While
I was reading The Shack, they had a contribution to make:
In
this novel, Papa, who is sometimes a woman and sometimes a man, is God; Saraya
is the Holy Ghost; Jesus is Jesus, the son of God. They are talking to Mack, a
human, who is spending the weekend with them.
CHAPTER
8
“Humans
are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people
could work or live together without someone being in charge.”
“But
every human institution that I can think of, from political to business, even
down to marriage, is governed by this kind of thinking; it is the web of our
social fabric,” Mack asserted.
“Such
a waste!” said Papa, picking up the empty dish and heading for the kitchen.
“It’s
one reason why experiencing true relationship is so difficult for you,” Jesus
added. “Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it,
and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with
some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship
rather than promotes it. You rarely see or experience relationship apart from
power. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of
relationship that we intended for you.”
Saraya
continued, “When you chose independence over relationship, you became a danger
to each other. Others became objects to
be manipulated or managed for your own happiness. Authority, as you usually
think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what
they want.”
.
. .
“We
carefully respect your choices, so we work within your systems even while we
seek to free you from them,” Papa continued. “Creation has been taken down a
very different path that we desired. In your world the value of the individual
is constantly weighed against the survival of the system, whether political,
economic, social or religious—any system actually. First one person, and then a
few, and finally even many are easily sacrificed for the good and ongoing
existence of that system. In one form or another this lies behind every
struggle for power, every prejudice, every war, and every abuse of
relationship. The ‘will to power and independence’ has become so ubiquitous
that it now considered normal.”
.
. .
“And
now,” Saraya interjected, “we have come full circle, back to one of my initial
statements: You humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost
incomprehensible that relationship could exist apart from hierarchy. So you
think that God must relate inside a hierarchy like you do. But we do not.”
“Mack,”
said Papa with an intensity that caused him to listen very carefully, “we want
to share with you the love and joy and freedom and light that we already know
within our-self. We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship
with us, to join our circle of love. As difficult as it will be for you to
understand, everything that had taken place is occurring exactly according to
this purpose, without violating choice or will.”
CHAPTER
14
Sarayu
talking to Mack.
“Then
let’s use your two words: responsibility and expectation. Before your words
became nouns, they were first my words, nouns with movement and experience
buried inside of them; the ability to respond and expectancy. My words are
alive and dynamic—full of life and possibility; yours are dead, full of law and
fear and judgment. That is why you won’t find the word responsibility in the
Scriptures.”
“Religion must use law to empower itself and
control the people who they need in order to survive. I give you an ability to
respond and your response is to be free to love and serve in every situation,
and therefore each moment is different and unique and wonderful. Because I am
your ability to respond, I have to be present in you. If I simple gave you a
responsibility, I would not have to be with you at all. It would now be a task
to perform, an obligation to be met, something to fail.”
Straight from the Godhead, as near as I can tell.
Straight from the Godhead, as near as I can tell.
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