Iconoclasm
The Shack by William Young People loved The Shack because it replaced the God of the Bible (which deep down they possibly didn’t feel comfortable with, because His ways are beyond our understanding and bad things happen, and it upsets our sunshine version of Christianity) and gave them a God who made them feel good, who took the God of the Bible and said, “That’s not really God, this is what God is like…” and gave them a diluted, false version of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and a dose of Sophia, Greek goddess of wisdom.
I was sure that anyone with even a modicum of discernment would throw the book in the trash. I had underestimated how wide the door of deception had opened. I lost friends who were pastors who were furious at me for questioning the book. One pastor railed at me, “I haven’t had a relationship with God for years, but now I have my ‘Papa’ back! You can’t take that from me!” Nothing jarred me more than seeing grown men of God just abandoning clear truth because something tugged their heart, justifying the scriptural butchering by saying, “It’s just fiction, it’s not the Bible!” I confronted someone on this the other night. “What about the satanic Necronomicon. Can I read it? It’s just fiction. Can I read pornography? It’s just fiction.” They thought that a bit extreme. Of course it was. - Gregory Reid |
While we are on the subject of theology, it is note worthy that the God portrayed in Young’s novel “does not need to punish people for sin” (120). Thus the traditional view of the Deity as Judge is dispensed with because “sin is its own punishment.” It appears that history’s wisest man, Solomon, must have been in error then, when he recorded in Ecclesiastes that he had seen “righteous men perishing in their righteousness and wicked men living long in their wickedness” (Ecclesiastes 7:15). He had also observed “righteous men getting what the wicked deserve, and wicked men getting what the righteous deserve” (Ecclesiastes 8:14). Most would agree, I think, that Solomon’s observations are far more in keeping with how the world actually works than Young’s attempts to “airbrush” the concepts of sin an devil. -William P Young; Christian Scholars Revue
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C - Past Witness Files
john calvin
Sept 2, 2022: Michael AG Haykin: Desiring God: A Meal for the Journey
John Calvin (1509–1564), who stands at the fountainhead of the tradition of which Staveley was a part, was quite content to leave it as a mystery as to how the emblems of bread and wine are employed by the Holy Spirit to make Christ present at the celebration of his Supper. And roughly down until the opening of the nineteenth century, anglophone evangelicals followed in his stead, treasuring the presence of Christ at the Table without feeling pressured to explain exactly how this worked.
John Calvin (1509–1564), who stands at the fountainhead of the tradition of which Staveley was a part, was quite content to leave it as a mystery as to how the emblems of bread and wine are employed by the Holy Spirit to make Christ present at the celebration of his Supper. And roughly down until the opening of the nineteenth century, anglophone evangelicals followed in his stead, treasuring the presence of Christ at the Table without feeling pressured to explain exactly how this worked.