It was written as a Christmas gift to his children - 15 photocopies in all. But so many people kept wanting to buy a copy, that The Shack has now reached Number 1 on the New York Times Bestsellers List. The book has created its share of controversy in the Christian world but is the author an out-of-the box Christian thinker or a heretic? Find out as Charles Morris interviews the man who wrote the novel.

June 17, 2008

The Shack, Part 2 w/William P. Young

Let’s say you had a tough life. Let’s say you were abused as a young child by the tribe in New Guinea where you’re parents went as missionaries then you were packed off to a missionary boarding school at the age of 6 and again you were abused. Let’s say you grow up and you marry and you have 6 children. You know hardship, you watch as your home in Oregon is auctioned off because you can’t pay the mortgage. You’re working three jobs to make ends meet. Then you have an affair and that’s where the shack of your life falls apart. But that’s what God used to save a life and a marriage. He wrote a novel to his children about his life and faith and other people kept wanting copies of “The Shack”. It’s now number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. I’m Charles Morris and welcome to Haven Today, telling the great story that’s all about Jesus. This is the second part of a program called “The Shack” with William P. Young. In the next few minutes you will hear more of the story of his life and the story of the book as Paul joins me from Victoria, British Columbia. On our homepage, haventoday.org, you can hear yesterday’s program if you missed it and by pressing the “Listen” button you can easily pass it on to a friend. You can also get a copy of the book as our thank you for your financial support. You can also call us after the program at 1-800-654-2836. Now I need to say, we are not endorsing, we are not bashing but we are engaging “The Shack” because even with its pros and cons it speaks in one way or another to all of us. A little later you’ll hear from theologian Dr. John Stackhouse about those positives and negatives in this work of fiction. And John will be with us tomorrow as we delve more into the biblical-ness – or lack thereof – found in the novel. And before the week is over, we‘ll look more deeply into the doctrine of the Trinity which is one of the points of controversy in the book called “the Shack”. So stay with us in these next few minutes. Nicole Nordeman opens Haven Today with a song for all of us who have known pain, some of us even right now, a song written by Stewart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love”.

Song: How Deep the Father’s Love
Performed by: Nicole Nordeman

Welcome back again to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris and we’re coming to you from Victoria, British Columbia. That’s where I happened to meet up with William Paul Young. I’m going to call him Paul because that’s what all his friends know him by. Paul thanks for coming back today.
PY: I’m glad to be back!
CM: And you are the author, of course, of “The Shack” which is hte number one book on the New York Times bestseller list. You are my brother in Christ and we’re going to talk just a little bit more about not just your book, but what other people are saying about your book. You’ve come under some criticism too from some people who think that you set out to write a systematic theology in a novel and you’ve got it all wrong. And you told us yesterday that was never your intent, was it?
PY: No, it never was. And you know, criticism and push-back and all those things, it actually is a lot less than I thought it might be. Overall, the emails I get and the responses I get are overwhelmingly positive. And yeah, there’s been some push-back but you know, that’s not a bad thing. You know, even people come to scripture – which my book is not! – but people come to scripture,
CM: You quote scripture though, and you allude to scripture all the time in your book.
PY: Well, see here’s the thing. And it’s amazing because people don’t see it because we’ve embedded it, you know, inside conversations and so it’s not as obvious. And Wayne Jacobson and Bobby Downs, and Brand Cummings, these guys helped me do that so that it just lost the “religious” kind of edge to it which the original manuscript had and the book wouldn’t be anywhere near as beautiful without their collaboration in this process. But yeah, there’s push-back. People come to it with what they have. And that’s not a bad thing. It raises conversations. You know, I feel very little ownership in this. And since the book did everything that I wanted it to when I gave it to my children, after that this is all a God thing as far as I’m concerned. And so, it’s not that I won’t talk about it, of course I will and I’ll talk about different issues people have and all of that and try to build bridges as much as I can. You know, I don’t want this to now be about me. It’s still about him.
CM: Do you feel like maybe you, in writing the book are understanding God in a different way maybe than you had before?
PY: There’s no question, and it’s not in writing the book it’s more a manifestation of the process, because we’re all in the process.
CM: it’s what was going on in your life, yes.
PY: Yeah, yeah. And at some point you either hold on to things that don’t work or you begin to change and I grew up inside and it’s not just because of the theological environment that I was in but it worked for me in the sense that it was about performance because that’s the persona that I grabbed onto. I was the, in the story of the Prodigal Son, I was the brother that was upstairs just, you know, ticked off that
Cm: Yes, yes.
PY: You know, leniency was being allowed for anybody else.
CM: right.
PY: And I felt that you know, here I am slaving away at trying to be righteous, and you know it’s not working but –
Cm: But you’re still working hard at it.
PY: I’m working hard at it and trying to convince as many people as possible and maybe even God that I’m doing OK, worthy enough at least, for a smile once in a while. And the paradigm of performance, legalistic, trying to produce acceptance in God by my work, it just never changed me. It didn’t touch any of the damage. All it did was teach me to hide the fact that I wasn’t good at it. And that’s the paradigm that I lived with. When everything blew apart I lost my ability to hold onto that persona and I lost any attempt at being righteous was gone. It was just all gone. I had nothing left. And it was then that I began more and more to understand the indwelling presence of Christ, who climbs into the middle of all my stuff and in the middle of that, without shame, begins to transform me from the inside. And that changed me. The performance stuff never touched it. This changed me.
CM: It never does and there are a lot of good Christian folk out there that are still trying to live their life thinking that that’s the way you live the Christian life.
PY: Yeah, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
Cm: Yeah,
PY: so if you think lies, you function according to those lies.
CM: Paul, I’ve got to tell you I hit a real bump in the road when I was first reading your book and I got to the point where you portray God the Father not as a male. And I know from reading the negatives on your book that that’s bothered a lot of other people too.
PY: Yeah, it’s interesting so far it hasn’t bothered anyone outside of Canada and the United States. You know the imagery is one of the things I wanted to do for my children because theologically we know God’s not a human being and God is Spirit, he’s not male, he’s not female, so every image that is used of God as a female, which there are many –
CM: Yes
PY: is just as inadequate as all or any image of how God is portrayed as a male. And, and we don’t think about those things so that a lot of times we’ve held onto and developed an image in our own minds where God is Zeus and he’s got a scowl and he’s just waiting for us to move out from behind Jesus so he can take a good shot at us. And unfortunately that’s what a lot of us grew up with and you didn’t know whether you were waking up on his justice side today or his love side today and the difference was how well you were behaving, how well your performance was. So the imagery, you know –
CM: And it is a metaphor
PY: It is!
CM: The book is a novel. It’s your way of portraying God in a figurative sort of way.
PY: Yes. I don’t believe that God is any more female than I believe he is male. You know he’s not like 51% male and 49% female.
CM: Right, right.
PY: Everything that it means to be male, every element of maleness is derived from his character and nature fundamentally but so is femaleness. And that’s why you have images across the board, you know, when God is described as nursing and being a mother that holds you on his hip – her hip. And the woman that loses the coin and the Proverbs 8 “Wisdom woman” and you know, El Shaddai being the rested one who is the Creator God.
CM: Yes, yes, yes
PY: You know you have all of these elements of scripture that profoundly indicate a wideness to his person and a greatness. And I was just trying to take it out of the little narrow box that we tend to keep God in and that’s the imagery that I used so –
CM: You’re enlarging it which is biblical. You’re calling God the Father “Papa” instead of “Daddy”
PY: or “Abba”
CM: Or “Abba”. And also God the Father in your book is portrayed as a large African American woman too.
PY: Yeah, and you know you’re not the only one. My mother got stone cold
CM: Yeah, let me ask you about your mother.
PY: She read that and put the book down and basically said,
CM: That was the bum for her when she started the book.
PY: Yeah, she said, “Oh, my son is a heretic.” You know, that was her response. And you know she got stuck there and she probably wouldn’t have got past it except for this miraculous set of circumstances that involved a family called the Munn family. And there was a pastor, Anglican minister and his wife back in the 50s who had been trying to have a baby. In the 50s my mother is in nurses training here in Victoria. She was at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital in nurses training, a green nurse. That is, she’s only been there like 4 months and she was the trainee, the nurses trainee on staff when the doctor said, “We have an emergency. We’ve got a woman who’s hemorrhaging.” From what I understand it was 5 or 6 miscarriages that this husband and wife had had. And so my mother gets taken into an operation as a green nurse and the baby is delivered, all of 16 ounces, one pound. This is back in the 50’s I mean there’s no pre-, no neonatal anything, there’s no nothing. And the doctor hands it to my mother and says, “This is not viable. Dispose of it.” Well, my mother didn’t know what to do. And at that time the normal procedure was to put it in the incinerator and she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it.
CM: Wow, Wow.
PY: So she wraps the baby up thinking it’s just going to die and wraps it up putting it in the only warm place in the room which was on top of the sterilization unit. And she goes and helps with the cleanup, whatever and she comes back and comforts the baby. Well, that’s, the operation was at about 8:00. Mr. and Mrs. Munn has been taken to post-op and the doctor has met with them and said, “I’m sorry your baby was, um – “
CM: Your baby didn’t make it.
PY: Yeah. Didn’t make it. And so meanwhile my mother’s taking care of this baby.
CM: And the baby’s alive!
PY: It’s alive and after MIDNIGHT she finally decides she better tell the head nurse that she has this living baby. Well, when the doctor found out he went ballistic. And in fact the rest of my mother’s nurses training he constantly tried to get her expelled from the school.
Cm: those were the days. Doctors were doctors back then!
PY: yeah, right up next to God. I mean it was God and then doctors.
CM: right
PY: And my mother was trained to be submissive and obedient and all those kinds of things. And in fact we didn’t even know about this story until after she saw the doctor’s obituary and felt OK to talk about it. The doctor had died and she started to track down whatever happened to little Harold Munn. And it turned out that he had been a 6’4” missionary in West Africa and was now the Anglican minister, senior pastor at the church in Victoria. And so she reconnected and in the course of connecting mentions that she has, you know, this heretic son who’s written this story and she kind of has a theological problem with it. Harold volunteered to read “The Shack” and when he was done he sent me an email telling me how much he loved the book. And then he communicated with my mother and said, “Here are the reasons why I love this imagery and why it’s important to me.” And that helped my mother get passed that point so she could finish the book. So here in the 50’s she saves this little baby who then helps her with this theological issue of how I presented God in image form and helps my mom get past that so I thought that was pretty.
CM: Whoah.
PY: My mom’s down here and Ruby my aunt says, “Well, let’s go to church.” So they go to the Anglican Church and slip in the back. Well Harold spots my mother and stops his sermon and says, “I want you to know that there’s a woman here who saved my life.” And he tells the whole congregation the story which is hugely emotional and at the end he then goes on, finishes his sermon and then they have communion at the end. And the gal next to my mother leans over to her and my aunt and says, “I’m so sorry but you know, in our church you need to be a member to have, to participate in communion so,” And my mother’s going, she’s very gracious and she said, “You know, don’t worry about it. It’s OK.” So everybody goes to the front, is served communion and then Harold takes off his outer vestments, takes the bread and the wine and comes all the way to the back and kneels down in front of my mother and my aunt and serves them communion. And you know, you’ve just got to think, that’s the kingdom where we’re not divided over all these things but because of life and who life is in us that we begin to relate to each other with this openness and this affection that Father, Son and Holy Spirit have invited us into the middle of that is so represented in this story by Harold.
CM: My, that is emotional. Before we go, one of the things you show is the relationship between the Godhead and then your main character Mac. That’s how you read your Bible, isn’t it?
PY: Absolutely! Scripture is a story! It’s a story of God’s pursuit of us and his affection for us. Unfortunately, even the way I grew up in Bible school and seminary it kind of teaches you to read it like territory, you know, a ways to have a little kingdom like your own doctrine and then you know who you’re going to fight against, see if you can win little battles. But it’s not that. It’s a story. It is th pursuit of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to show us their character in such a way that we run into their embrace. Yeah, it’s very much how I read scripture.
CM: What about Christ being the Way, the Truth and the Life? You’ve been criticized about that in the book.
PY: Well, and yeah, some people think they know me better than I do and I don’t know what to offer that you know, for me there is no hope for any individual person and no hope for the human race apart from the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Like I’ve said before, the road narrows, the way narrows down to one person and it’s in Christ that we have any hope at all. It’s either he is our life or we are lost in death. And you know that’s it. There’s never been a question in my mind or anything that I’ve written that indicates anything other than that Jesus is the way and he’s both the Truth of the Way and the Life of the Way.
CM: What are you hearing from people? What are people telling you in the emails you receive?
PY: Man. And it’s all over the map because people are coming to this and they’re bringing their lives to this. And so some are totally impacted by the fact that Mackenzie has a great sadness and they have great sadnesses. There’s a lot of great sadness out there.
CM: there is, yes.
PY: And then people are saying, you know, “I’ve never understood the Trinity, it’s never been a concept I could grasp at all,” not that this is an end all, be all book about the Trinity but, or relationship with the Holy Spirit or, I mean we could go through so many things that people have been impacted by. A little conversation here or what happens in the forward or what happens in the afterward, I mean it’s just that people bring their lives to this. The beautiful thing about this is when they write these emails they’re not writing to me to tell me about me, they’re writing to tell me about what God is doing in their lives. And it’s always about God and what God is accomplishing. Just because God chose this as a particular conduit for his purposes, you know? The beautiful thing about the kingdom is that we all understand that apart from Jesus we can do nothing, I mean he told us, you know, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” And so there’s no pedestals in the kingdom, you know, because how do I compare my nothing with your nothing? You know? And this is why the elders throw their crowns down before the throne
CM: Yes
PY: because they’re old enough to understand, apart from him we can do nothing. And that’s part of the beauty. And so what people, I mean they write me horrendous things and huge losses and deeply touching. I get an email from Edmonton, Alberta where somebody has built a memorial for a father and a three year old little daughter who went out for ice cream and were killed by an 18 wheeler. And next to the memorial on the post is bungee corded a copy of “The Shack”. I mean, what do you do with that? You just say, “I’m so grateful that you let me be a part of this but at the end of the day you did all of this and that’s what the beauty is.”
CM: Paul Young and “The Shack” here on Haven Today. Now on tomorrow’s program we will be joined at length by Dr. John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Regent College in Vancouver. John, you’ve not only read “The Shack” you’ve spoken at length with Paul Young. What do you see as the pros and the cons of the book?
JS: I think if you read “The Shack” to teach yourself or somebody else correct theology you’re using the wrong tool for a good job. If you read “The Shack” to draw closer to God and to have God encourage you then it’s the right tool for the right job.
CM: Dr. John Stackhouse of Regent College and as I said John will be back with us on the program tomorrow for a much lengthier interview regarding ‘The Shack’. Now I said this when we began, we are not endorsing, we are not bashing but we are engaging “The Shack”. Two things, if you would like a copy to read and engage call us in a moment at 1-800-654-2836, that’s 1-800-654-2836. Ask for a copy of “The Shack” and we’ll send it to you as our thank you for your gift to Haven Today. Or you can go online, make your gift and order a copy at haventoday.org, that’s h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org. Let us know the station you’re listening to. And you also might go to the “Listen” button on our homepage and that will talk you through, easily, how to send this on to a friend so that they can hear yesterday’s program or today’s program as well. If you’d like to hear a full discussion regarding the literary qualities and more importantly the theology that comes through in “The Shack”, good and bad, we have a panel discussion recorded a little more than a week ago between Paul Young and the faculty at Regent College, an evangelical, theological graduate school here in Vancouver. It’s 2 CDs and I must say, it’s quite good. We have copies of that as a thank you for your gift. Just call us at 1-800-65-HAVEN or go online at haventoday.org. Because this book has captured the interest of so many, we’ve also posted a blog where you can share with us on our homepage, haventoday.org. Now, one other thing we need to talk about, we need to be praying for those affected by the flooding in the Midwest, and especially in Iowa where thousands have been left homeless the last few days and there’s flooding still going on. Prayers and help are needed. We have also been raising funds for sending tents to the earthquake area of Southwest China. Not one dime for Haven, we’re passing your gifts straight through and I got an email yesterday that I’ve just got to share with you. It’s from a woman named Caroline in Magnolia, Texas. She says, “I am a single Christian grandmother raising 3 children as a waitress in Tumbal, Texas. I took up a collection for the relief fund to China. Please accept this small gift from my customers at the Blueberry Patch. Thank you and God bless all of you.” Well, all I can say is God bless you Caroline and what she sent, I know the Lord will use in a mighty way. It will be given by a Christian relief agency in the name of Jesus. It’s still not too late to help out with our China tent project and you can find all the details online or give us a call at our toll free number.
I’m Charles Morris and I want to thank you for being me on a program called “The Shack” with William P. Young. Would you come back again next time? We’ll be again sharing the great story. It’s all about Jesus and we’ll do it together here on Haven Today.