Several months back I started a blog series on a sermon I saw given by Mark Driscoll on the book The Shack, by Paul Young. Mr. Driscoll made 3 basic charges against the book to his congregation: 1) The Shack taught graven image worship (See part 1 of this series), 2) The Shack taught modalism (See part 2) and 3) The Shack teaches goddess worship. It is on this last charge that I want to end this series.
I won’t spend a great deal of time on this as the assertion is so ludicrous as to not really warrant a detailed response. Let’s address the charge with a very simple thing. If you have read the book you know that Mack, the main character is stunned in Chapter 5 when he is met at the door of the shack by an African-American female. Mack grows to love Papa, our black female God, over the course of the book. She appears to him in this way, Papa tells him, because he had had such a terrible relationship with his biological father. There is, in other words, a method to Papa’s “madness”. He wanted to meet Mack in his pain in a way that didn’t make it worse, and Mack responded.
Is Pastor Driscoll, are we so blind to the feminine characteristics of God as to take on the idea that God is a male? Seriously? Let me ask a simple biblical (not theological) question to all or any of you: When God made Eve in his image and likeness, what model did he use if not himself? Should we re-translate the Scripture to say, “In the image of God made he him but NOT HER”?
Whatever will Pastor Driscoll do when he finds out that when Papa and Mack head up the mountain to locate Missy’s broken body, that Papa suddenly appears as a man. Will he accuse Paul Young of making God transgender? The point is that God will meet us where we are in anyway that will help us feel his draw to him.
Let’s take a quick peek at Sarayu, the other “goddess.” Notice the way Mr. Young describes her. She is wispy, almost lighter than air. He writes that Mack has a difficult time even seeing her. So the focus that he puts on the character ISN’T that Sarayu is a woman, but more like the air, a breeze, a breath. If you don’t give the Holy Spirit (Sarayu) some anthropomorphic (human-like) qualities, how do you describe one’s interaction with the wind? Yet the Holy Spirit does definitely interact with us at the relationship level. I think a female-esque image is perfect, I’ll explain.
Let me give you a quick mind picture. If you’ve never seen a Grace Kelly movie before, take the time to watch one. Notice the way she moves across a room. She floats, she glides. It’s as if she is riding on a breeze. Can you honestly name a guy whom you would describe that way? So from an imagery point of view, describing the Holy Spirit in female, Grace Kelly-like terms seems natural.
So what’s left that could possibly be used in any way as goddess worship in the book?
Now let me add something that we as Christians have to take to heart. We have GOT to stop discounting the role of women in the Scripture and in the delivery of the Gospel. This is what we do when we insist that God is male and even sometimes when we insist he is genderless. God being genderless doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any masculine or feminine traits. It is not ungodlike to appreciate the gifts that are held most often by women. Women are the nurturers. They are the relationship builders. They are the healers, not literally, but how many kids go running to daddy when they skin their knee?
Women balance out us men. For myself, when I go on one of my prolific, insightful rants, my wife patiently listens to what I say and then calmly asks, “Are you finished? Good. Now let me tell you the other side.” That’s what I mean: balance. They get that balance from their heavenly Father who made them in His image and likeness.
In the Scripture a woman was judge over Israel. It was a woman (Ruth) who teaches us the point of loyalty and a woman (Esther) who teaches us about sacrifice. It was God’s plan to have a woman bear the incarnate Lord and it was women who first learned about and reported the resurrection of Jesus. Let us not mistake the contributions of women to God’s story with us. Let’s not concern ourselves with human gender issues in our description of God, I’d be willing to bet that God isn’t worried about it at all.
