Does God Look More Like Aunt Jemima or Gandalf? (The Shack)

I have been accustomed to think of Aunt Jemima as simply a lady on the bottle of my pancake syrup, but that has changed. The Shack portrays God the Almighty and Eternal as an apron clad, dress wearing, hip shaking, ipod listening, bread kneading, hefty black woman. Since reading The Shack I find it hard to think of pancake syrup the same way again, or at least the figure on the label. Is this portrayal of God or "Papa" a legitimate picture of how He could reveal Himself? Does this image of "Papa" help break down some of our Eurocentric "stupid white male" (phrase from Michael Moore) preconditioning about God? Or is that uneasy hesitancy that some of us feel with the idea of an Aunt Jemima deity a welcome caution?

Let's start the exploration with Mack. He is invited by "Papa" through a note in the mail to come back to the nightmarish scene of his daughter's murder. As he approaches "the shack" it turns into a transformed and glorified log cabin surrounded by a Thomas Kincade type setting. Coming near the door of this miraculously transformed cabin he encounters the completely unexpected...

"Mack decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he
raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly
into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. Instinctively he
jumped back, but he was to slow. With speed that belied her size, she
crossed the distance between them and engulfed him in her arms, lifting him
clear off his feet and spinning him around like a little child. And all the
while she was shouting his name-“Mackenzie Allen Phillips”-with the ardor of
someone seeing a long-lost and deeply-loved relative. She finally put him
back on earth and, with her hands on his shoulders, pushed him back as if to
get a good look at him." (p.82)

In view of the deep pain Mack carries. this is a very welcome and healing scene. The figure he encounters, "Papa," is extremely likable, winsome, and overflowing with love. Mack is intrigued and delighted with the presence of this surprising figure but he still has reservations due to his religious and theological conditioning. Young explains...

"Mack was speechless. In a few seconds this woman had breached
pretty much every social propriety behind which he had so safely entrenched
himself. But something in the way that she looked at him and yelled his name
made him equally delighted to see her too, even though he didn’t have a clue
who she was." (p.83)

Again...

"She picked up the wooden spoon again, dripping with some sort
of batter. 'Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both
genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or
a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and
suggest that you call me Papa is simple to mix metaphors, to help you keep
from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.” She leaned
forward as if to share a secret. “To reveal myself to you as a very large,
white grandfather figure with flowing beard, like Gandalf, would simply
reinforce your religious stereotypes, and this weekend is not about
reinforcing your religious stereotypes.” Mack almost laughed out loud and
wanted to say, “You think? I’m over here barely believing that I’m not stark
raving mad!” Instead, he focused on what she had just said and regained his
composure. He believed, in his head at least, that God the Spirit, neither
male or female, but in spite of that, he was embarrassed to admit to himself
that all his visuals for God were very white and very male." (p.93)

Now that Mack realizes he has been duped into thinking of God as "very
white and very male," Mack begins to throw of the blinders of his religious
training as Papa further explains the theology of God's gender. Asking Her/Him
(Papa) why He/She had always revealed Himself as "Father" in the Bible, here is
Papa's answer...

"Well,” responded Papa, turning away from him and bustling around the
kitchen, “there are many reasons for that and some of them go very deep. Let
me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering
would be much more lacking than mothering. Don’t misunderstand me, both are
needed-but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its
absence."
(p.94)

If I'm reading this correctly, and I think I am, the idea is presented that God could have revealed Himself as "Mother" but chose not to because of all the single parent families without dads, or something like that. Therefore to fill in the social vacuum God revealed Himself as Father. In partial defense of The Shack three truths are implied and accurately reflected in this dialog between Mack and Papa:

1) God is spirit. He does not have gender. (He is "Other" than His creation.)

2) Male and female come equally from the image of God.

3) The Bible does, at times, use feminine qualities when referring to God...

"You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth." Dt 32:18

"From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the
heavens." Job 38:29

"As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of
a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy." Ps 123:2

“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself
back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant." Is
42:14

Here are some other things to balance the above considerations, and why I think The Shack would have been better served to cast a more Gandalf like figure for Papa:

1) There is no place in the Bible at all where God is given a feminine title or name. There are "ungendered," impersonal titles or descriptions of God (e.g., Rock, Fortress, Shield). But there are no feminine terms or pronouns (Mother, Sister, Bride, She, Her) used to describe God. Why is this??? Papa of The Shack informs us that it is in order to compensate for the lack of a father image which is in shorter supply in the world. But is this historically true?

2) Consider that the pagan world believed that the gods were male and female. There were Asherah and Anak and Nut and Isis, Teomat, and the Queen of Heaven, Ademitur, and Artemis. In fact these beings were very sexual and had intimate relations with each other. Consider the added insight of Dennis Prager, the Jewish social commentator...

"The gods of virtually all civilizations engaged in sexual relations.
In the Near East, the Babylonian god Ishtar seduced a man, Gilgamesh, the
Babylonian hero. In Egyptian religion, the god Osiris had sexual relations with
his sister, the goddess Isis, and she conceived the god Horus. In Canaan, El,
the chief god, had sex with Asherah. In Hindu belief, the god Krishna was
sexually active, having had many wives and pursuing Radha; the god Samba, son of Krishna, seduced mortal women and men."

Though William Young appears to me to give a somewhat "politically correct" anti-white male statement, as seen above, in distancing God from "Gandalf," he begs historical and theological accuracy. The biblical portrayal of God as Father was unique in the ancient world and it still is. The God of the Bible reveals Himself as Father to, in part, infinitely distance Himself from the erotic, sexualized, and power hungry deities pagans worshiped in ancient cultures who saw the world being birthed out of various mother goddesses. In contrast, the God of Israel (Yahweh) is seen as masculine and Father so as to hold to the gracious balance of Him being a God who personally and lovingly cares for His created world, but is distinct and infinitely above it. This is a huge social and religious reason why God did not reveal Himself with a female title.

3) But the bigger truth to keep in mind is that God is called Father not mainly to be separate from the pagan deities of Canaanite and Mesopotamian culture, but it reflects His eternal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

"May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of
unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and
mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Rom
15:5-6

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." Eph
1:3

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great
mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead..." 1 Pet 1:30

It is important to keep in mind that Christians have God as their Father through adoption. Jesus is the eternal Son of God by His essential nature. To be more clear, Jesus has always been Son to the Father before creation and throughout eternity. This is an even greater reason why we call God Father. "And a voice came from heaven:

“You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Mark 1:11

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Jn 3:16-17

Okay Anthony, but what about the scriptures you quoted above that give God feminine descriptions? Good question. These descriptions do not imply that we have a license to refer to God as "mother" or "she." Such language is simply a literary device that makes for a vivid description. For example, Paul said to the Thessalonians that he was, "gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children." (1 Th 2:6-7) Now, we wouldn't conclude from this statement that Paul was getting in touch with his feminine side. Hopefully we would not be so sloppy. So, when God is described at points with female qualities, that should not give us a license to attribute to God titles like "Mother" or pronouns like "She."

Unfortunately some evangelical theologians and pastors are doing this, and William Young has added a little strength and motivation to their cause with The Shack. Young indicates through the dialog quoted above that it is just as legitimate to picture God as Aunt Jemima as it is to picture him, as we traditionally do, like Gandalf. Perhaps we shouldn't picture God as either. But if we had to choose, look at this self-revelation God Himself given by Christ in Revelation 1...

"I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I
turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone “like a son of man,”dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace,
and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held
seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was
like the sun shining in all its brilliance." Rev 1:12-16

This looks more like Gandalf the White who resurrected after defeating the demon monster than the hip and shoulder shaking, syrup lady. Maybe our traditional prejudices of how we've traditionally pictured God are more enforced by the revelation of Scripture itself than Eurocentric "stupid white males."

So why all this time and digital images on this topic? Well, ideas have consequences. The further an idea is from where it should be when presented the further the idea can lead us astray is not corrected in time. Pastor Ben Patterson says, "It's a bit like the moonshot. When the rocket is aimed at the moon some 200,000 miles away, it has to be precise. What may be just a millimeter off within the first mile or so of the earth's atmosphere will be a huge miss when out toward the moon. Ideas have this same quality about them. They have their trajectories." Given that the Shack has been highly influential in people's thinking about God, I think there are ideas in the book that need to be reconsidered in light of the straight measuring stick of scripture. The Shack has much to commend. But when it comes to the description used of Papa, I'd prefer Young to have stayed more in boundary lines of biblical revelation, even Lord of the Rings.

The Church Is No Shack

One of the most helpful and, at the same time, disturbing elements about The Shack it its resistance to the the institutional church. The Shack has a decidedly anti-institutional stance with regards to the church. By institutional I mean "organized religion," where you have a committed groups of people who meet on an ongoing basis for "religious" purposes. This will include some form of defined leadership and regular "spiritual" practices & beliefs. (e.g., communion, baptism, teaching, etc.) There is a community of spiritual formation and allegiance, not just the island of individual preferences. I think this, in part makes The Shack very popular, in part, because it goes with the common grain in our society that wants kernel of spirituality while ditching the husk of the church or organized religion. But is this either good or realistic?

Here are some quotes from the early sections of the The Shack which lead me in part to draw this conclusion:

1) Mack is a theologically reflective person. We are told that at one point in his life he went to seminary on Australia..."Whatever happened, in his early twenties he eventually ended up in a seminary in Australia. When Mack had his fill of theology and philosophy he came back to the States, made peace with his mama and sisters, and moved out to Oregon where he met an married Nannette A. Samuelson." (p.9) The point of this observation is that Mack tried seminary (a religious institution to train clergy to fill the institution of the organized church), but he had his "fill." Usually when someone has had their "fill" of something they've had more than they can stomach.

2) The book admits that Mack is "not very religious." "But at the same time, Mack is not very religious. He seems to have a love/hate relationship with Religion, and maybe even with the God that he suspects is brooding, distant, and aloof. Little barbs of sarcasm occasionally spill through the cracks in his reserve like piercing darts dipped in poison from a well deep inside. Although we sometimes both show up on Sundays at the same local pew and pulpit Bible church, you can tell that he is not too comfortable there." (p.10) Religion or church is associated with something that is uncomfortable and shows God as "brooding, distant, and aloof."

3) When Mack inquires to Annie, the "matronly postmaster," about Tony, Mack's postal worker, she throws in this offhanded question....What’s wrong with you, Mack? Still smoking too much dope or do you just do that on Sunday mornings to make it through the church service? At this she started to laugh, as if caught off guard by the brilliance of her own sense of humor. (p.19) It does seem a bit unusual that in a real conversation someone would make that kind of offhanded comment about getting through church unless the author (William Young) had a real intention of making a subtle but very clear point. This is further confirmed as Young draws out Mack's inner reflections with his conversation with Annie...“Now Annie, you know I don’t smoke dope-never did, and don’t ever want to.” Of course Annie knew no such thing, but Mack was taking no chances on how she might remember the conversation in a day or two. Wouldn’t be the first time that her sense of humor morphed into a good story that soon became “fact.” He could see his name being added to the church prayer chain. (p.20)

4) Finally we see that one of Mack's favoritie programs is Bill Moyer's show... A quick glance at the clock told him that Bill Moyer’s show had just started; a favorite program that he tried never to miss. Moyer was one of a handful of people whom Mack would love to meet; a brilliant and outspoken man, able to express intense compassion for both people and truth with unusual clarity. (pp.22-23) Bill Moyers, as a journalist, has reported much on the power of "Myth" without the real need of any doctrines, creeds, that is guarded and taught with instituional or religious accountablilty.

Reflections:

1) As is always the case the instutional church is always in need of reform. This book is a good reminder that we, who are a part of the church, should not become distant or irrelevant to our original mission. The church too often becomes an institution which exists to serve its own puposes on the level of any human club. When this happenes a lot of problems occur. The Shack serves as a very sharp prod to point the church away from irrelevancy and self-service. (Yet do we needs to throw the baby out with...)

2) Without "organized" church the Christian faith will die. Church is not simply Christians who love God. It is an organized community centered with a called eldership, regular practice and discipleship guided with biblical accountaibility. Without the organized church Christianity will die.

3) It is possible to be a Christian without being a part of the organized church. However, it is impossible to be a mature Christian who is fulfilling his/her calling without the organized church. A quarterback can throw the ball without the the team, but he cannot play the game of football. So it is with the Christian. You can be saved and on your way to heaven but without the church you cannot fulfill the purposes for which God has put you here on this earth.

4) Being a part of the church is very challenging. Yet it was meant to be that way because that is what maturing in love requires. We are called to be with people and in ministries that have challenges and diffifulties because we are called to walk out of our comfort zones of self-centeredness and learn the true nature of Christ-like and sacrificial love. This is impossible to do in individual isolation or alone with just a few other people we are comfortable with.

5) Without the organized church the mission of Christ cannot be carried out. When God's purposes are carried out it is always done through the organized church.

In defense of William Young I think it is important to understand the background from which he writes: he was the child of missionaries in West Papua, among the Dani, a technologically stone age tribal people. There he was sexuallyabused. This radically altered his experience and interpretation of the world. Having worked with several people who have been sexually abused I have come to understand that there is often a strong resistance to traditional structures of authority. (Such as religious institutions and their leaders.) This is a "defense mechanism" to protect them from the fear of being abused again by a trusted authority figure. In an interview with World Magazine's Susan Olasky, Young, who is no longer a member of a church, said "(The institutional church) doesn't work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged. . . . If God is a loving God and there's grace in this world and it doesn't work for those of us who didn't get dealt a very good hand in the deck, then why are we doing this? . . . Legalism within Christian or religious circles doesn't work very well for people who are good at it. And I wasn't very good at it."

As Young writes from that lens I think he has a lot of valuable things to tell us. The church must more greatly reflect the love and unbounded joy of God. The church must war against the destructive legalisms that stain the fruit that should come from a Spirit-filled life. And as Young says in another section of the book...I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing...(p.11) May the church be an organized and life-giving body of people to whom healing can come for those who have been broken.