be wrath for them.  They will be the foretastes of final and eternal pain.  Or they walk through pleasure…not giving any thanks to God at all and not turning those pleasures into a moment of worship whereby they see in and through those pleasures the beauty of God and cherish Him above those pleasures.  And those pleasures will come back on their head as condemnation in the end.  All things will work for bad for those who do not love God and are not called according to His purpose. And we don’t want to be that way.  I’m sure you don’t.  We want this promise to be true for us, and so we need to…take it and figure out if we qualify.  Is it ours” (2007)?

This is quite the query.  How often do we forget the qualifications of this beloved promise?  I was struck to the heart.  So what does Piper propose?  In this first examination,  he asks: “Do you love God this morning? If you don’t, this promise is not yours” (2007).

Piper begins by explaining that we must examine what it does not mean.   He cites three things that it does not mean to highlight what it does mean.    I pray that if you don’t love God, this essay will make it clear so that you can take steps to embrace him as your only hope and satisfaction.

Point 1.

Love for God does not mean meeting God’s needs.

 While it may seem obvious, I think we can get this confused because that is exactly how we do and ought to love one another.  This love is horizontal, but it cannot be vertical.  “If you try to take that definition of love and move it into your God relationship, you will blaspheme” (Piper, 2007).  He cites one verse to shatter that proposition. I will use the verse preceding as well to clarify the context within the KJV.

Acts 17:24-25 says this:  “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things.”

 ”God is radically different from people. Our love for him is very different than our love for each other. It is never, ever, ever  meeting needs.  You do not meet God’s needs because God has no needs.  He has no deficiencies that we can supply.  He has no defects that we can reverse. He has no needs that we supply.  Therefore…the essence of love to God is always and without exception receiving…Now I said ‘essence’ because I know that we do use the word ‘love’ to cover, not only its essence, but often its fruits, its behaviors.  And so sometimes we think of ourselves as giving praise,  giving honor, giving service, giving obedience.  It’s a very dangerous use of language, not wrong, just dangerous.  Because the essence of loving God is receiving from God…I mean that joy in God is always a receiving of pleasure from the object of our delight” (Piper, 2007).

Point 2.

Love for God is not love for his gifts.

Piper includes: forgiveness of sins, justification, escape from hell, resurrection to a pain-free life. 

“Loving God does not mean being glad that your sins are forgiven.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, being glad that you are imputed righteous.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, gladness that I have escaped from hell.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, gladness that I will be free from disease someday and have an everlasting life of pleasure.  We know that that’s not the essence of loving God because people who don’t love God are glad for all those things.  Nobody wants a guilty conscience and [they are] very happy if you can tell them a way to get rid of it.  Nobody wants to go to hell and suffer forever, and they’re very happy to escape from that.  Whatever means they can use to get out.  Everybody will love the prospect of eternal joy, and everybody would like to be counted righteous when they don’t have to be righteous.  And none of them has to love God” (Piper, 2007).

Piper continues with this piercing illustration:  “If they can convince themselves in their minds that ‘I’m forgiven because of Christ, I’m justified because of Christ, I’ve escaped hell because of Christ,  and I’m going to heaven because of Christ, and frankly, I like television better than Christ.’”

I’m convinced that there are tons in today’s church just like that.  “They’re really happy to be safe, and they have no heart for God.  NONE!” (Piper, 2007)

Point 3.

Love for God is not the things that love prompts you to do.

“The Love of God, the love for God, might prompt you to leave mother and father and lands and houses and declare the name of God among the nations.  But leaving mother, leaving father, leaving houses, leaving lands, declaring the glory of God is not the love [for] God.  The essence of the love [for] God is not the fruit of the love [of] God” (Piper, 2007).

He remembers John 14:15 when Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  Piper explains that he’s heard so many people take that text and make “keeping the commandments the definition of love.  That exactly the opposite of what the text says!” (Piper, 2007)

“‘If you love me,’” Piper explains, speaking as Jesus in this verse, “‘then you will do a certain thing and the doing is not the loving. This is the root; this is the fruit” (2007).

He cites the incident when Jesus explained this to Peter in John 21:15-17.  “‘…Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?’ He saith unto Him, ‘Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.’  He saith unto him, ‘Feed my lambs.’”

Piper asks the question, “Did Jesus say, ‘Well good, that’s all that needs to be said [because] clearly you’re doing everything I command you to do. Because that’s what love is’? He did not say that because that’s not what [love for God] is. He said, ‘If you love me, Peter, feed my sheep’” (Piper, 2007). 

Piper’s interpretation says this, “If you love me, then you will act like it.”  The love is first, the acting-like-it is second.  The second ’flows out of’ or ‘is a result of’ or is ‘the fruit of’ the first.  Acting-like-it is the fruit of loving God.  “The acting is not the essence of the loving” (Piper, 2007).

So what is it?!!!!

“What I’m saying,” Piper continues, “is that ‘love for God’ is the heart’s esteem for God before it produces anything else.  The heart’s esteem for, admiration of, delight in, cherishing of…God…before it produces anything” (Piper, 2007).

“Love for God is not, in its essence, a deliberated choice.  Love for God is not, in its essence, a deed.  It is a reflex of the newborn heart, the called heart, to the beauty of God in Christ.  You don’t decide to taste honey as sweet.  If you have living tastebuds, and you put it on the tongue, it is sweet.  If your taste buds are dead, it isn’t sweet.  And you can rummage around with all kinds of decision and it will stay non-sweet” (Piper, 2007).

 It is the new life which God gives that produces love for God.  It is the reborn heart’s reflex to the sight of God’s glory.  Just as your tastebuds must be alive to taste something for what it is, so you must be called by God, called according to his purpose in order to love Him.

I see the question coming because I asked it.  “Why is this so important?  What’s the big deal, Piper?”

He answers, “I stress this because I don’t want to produce hypocrites…I don’t want to go to my grave [and people say] ‘John Piper helped produce a big church of hypocrites.’  And that’s exactly what we produce, I believe, by equating deeds of love with love [itself].  If the essence of love is the deeds that love does, they can be imitated” (Piper, 2007)

In other words, when love equals deeds of love [love=deeds of love] then anyone can do these “deeds of love,” and they can do them without ever having “loved God.”  It is hypocrisy.  “Imitated love is hypocrisy.  If the deeds of love do not come from this deep wonderful God wrought miraculous reflex of delighting in God for himself, we beget hypocrites,” Piper continues (2007).  “I fear there are many in the church: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox who’ve been taught all their lives ‘do, do, do, do, and God will approve and you’ll be safe.’”

“This text says, ‘You want God to work for you, you want him to work everything together for your good.  Don’t start with doing, start with loving.  Experience something…of him.”

 And so I continue on with my story.  When I first heard this sermon, I was convicted in heart.  But I didn’t know why? Perhaps it was the obvious questions:  “Do I really love God, do I just love him for his gifts,  and do I just love being forgiven?”

Or perhaps it was just this:  “What in the world did Piper just say?!!!”

I can tell you from that moment that I have heard this sermon many times.  I have kept it hidden in my heart, and I have tried to discern it.  I am convinced, as I have slowly listened to it in this tenure (in order to copy it for this essay, oddly enough) that it is, indeed, true.  This morning, Charles Spurgeon reminded me of its truth.  His text was this:

“The Lord is my portion, saith my soul” (Lamentations 3:24).

He wrote these beginning truths.  (For safety reasons, I will only portray a portion. John Piper’s comments have no copyright.  Praise the Lord!)

“It is not “The Lord is partly my portion,” nor “The Lord is in my portion;” but He Himself makes up the sum total of my soul’s inheritance.  Within the circumference of that circle lies all that we possess or desire.  The Lord is my portion.  Not His grace merely, nor His love, nor His covenant, but Jehovah Himself.”

Indeed, God himself is the object of my love if Romans 8:28 should apply to me.

But how do I cultivate this in my life?

I think, perhaps, we must study the very character of God.  His very essence, which while totally infinite, is still very real in my life. God is Holy.  God is Righteous.  God is Gracious.  God is Steadfast.  God is Just.  God is Faithful.  God is Good.

I think one should commit himself to studying and understanding and meditating and knowing who God is.   When he does this, he will grow to love God, himself, more everyday.  We must love God for who He IS.

So I say this:  Know who God is and you will love him more and more.  And there are only two sources which reveal to you who He is.  The two sources are His self-revelations:  His Creation and His Holy Word which both witness to His Son and are enabled by His Spirit.

I think it was Jonathan Edwards who said, explaining the trinity, “Jesus Christ is the expression of God’s love for himself.  The revelation of all that God is [paraphrased].” 

The two revelations  (General and Specific) reveal God Himself because they point to Christ, the Incarnate Word.  At the beginning, the Father spoke, the Son created in obedience to the Father, and the Spirit moved in obedience to the Son. 

Also, Jesus Christ is the reason the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible.  It witnesses to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus Christ is the very “image of God,” as it says in 2 Corinthians 4.  Jesus Christ is the ”brightness of His glory” and the “express image of his perfection” as in Hebrews 1.

We are to know Christ, the only name under heaven whereby men must be saved.  We know him by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  When we know Christ, we know God the Father.  Through all of this:  We Know God, Himself.

Oh, the depth and wisdom of God! Humble yourselves under his mighty Hand.

So then….

How can we love that which we do not know? Know Him.

 It is written on a decal on the back of my car.  “Know Him.”  Just now, I get a glimpse of the glory of its exhortation. What illumination…

Working with you to love Him through knowing Him,

Vince R.

Works Cited

Spurgeon, Charles. Morning and Evening Complete and Unabridged Classic KJV Edition.  Hendrickson: USA, 1991. 642

All Things for Good Part I, Romans 8:28.  By John Piper. Desiring God Radio.  Introd. Bob Allen. Minneapolis, MN. 22 Mar. 2007.