Saturday, January 17, 2009

My Theory on the Shack controversy and how we have put God in a nice little neat Box.

My Theory on the Shack controversy and how we have put God in a nice little neat Box.

In the times of Jesus, the Pharisees got very riled up when Jesus appeared on the scene. That’s because what Jesus was talking about went completely against what the religious community believed and held dear. Their theology was so entrenched and impenetrable, that they just could not accept anything that went against it.

In their defense, they thought they were being good religious folk and defending the faith. They just could not accept that the very same God that had written the Old Testament and given us all those laws could be the very same God that was now telling them that those laws were no longer in effect, actually summed up in Love, and now talking about forgiveness.

The Pharisees had such a very tightly woven theology, that they just could not accept that God may be just a little different than the one that they have built up in their minds. They had put God inside a little box in order for the world and God to make sense to them.

If anything, like this book, challenges that and indicates that God might actually have the capability to exist outside this box, it is going to cause them to revolt. Their universe, including their God must make sense to them.

This is just a fact of our human existence. We are human and therefore bound by natural laws. Our human nature wants to put everything into a nice neat equation. Just like mathematics and science. We learn the formulas necessary to make sense out of how the universe works. If anything comes along to challenge our formulas, we resist it. It’s always been this way.

In the days of Columbus, it was believed that the world was flat. That was what they needed to believe at that time in order for them to make sense of their world. That theory was challenged; people resisted, called Columbus a heretic, and just plain got angry. The history of the world is filled with many many more examples just like that.

Anytime an accepted view or formula is challenged, there are those that will get angry and refuse to accept it.

That is until it is proven? The world is not flat and neither is my God in a box.

Just Keeping it real
Pastor Phillip Dacus
http://www.needsmet.us/

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