Dumpster-Dancer

An acquaintance escaping the shackles of a Bible thumping background asked my opinion of one of her favorite books, The Shack, by Wm. Paul Young.

“The Shack” is a the story of a Fundamentalist Protestant who meets the Holy Trinity in person and learns from Her/Them that many of his preconceptions about the nature of divinity were flawed.

Effectively the book is a deconstruction / destruction of some Protestant cultural beliefs about God and Institutional Church. My acquaintance, coming from that theologically rigid place, rightly feels liberated by the book's message of God's infinite love and forgiveness.

Hopefully I bring a different perspective. As a young adult my dad was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, one of the most ferociously Bible thumping Protestant denominations. During his college education, he reasonably observed that the Brethren are . . . well . . . a bunch of superstitious, rigid, ignorant, nut jobs. Dad concluded that God was a figment of Man's imagination and was formed in the image of Man.

Dad never looked back. I was born shortly thereafter and was raised in a rational, Atheist, Power of Positive Thinking, Richest Man in Babylon, Greed IS GOOD!, household. We prospered, financially, educationally, and philosophically. Dad knew his Bible backward and forward and delighted in using scripture to demolish the faith of believers. He probably converted more Christians to Atheism than any one man since Stalin.

I witnessed this primarily during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s when many of America's cultural institutions were being questioned. Even though he was an avowed Capitalist, Dad hung out a lot with the hippies of that day. I'm going to use a similar dichotomy, greed, to try to illustrate my primary disappointment with The Shack and the philosophy that it speaks for.

This is a hard thing to explain. For decades now I've tried, and it never comes out quite right, so please bear with me.

Dad's a hypocrite. By that, I mean that Dad renounced God and the Church(es) with his words . . . but not with his actions or his assumptions.

While claiming Atheism and Rationalism, he lived the most exquisitely, perfect and Christian of lives. He was generous to the poor, loved everyone as his neighbor, honored his Mother, never adultered, never stole, never lied, never coveted, lived in moderation, stayed married and doted on that most difficult women, raised 4 kids well, and was never greedy.

Let's looks just at that last one. He is a huge advocate of the “Greed IS Good” business philosophy . . . but he does not practice it. He's fair to everyone.

So what's going on? Dad doesn't even realize the cultural influence organized religion has had on him. Dad treats people in a Christian way because he thinks that is just his nature and is common sense. He assumes that since he knows right from wrong and wants to be a good and decent man, that everyone else is the same. What he fails to see is that his very notion of right / wrong, good / bad, comes from our Christian cultural tradition. He's being fair to everyone even as those outside our Christian cultural tradition are screwing over customers, employees and the nation in pursuit of absurd hordes of wealth.

Take away the Bible; take away God; take away institutional religion; take away religious tradition: and how could any reasonable human being know whether greed is good or not?

We are inherently wired to accumulate stuff we want. Individually that might seem like a good thing. Look out for number one! However, to live together well, we need a moderating influence. We need something to remind us that it's just as important to look out for our neighbor as for ourselves. Institutional religion provides that for society.

So, I'm happy that my acquaintance used The Shack to help herself break free of the most rigid of religious/cultural bonds. It's wonderful to see her think freely and not fear the prudes and zealots who cluster in the sad little churches that are all that remain of the once mighty institutions of God in our land.

At the same time, she would have nothing to break free of had she not first been trained in the basics. As we mature, we can more wisely discern between fear based dogma (or cultural pressure) and the Truth. Greed is NOT good. I will happily go to an ignorant, dogmatic, annoying church every Sunday for the rest of my life so long as it is trying to remind people that Greed is NOT good and that we should love one another and forgive.

I listened as my dad rationally, and reasonably demolished the faith of Sasha and Paul, parents of my best friends Bridgette and Cookie. I was there as my Dad introduced them to the Hippie crowd. We kids played in the mud during the crazy drug parties of the 1970s. (Of course, my parents never did the drugs . . . or not much). But Sasha and Sage did. After being converted to Atheism by my Dad, they threw out the whole set of “common sense” rules that my dad kept. They adultered, divorced, drank, and spiraled down. My best friend became a heroin addict as a teen, then bore one deformed and several addicted babies, and last I heard, remains a mess these many decades later.

I wish Sasha and Sage had stayed in church and stayed married.

My dad thought he was doing good spreading the voice of reason and fact. He thought rational people would always want to do good. He thought we inherently know right from wrong.

He was wrong.

The Shack is a wonderful book, and there's a place for it, but I hope that it does not wreak inadvertent destruction like my dad did. Sometimes ancient wisdom is . . . wise. We've worshiped in churches millenia. There's probably a reason for that.