Shack Attack

Well, another post written from the road that I will post once we have internet access. Right now Paul and I are on the other end of the mega road trip, which (knock on wood) has been a great success this far. We are currently making our way through our homeland of Nebraska. It is a good thing we both have a soft spot in our hearts for the Nebraska prairie, because the western portion of the state is eye-pokingly flat and boring. Ah, The Good Life.

We finished book number three, The Shack, by William P. Young, earlier today. It was phenomenal, rich with thought provoking and challenging analogies all within a compelling narrative. I do suggest that you read it if you have the time. It is difficult to explain and I’m still trying to sort it all out myself, but in the story the main character has a sort of “meeting” with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (and, point of awesomeness, God presents as a woman). The conversations in the book are currently tripping up all of those neuro pathways of my mind.

A handful of the interactions really resonated with my understanding of the world, and of course we cling on to those places where we find such resounding connection. In the first, Jesus is talking to the main character about institutions, and how God didn’t create institutions or any similar counterparts to institutions, i.e. politics or economics. The Jesus character stresses the importance of not placing our faith in such institutions, because since they are not the creation of God, they are not the place to seek one’s understanding of the world. However, he stresses that God created relationships, and even within institutions what we really need to focus on is the way we relate to ourselves and to those around us. As a good example, the Jesus character reminds the main character not to be distracted by dysfunction or corruption in churches, reminding him that God created the relationships that compose the church, and our focus should be on the heart of the relationships, versus the byproducts of the institution formed by those relationships. Yes yes yes!

The second nugget to share came from a conversation between the main character and the “God” character, where he is sharing his own difficulty in coming to terms with his emotions. The “God” character gives a drop down chart that could be in a guide for good therapy, stating: our paradigms power our perceptions, and our perceptions power our emotions. Your emotions are thus your response to your perceptions. Thus, false perceptions breed false emotional responses. But rather than analyzing and second guessing every emotion, we need to go to the root of the experience and check our perceptions and the truthfulness of our paradigms. So, this is all good and I do believe it is true, but my own (glaring) question remains – how can people objectively check their paradigms when they too are woven into their consequent perceptions and emotions? If you aren’t challenged to question your dominant paradigms from some sort of removed perspective, how will you ever be able to remove those schemas from your perceptions of the world? Ahhhh, the perfect marriage of therapy and faith, a delicious puzzle to unravel.

Let me know if you figure it out. And read (or listen to!) The Shack.