The Shack

What an overwhelmingly beautiful piece or art. It made me weep in several segments. I wish the gods represented in the film were real and then I would like them and be on board with them every time. I was raised in a Baptist Church and went religiously (ha ha) up until I was in my 50s. I have also been in the world and was a rougher than a cob Air Force Officer for 22 and a half years and then a civilian contractor to the air force another 18 and a half. I am a whiskey drinker and cigar smoker. For 20 years, at night, I was a college, then University History Professor and one evening I stopped in lecture and wondered if I believed what I was telling my students or did I believe what I heard on Sunday mornings. I had always thought that it was all reconcilable and it may be meaning that 4.5 Billion years ago god or the gods said let there be light and then later said let their be evolution. If he or she or they or it is really god then they do their own thing. This movie is largely from the Christian perspective and I have always thought that it really was the greatest story ever told. I have wrestled with religion for the last 15 years and am convinced that if you are happy with what you believe then just leave it alone. Study will only generate questions that cannot be answered. The newest crazy thing are the Young Earthers who want people to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. Which makes sense because humans have been only been writing a record for about 10,000 years and having and having and been saving a record and evidence of cultures. I am not an atheist but I dont think anyone knows and maybe we are not supposed to know. It would be very cool to have a or many supernatural entities that care about us and look after us to some extent. In a graduate level history class Charles Shows told us a Confucius saying that works for me: He who says he knows, knows not, because if he really knew then he would understand how much that we really dont know. Good show but if you are all about Christianity and want it to be like it is in Sunday School since you were a child you may be pissed off but if you have a college education it is probably well worth your time. May the Force be with you. Chuck

Loved it! Every single moment. Heart wrenching. Soulful. Everyone should watch this video.

I was given the book by a friend who meant to comfort me after my sons tragic death. It was a remarkable book, but unfortunately not in the way she meant. I spent some 35 years in evangelical Christian churches, mostly full of very nice people. Not thoughtful people, but nice. Since I didnt grow up in a church, I kept noticing a difference between what my fellow churchgoers said about Gods and his trinity-partners Jesus and the Holy Spirits natures and what the Bible actually said about them. This book, and movie, finally brought it out in the open. It was an ah-ha moment that pushed me away from the church entirely. These characteristics are what American Christians would *like* their deity to be like. Its an ideal depiction of justness combined with mercy in the exact proportions that only an all-knowing and all-loving God could provide. But unfortunately, if one reads the Bible without the influence of the typical interpretations and slants given to the narratives, that is not the God of the Bible. *That* God is not merciful, but vengeful. Not just, but capricious. Not loving, but hating all but a small group of the worlds people. Not logical, but amazingly bloodthirsty. God isnt even omniscient enough to recognize individuals when he wrestles with them. The God of the average white evangelical church in America is not recognizable as the one in the Bible, which is why most of the time Christians ignore the Old Testament and its violence and incomprehensible cruelty. For the amount of time I spent reading the Bible, going to Bible Study, tithing (and more) to the church, Im sorry that I didnt read and see this sooner, as it may have given me the insight to know that wishing a God into existence is not the same as having a God who actually has these good characteristics.

You have GOT to see this!!!

Touching and intelligent. Very well done and very much needed!!

Sometimes we all need a lift up right? Try this you probably need to watch it from time to time.

This was based upon a novel written in pain and hope concerning the problem of evil and the need to maintain a relationship with God. It is Protestant--with the rather vague, confused theology--but it hit the larger issues quite well (which is also normal). It portrayed Jesus as stating that he is not religious and not Christian: but if you even begin to ask who Jesus is...sorry but thats religion and thats Christian...larger than we can imagine for sure, but we cannot consign Christianity to mere vagueness. The second lack of clarity concerned that people really can go to hell according to Christ Himself. The film was not explicitly universalist, but it also was not explicit that serious criminals should be arrested and need to repent before their deaths.

I absolutely love this movie and how it shows that God pursues us!

The Shack is a movie based on the book by author William P. Young. Young, according to an interview, wanted to write a story that expressed the gospel, specifically how God may see and want to interact with the peak of His creation (mankind), in a novel contemporary way. For my money I think that Young succeeded in doing so and though I havent read the novel it seems to me that the movie, an especially engaging account of a man caught in a nexus of personal pain, succeeds in capturing and delivering the same message about God. It is an account of salvation of a man entering into a real relationship with the trustworthy Creator of universe and discovering as he is brought into the relationship of the personality, desire, and interactivity of God who allows the man the freedom (and the consequences that go with it) of his choice to participate and to know and to interact with God; in short, to choose or reject God. People who would shy away from such an obviously Christian movie should know two things about the film: 1) the movie by way of how it presents God gives the viewer an obvious choice to believe the main character, Mackenzie, or to dismiss his accounts and (2) this is a drama that deals with painful and heartbreaking events that are not clean nor cleanly resolved; it doesnt present life, even one where the main character makes a choice to walk through it with God, as being wrapped up all nice and tidy in the end like some people think of the biblical Job story. Far from this, Macs life though it is going much better by the end of the story, is still one where he has had to live and move through incalculable pain and makes choices to continually forgive in the aftereffects of that pain. So the story parallels many peoples life experiences as they are, not in fairy tale fashion. That last bit is important because the clear-eyed view of the story and what it relates about God (certainly taken from the biblical characteristics of the trinity but expressed through a very human view--also certainly open to scrutiny and rebuke but being overly literal about this story will also being missing its many points) makes it an even more compelling case about God. It treats God seriously, as a personal entity, and offers some not often pronounced insights into His character. Many people (myself included) will be or were surprised by the presentation; some will go away offended but I might enquire why? God, in His agency, is depicted in trinitarian fashion and just as Jesus was Gods fullest represenation of God to humankind as clearly exhibited in the gospel accounts and through His own words so too does The Shack express God and His character to a mere man.

A tough hard to explain and sensitive to discuss has been eloquently handled.