I have recently been loaned a copy of the Christian bestseller, The Shack. It has been given rave reviews by many many people. Let me begin by saying, "Holy Swedish Chef, what's up with the hype!?"
First off, The Shack falls in the same category as about 99% of Christian literature. By which I mean: absolute suck writing. 100% predictability, yawn-worthy foreshadowing, stereotypical and racist caricatures of people of other ethnicities, dialogue that makes you think the protagonist is a bit too slow, and a complete avoidance of actually answering the questions worth asking (I say this last bit as an atheist familiar with the cat and mouse game of conversations). Honestly, you just can't get a straight answer.
For Christians, I can see how this book gives one the warm and friendly feeling of being with a God that actually cares and bolsters the idea of nurturing and loving relationships. To which I have to ask, "Have you actually read the Bible?" That loving God persona is great if you want to completely cut out about 80% of what God actually did. A few examples: exterminating most of the human race through a flood, killing 40 children who made fun of a prophet's baldness via bear attack, commanding entire tribes of people to destroy other tribes, leading people in circles around the desert for 40 years, and that doesn't even begin to count the punishments for disobeying the 10 commandments... which, most of them happen to be death.
Oh, but that was the Old Testament, people say. God totes isn't like that anymore! He's fluffy and fun and likes to cuddle!!!
Readers of The Shack experience a collective amnesia about the nature and history of God, which presumably allows for them to fall in love with this book and believe it strengthens their relationships with God. God is loving! God loves all his kids! this book proclaims (multiple times). But... what of hell?
William Young half-assedly tries to deal with this by throwing a similar problem to Mack: If you had to pick two of your kids to save and three to lose, who would you pick?
Mack chooses the "right" answer by saying he would sacrifice himself over his kids. God beams. Loves that answer. Exactly! That's why Jesus sacrificed himself...
BUT WAIT!
Did anyone else have a wtf moment? Uhhh... if YOU ARE GOD YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SEND A CERTAIN NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO HELL. You create the rules. You could, for instance, decide that BECAUSE you love all your children, you're going to send them ALL to heaven!!
Young somewhat addresses this in the vaguest way when he mentions how Muslims, Buddhists, etc. can all find their way to God. (This is the source of great contention with many fundies, since it's sort of a UU thing.) But fortunately, Young is vague enough to not explain this passage, and Mack is slow enough to not pursue that train of thought further. So it could mean that people of other faiths can become Christian and go to heaven, or that all spiritual people go to heaven... it's not really clear. Way to dodge THAT bullet, Young!
The other thing that bugged me was the whole "blame the victim" trope that gets dragged out all the time with religious discussions. It starts with two big pieces of BS: A. God is not Evil. B. Evil is inherently the human's fault for not pursuing a relationship with God.
UM, WTF?
If God is the alpha & omega and all that, God is everything, then God happens to be at least partially evil. There's no way around that little math problem. You can't just be everything and not be evil* too.
Even if we accept that premise (wtf, why would we?!), let's examine the Garden of Eden, in which God decides to be a total ass and plop the tree right in the center and say "Don't eat that." Oh yeah, did I forget, he also made humans inherently flawed? And then freaked out when they fucked up even though he knew it was going to happen? One might even say, planned for it to happen? Since, he is, you know, God. Responsible for everything. Designed the entire world and wrote what would happen to everyone and everything?**
This is where the victim-blaming comes in. Even though God made you imperfect, it's still your fault for being imperfect, therefore you need to beg God's forgiveness and hope he doesn't punish you for being imperfect. (Thanks for that, God.)
Young dances around this idea, talking about the relationships, but never once examining the fact that it may not be anyone's fault that evil exists.
The entire book is like that. I can't see how anyone being intellectually honest can really say it answers a damn thing about faith. I guess you need faith to believe it, ha ha ha!!
*Evil in the Christian sense. I don't particularly believe anything is "evil." Bad shit happens. Some people do bad things. REALLY bad things, sometimes. Does that make him/her inherently, 100% bad? No.
**This little bit of theology always throws me for a loop. How can anyone reconcile this concept of "free will" with predestiny? Takes quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
No comments:
Post a Comment