A PEEK INTO THE SHACK

"As he [Mack] tried to establish some inner balance, the anger that he thought had so recently died inside him began to emerge. No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door. 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." The Shack, William P. Jacobs, p. 82

Question. Would fewer people get stuck at this point in the book, if Papa would have appeared as a strong, older gentleman? Perhaps, some would have been less offended, if Mack would have opened the door to see "the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up..." (Isa. 6:1). The visions of God recorded in the Bible depicted God in a form appropriate to the situation. It was in the year that King Uzziah died that Isaiah had this vision. The people of God needed to be reminded that the True King of Israel was still on His throne.

I think Young is saying more about the dangers of fashioning any mental image of God and calling that image God, than he is making a case that God is an African American mother.

On page 93, speaking as Papa, Young writes, "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 woman, it's because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning."

I'm reminded of this passage from A.W. Tozer's, The Knowledge of the Holy--

"When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand." (p.12)

I think the thoughts expressed by Tozer are comparable to the words puts in Papa's mouth.

"...Mackenzie, I am what some would say 'holy, and wholly other than you.' The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think." (p. 98)