My Trip to “The Shack”

William P. Young has sold more than a million copies of his novel “The Shack”. It is about a tragedy that strikes a family in Oregon and how the father—a man named Mack—copes with his great loss.

If you want to read the book, do not read this blog.

But then again—I have read many books a second and third and fourth time: children especially like to hear the same stories over and over again. The pleasure of good literature is not diminished simply because we already know the plot.

The Shack is not good literature and it is not good theology and it is not good psychology. Few people will read it more than once and many people—like me—will struggle to read it the first time. I put aside The Thirteen Gun Salute by Patrick O’Brian in order to read this book, but I am eager to get back to a good book.

Mack takes his children on a camping trip and while there his daughter is abducted and murdered. It all happens near an old shack up in the woods by a lake. Mack is a Christian, in a manner of speaking, and he has trouble dealing with this tragedy.

Mack returns to the shack and meets God, who is a black woman. Jesus is there also and the Spirit, who has the name Sarayu. I am sure the narrative explained the meaning of this name but I must have missed that part. It is easy to miss an explanation because most of the text is nothing but God, or Jesus, or Sarayu explaining to Mack the meaning of, well, just about everything. The plot is thin, the characters shallow; it is chapter after chapter of either Jesus, God, or Spirit explaining to Mack what he does not know.

Oddly enough, it is pages and pages of theological “explanation” before Mack ever wonders about his daughter and where she is and how she is. Seems that would be the first thing on my mind.

God, however, is concerned about Mack’s human tendency toward independence. This is the root of all earthly problems, including loneliness, selfishness, hostility, and greed. Surrendering it for a relationship of love and trust is the cure for all human ills.

At the very end, Mack finds the body of his slain daughter, returns to civilization, leads authorities to that site, which leads (we learn in the final two sentences) to the arrest of the criminal and the discovery of many other bodies. And all live happily every after, it seems.

You can read more about it at their web site: http://www.theshackbook.com.

Remember the Alamo

Texans have their famous battle cry but now all Americans have a roll call of emotional memories that surely must leave us with shame and sadness at the way our blessed country has been led from the White House.

Remember Iraq.

At the beginning we were angry about the terrorist attack upon America. But our leaders allowed our rage to morph into a military invasion of a small, rather harmless but oil-rich country. The war was badly conceived and badly managed. It has brought nothing but death, destruction and debt—except to the profiteers who have taken American tax dollars and ended up wealthy.

Remember Katrina.

We knew it was coming but Washington did not do what needed to be done. Few events demonstrate with more clarity and certainty the ineptitude and indifference of the White House to the realities of life in these United States. Again, the response was badly planned and badly managed. It remains an embarrassment to the American people.

Remember Guantanamo.

Never, in the long, illustrious history of the United States, has a President tried so hard to undermine the rule of law and deny basic legal rights to so many people. They sought to detain people without charges, hold them without legal counsel, try them without due process, and convict them without public trial. From beginning to end it was a denial of our pledge of “liberty and justice for all.”

Remember the Economy.

From Enron to Lehman Brothers, the last eight years have brought more economic disaster to the American people than any time in our history save only the Great Depression. Millions are out of a job, millions are out of their homes, and millions have been lost from our bank accounts: and what has our rich, oilman President done? Spend more time on vacation than any President in American history.

The Great Decider has actually been the Great Disappointment, presiding over the most arrogant, corrupt, incompetent, indifferent, secretive, belligerent White House in American history. All of us will have to endure the aftershocks of this administrative earthquake for the rest of our lives.

God help us—find another Alamo to which to send this pathetic excuse of a President.

Empire and Kingdom

Most of us grew up on stories of the empire: Star Wars, Star Trek, Fellowship of the Ring. And now we are living in the empire—the American Empire. This prepares us for the tension between empire and kingdom that is at the heart of the Christian faith.

All of the biblical story is framed by the presence of empire—those multi-national power centers that shape culture, economics, politics, and even religion. Empires wage war and make peace; empires rise and fall, come and go.

Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome—these are the empires whose fortunes create the landscape upon which the narrative of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, and John is enacted.

Think of Abraham, who was told to leave “Ur of the Chaldeans” which is at the center of the Chaldean (or Babylonian) Empire; he settles on the fringe of the empire, in Haran. Later Abraham leaves altogether and moves to Canaan. God wants to do something through his family that he cannot do through the Empire. “I will bless the world through you and your descendents,” God said to Abraham.

Then there is Moses, leading his people—the Hebrews—out of the Egyptian Empire; we call it the Exodus.

David aspired to have his own empire, even though God did not want it. Much of the Hebrew Bible describes the ebb and flow of power and religion in the empire of the Israelites.

Daniel the prophet interprets the famous vision of Nebuchadnezzar: Daniel chapter two. The head of gold is Babylon; the chest of silver is a succeeding empire; the legs of bronze is another, and finally the feet of iron and clay are the last empire before the appearance of the kingdom of God.

Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire and Paul was repeatedly imprisoned. John was exiled to the island of Patmos where he saw the visions that now comprise the last book of the Bible: Revelation. It is all about the great evil empire—Rome—and its persecution of Christians.

All of this offers believers today—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—a helpful way to interpret the American Empire. How does one dwell in the Empire and still live under the rule of God.

Where is Ground Zero?

Today is the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and perhaps, the White House. I celebrated by giving the eulogy at the funeral of a World War II veteran; burial was in the Camp Nelson National Cemetery, not forty feet from where we buried my mother in February. It was a beautiful day high above the Kentucky River.

In New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania others held vigils, memorials, and dedications: as it should be, I think. The United States suffered a mighty blow seven years ago today. It is right and proper that we pause and remember.

Too bad we did not pause longer after the attack seven years ago; instead we rushed to judgment and then to war. Of all the bad things that erupted on the human race that fateful day the worst by far was the resolve on the part of some, no, many, to go to war.

Our national psyche was crushed that day and it is our instinct—mostly animal rather than human—to strike back, or at least to strike out. We looked around for an easy victim to bear the brunt of our anger.

And strike we did: sending armies into the Middle East. We sent Christian armies into the Muslim Middle East; that is the way history will remember it. The President called it a crusade; millions of Muslims did before he made that awful gaffe.

The old crusades—a millennium ago—had a public rhetoric, all about Jesus and Jerusalem, infidels and inspiration, even a bit about the end of the world. But there was also talk of trade and markets and money to be made.

Just like today with our talk of democracy stretching a thin skin of nobility on our uncontrollable lust for oil.

The terrorist attack on the citadels of the Empire was not about God—“God is Great,” they announced as they pointed the planes into the high rise windows—and our attack on the sands of Mesopotamia was not about democracy—“Operation Enduring Freedom,” they wrote as they plotted the downfall of a petty tyrant.

\Thousands have been killed; hundreds of thousands maimed and busted for life; millions displaced; cities destroyed, museums looted, and roads abolished—to say nothing of the trillion-dollar debt that we posted to the account of our nation, making it more difficult to attend to the general welfare.

In a way, the terrorist succeeded: pushing us off course, flushing out our baser moods, and taunting us toward ugly actions that can neither atone for our vices nor attest to our virtues.

It has been seven years of sin, sorrow, and suffering. To remember it all is deep sadness.

dwightamoody@gmail.com

I Am A Community Organizer

I am a community organizer.

I know it doesn’t sound like such a great job and it doesn’t pay too much. It’s not like announcing you are a lawyer, or a principal, or a surgeon. People in my line of work rarely get appointed to boards or elected to council or nominated for office. But I like it and hope to stay at it for a few more years.

What do I do, you ask?

Last week, I help organize the lunch that fed a family in grief. Their father had died and because most of them were from out of town, we organized a meal and gave them a large, clean room in which to meet.

Sunday night I organized a book club—or at least we had a book-reading and book-signing. We held it in a neighborhood eatery. It wasn’t a fancy place but fifty people came and most of us bought something to eat or drink. The folks bought 25 books from the author and that was good, too. I like helping authors.

Somebody presented me yesterday with an idea. “I want to do something to help adult, mentally-challenged people. I have a 22-year old son who lives in an adult care facility, but he is bored.” I liked his idea and immediately began thinking of what we could do to help this population. “Stop by my office,” I said, “and I will help you get it started.”

That’s what community organizers do, you know—help people get things started to help other people.

Last year a man in our group organized a food service. It is run by a man and his wife in Georgia. They are community organizers also. They buy food at wholesale prices and truck it to community centers all over the country. I run one of these community centers and on the fourth Saturday of every month the food comes in, volunteers from our neighborhood gather to unload it and distribute it to families who have placed an order and paid the costs. Last month we fed almost 500 families.

I do other things as well: a good bit of teaching, tonight an hour of listening to a troubled teen-ager, next week gathering up folks for a community hay ride, and—right now, writing this blog.

But mostly, I am a community organizer. My picture is not in the paper, like the mayor or the basketball coach. But what I do is important; it makes a difference; it contributes to a more humane, more pleasant environment. I like it. It is a calling, a vocation.

People call me reverend and out on the board in front of the church my title is Pastor. But mostly, I am a community organizer.

P.S. Somebody reminded me: Jesus was a community organizer while Pontius Pilate was a governor.

dwightamoody@gmail.com