I saw the
movie The Shack and I very much enjoyed it. (I had read the book a few years back as well.) While we can certainly quibble
over the nuances of the theology presented (and such discussion has its place),
I also think getting bogged down too much in that kind of discussion might be
missing the point. This movie provides plenty of opportunities to have a
conversation about God—and to me, that’s a good thing! In hopes of fostering such a conversation, I share a few things that struck me as I watched the movie and
later thought about it. WARNING: There are some plot spoilers below,
so read at your own risk.
Mack arrives
at “the Shack” still “stuck” in his Great Sadness, unable to let go of
the pain and anger over his daughter Missy’s abduction and death. Mack feels
angry at God for letting this tragedy happen; he also feels guilty that he
wasn't there to protect his little girl when she needed him most. His
feelings are quite understandable. Having
lost a daughter myself (albeit under quite different circumstances), I felt a
certain solidarity with Mack. My guess
is most people are sympathetic with Mack’s point of view.
Early in the
movie, we learn that Mack also carries an even deeper pain—a Greater Sadness
if you will—around his relationship with his father. As often happens in our lives, a “current
tragedy” can open up the wounds of the past. His father was an alcoholic and abusive to his
family. Once during a church altar call,
young Mack dared to reveal his father’s “sin” to the pastor. His father, whom we have no reason to think
was not a well-respected member of his church—perhaps even a leader—responded
by brutally beating his son, all the while quoting scripture to the boy, as if
to remind him that he was only getting what his “sinful” actions deserved.
How could this experience he endured as a
child not influence grown-up Mack’s view of God? Is it possible he thinks on some level
that he lost his daughter as a form of punishment? You have to wonder if, even just a little bit,
Mack thinks Missy died because: “I deserved
it”.
It’s no wonder then, that when Mack first
meets Papa (the God character) he is
skeptical at best. When Mack asks why God chose a black woman avatar, Papa replies, “I figured the last thing you needed right
now was a father.” Mack becomes caught up in the love of the Trinity, however,
and he begins to soften. I love how The Shack portrays the
interplay of the Trinity: Papa, Jesus,
and Sarayu (the Spirit character,
whose name means “breath” or “wind” or “holy river” in Hindu). The scene with Mack eating dinner
with the three members of the Trinity portrays the "easiness" of the
relational flow between these entities—with Mack “in the middle” of the
conversation. It is a beautiful metaphor for the communion
with God for which every human being was created.
We were designed to dance with the Trinity,
to walk with them, to talk with them, to laugh with them, to be caught up in the
triangle of Trinitarian love—but God doesn't force anyone to join the dance. In one
scene, Papa
and Sarayu dance together in the house as Mack watches them from outside
through a window. Later, after some tough conversation
with Papa, Sarayu gives Mack his car keys; he is free to go. While he is tempted to leave, in
the end he chooses to stay. Like Mack, we too can choose—and from the
very beginning, human beings have chosen—to turn away from God at any time. We can and do choose to worship
other gods, take over the judge's seat from God, and even decide we want no
part of God—often because, like Mack, we've misunderstood God's true nature.
Our Communion Liturgy says that, "When we
turned away and our love failed [God’s] love remained steadfast". In other
words, God never gives up on us.
God always finds creative ways to lure us back, calling us home in a variety of ways and through whatever form is most
effective to get out attention.
Papa
repeatedly tells Mack she is "especially fond of him", but she later
tells him she is also “especially fond” of the man who killed his daughter. Mack struggles with a question we all wrestle with at times: How can a God that loves me also love someone
that hurt me so badly?
During
his encounter with a mysterious fourth character named Sophia (which is the Greek word for “wisdom[1]”), Mack learns that the key to
resolving both his Great Sadness—and
his Greater Sadness—lies in learning to “let go” and let God alone be
the judge. Toward the end of the movie, Mack asks Papa, "Is there anyone
you aren’t especially fond of?" To which she replies,
"No.". The point is, God loves all—period. God's love is not contingent on
anything we do or don't do. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do good
works, nor that there are not consequences for poor choices (sin), but we
should always remember that our works
don't earn God’s love.
Love isn’t
just what God does; love is what God is—see 1 John 4:8. God was love at the beginning;
God is love now; God will be love into eternity. In the end, love—not sin—has the last word.
In fact, God
loved us so much than when it became clear that there were significant
roadblocks preventing us from turning to God, God chose to take on human form
and come to us that we might have a chance to experience God in a "more
familiar" form—see John 3:16. Christians believe Jesus was fully
divine—he was God with us in every way—but he was also fully
human. That means he experienced what it is to be
human in every way. God literally took up residence in a human body
and lived a human life. Jesus was born, he grew up, he had
relationships, he experienced the full range of human emotions and the
struggles that we experience, and then he died. Not just because he died, but
because he died precisely the way he did—a violent and public execution at the
hands of the Romans—Jesus is somehow able to draw the sins of the whole world
out of the darkness, expose them, and take them upon his body—see Colossians
2:14-15. He was crucified and laid to rest—along with
the world’s sin.
Make no
mistake, though, those who witness Jesus’ death on that dark Friday afternoon
view it as a tragedy. They do not realize, yet, what will happen on
Sunday morning. They have invested themselves in following
Jesus for several years, and pinned their hopes and dreams in his being who he
claimed to be. All that hope and optimism appears lost on
Good Friday. For three days, it seems that even God
couldn't overcome the world's darkness. But then, the “impossible”
happens… God moves as only God can to
bring goodness out of tragedy—life out of death. Three days later, Jesus rises
from the dead, showing that nothing—not even death—can separate us from
God's love—see Romans 8:38.
If God overcame the ultimate tragedy—the Ultimate
Mess if you will—what does it say about what God can do with our personal tragedies
and messes—the sin, the hardships, the suffering that inevitably come into our
lives?
I think of
this chorus states it well:
We pour out
our miseries.
God just
hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are.
The honest
cries of breaking hearts.
Better than
a hallelujah, sometimes.
—Amy Grant, "Better than a Hallelujah"
Beautiful the mess we are. In The Shack, there is a
scene were Mack and Sarayu discuss this very subject. The conversation happens in a
garden as they do some work together. When Mack first sees the garden,
he thinks it is a mess—although he also notes its wild, untamed beauty. Mack and Sarayu clear a section “overgrown”
with beautiful wildflowers. Mack didn't really understand why they were
doing it at the time. To him, it seems wasteful
to destroy so many beautiful flowers to make space for “something new”. From his limited perspective, he
couldn't see the "big picture" the way the Trinity could. (We the movie
watchers get a “view from above” at one point to bring this point home.) The wild garden was a
metaphor for Mack’s life: wild, messy—in process. As Papa had said to him
earlier, "When all we see is our pain, we lose sight of God." He would later lay his
beautiful daughter to rest in the space that he and Sarayu had labored to
create together, in a coffin Jesus had been exquisitely crafting in his
workshop behind closed doors throughout the film.
The scene
where Mack literally takes the coffin and lays Missy to rest resonated deeply with
me because I’ve been in a similar situation.
When we buried our daughter Hope on May 2, 2008, I was the one who carried
her tiny casket from the hearse and placed it on the altar during her funeral. While the details of Mack’s and my experiences
were quite different, they were both moments that symbolized a father “letting
go”, relinquishing their beloved daughter over to the care of the Trinity,
releasing them from our arms to God’s. I
know full-well how heart-wrenching that is to do because I’ve done it—but,
looking back nearly nine years later now, I also know how necessary it is to
our healing and wholeness.
Out of Missy’s “remains” came new life;
watered by Mack’s tears, which Sarayu had collected earlier, flowers and a
beautiful tree spring up from the “roots” of tragedy. What a beautiful Lenten image: New life rises
from the “ashes” of a “broken” life, reminding us that, “after the last tear
falls, there is love.”[2]
Beautiful the mess I am.
Okay, so a movie is great, but
what about the man in the mirror? How does this apply to me? I
confess I sometimes find it easier to believe that God loves the world in
general than to believe he loves me—Alan—specifically. I feel so “messed up” some days. I
think: How can God love a mess like me? When that happens, I'm usually
pretty self-absorbed and less likely to notice the world around me—much less
notice God's Presence in my life. (During the movie, Mack was so self-absorbed
in his own pain that he not only failed to see God, but also failed to notice
that his older daughter Kate felt her own guilt over Missy’s death that was
causing her to be withdrawn and depressed.) To quote another song, "in
the middle of my little mess I forget how big I'm blessed."[3]
I have to remind
myself that God sees beauty in “my little mess”, and that “my mess” is
precisely "the stuff" God uses to form me into the person I was
created to be.
When we start catching a glimpse of that larger Perspective that God sees
all the time, we begin to realize that nothing we do in this life happens apart
from God. Every little mundane and
ordinary thing we do in this life is permeated with the Presence of God. God is in it all: the good, the bad, the ugly. What we have to do is train our senses to become
more continually aware of God’s presence in the wild, messy, in-process—and
beautiful—world in which we all live, move, and have our being.
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