One of the most – if not THE most – spiritually influential books I’ve read is The Shack by Paul Young. While I will refrain from giving away many of the details of the book (as my friends did who referred it to me), I did want to share some of the basic lessons contained within and how they have impacted my life.
One of its central tenants that resonated with me the most is the way God’s love is conveyed throughout the book (or higher power – however you define it). No, it’s not the traditional hell, fire, and brimstone from Southern Baptist days of ole. Nor is it an absent or indifferent God. The story unfolds of a God of pure love – an idea that not many can fully fathom.
Which begs the questions: What if God loved you wholeheartedly and unconditionally? What if He didn’t do things to you but rather led you through circumstances brought on by this physical, broken, messed up world we all live in? How, or would, that make a difference? It would take an awful lot of love on his end, and an awful lot of trust on our end…
“I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”
“Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.”
“You must give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms… choosing to live only in me. To do that, you must know me enough to trust me and learn to rest in my inherent goodness.”
“As you grow in relationship with me, what you do will simply reflect who you really are. …your independence actually destroys [this] relationship your heart longs for.”
“…my life was not meant to be an example to copy… it means your independence is killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside you, so that you can begin to see what our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, and think like we do.”
These statements are so rich and filled with such substance that one could spend hours discussing or pondering them (which I highly recommend). But most importantly, they convey the importance of placing your trust in that higher power – in God – and flowing with it, rather than against it. While salmon do it well, we unfortunately don’t have that same luck when trying to swim against the currents of life. Events usually happen that drive us to our knees – just like in the book – and we’re left at a point where we have to come face to face with who God is, who we are, and how we’re in this together.
Most of us spend a lifetime wondering if God loves us. What if we threw that question in the trash like last week’s tired old casserole? What if instead, we focused on imagining how big the creator of the universe’s capacity for love might be? I think if you look hard enough, you’ll find more than enough peace, acceptance, and guidance to go around.