What The Shack Meant To Me

The first six paragraphs of this week’s blog post started as something I wrote on my Facebook timeline. I wrote about how much the movie “The Shack” inspired me. Even though I will add more at the end of this post, I decided to start with that Facebook writing without making changes or doing editing. I didn’t want to lose any of the passion the movie had inspired when I was writing about it soon after watching it. Following is what I wrote on Facebook:

I recently watched the movie "The Shack." I also recently watched the testimony of the writer of the book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-BB2ylI8EU&feature=youtu.be) and am re-reading the book. I am surprised by how many negative reactions that movie garnered from some, because it was a beautiful message. Maybe some who weren't ready for the message were offended by it. I found it cleansing.

At the end of the movie, Papa (the writer’s name for God) said that forgiveness was not about reconciliation but was about letting go of the person's throat we have not forgiven. That is what I learned the hard way a long time ago. I know there are people who think I haven't forgiven or am not forgiving because I am not reconciling with some people who proved to have patterns of harmfulness. That does not mean they made a mistake or had a bad day - it was that I woke up to a very harmful pattern I'd been seeing and probably ignoring for a long time, patterns that were not changing. The people who judge that I'm not forgiving seem to forget that among the long list of people I was a caregiver for was one of my abusers, and once that person apologized and I knew they meant it by the change I saw them display, I nurtured them and cared for them with all of the love and devotion a parent would give to a child. They also seem to forget that I keep nurturing a current relationship with someone who is showing consistent change even though it was in a very difficult place before that person's change started.

Any stories I tell or anything I write about in my blog are stories of people I have forgiven but chose not to ignore their patterns any more. I tell those stories with a heart of social justice like the one Jesus teaches us to have in his examples. I had so many religious influences from my past that told me and others that I loved that forgiveness always means reconciliation, and I saw so many victims forced into returning to unbearable and dangerous situations, which meant they were re-victimized by those who put that demand on them while the person who was guilty faced no consequences for their actions. That is codependency and enabling and is not good for either party. Therefore, I share what I learned on my journey in the hope that it will help others avoid unnecessary pain.

I have been searching my heart to the very depths to make sure I'm in a state of forgiveness for everyone. I have found that every person who hurt me directly I have forgiven. I never want any harm to come to them. I definitely don't want them to go to hell or face any horrible consequence for their actions. I simply want them to wake up enough to change for their benefit as well as the benefit of those around them. That is why I pray for them even if I don't reconcile with them.

I did find anger in my heart that I will be working hard on. At the end of the movie, Papa said that anger is understandable and sometimes it takes time to work through it, and I will. I am angry at leaders of religious organizations or groups, especially healing groups where the people who came there for help were already vulnerable, who have allowed a leader in their organization to abuse someone and put the responsibility on their victim instead of expecting the abuser to make amends (apologize and mean it) and change their behavior. If a leader will not make amends and change their behavior after even one abusive episode, it is imperative for the safety of all current and future members that they be removed from leadership. I recognize how much harm a leader can do in a situation like that, and I am mad as hell at people in charge who do not handle leaders who are abusers correctly. I will be working on that and turning that over to God more and more.

I also realize I am in a state of anger and unforgiveness for the people who abused my father when he was a child. I will be working on that.

Other than those two situations, my heart is free and full of forgiveness for everyone who has hurt me, and I thank God for the peace that comes from that. I thank God that he gave me all of the support I needed while I worked to get to that point. Yet, even though I've forgiven, I will not stop speaking up to teach people how to spot dangerous patterns in other people and that it is okay to forgive without reconciliation - unlike what too many religious organizations wrongly teach - that like Papa said in the movie forgiveness is simply taking your hands from around the throat of the person you need to forgive.

That is the end of what I wrote on Facebook. I do have another insight I learned from the movie that I want to share, because it was like an epiphany to me. I grew up around people who had secrets. Growing up around it made it seem so normal that I too often allow people like that into my life as an adult – repeating the familiar. I’m learning as an adult to flee from it when I recognize it. People who have something to hide often punish people who can reveal them. This can happen in many ways from spreading lies to discredit them to physical assault and everything in between. The boy in “The Shack” experienced this.

At the beginning of the movie, the boy reveals to the church, through a prayer request, that his father drinks and beats his family. The father retaliates by beating the boy viciously. Before the beating starts, the father repeatedly screams that the boy was wrong to reveal him to his people, meaning the church since he was a deacon. Between each strike of the belt on the boy’s back, the father has the boy recite Colossians 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”

As I watched this, I remembered that the bible also says in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” I realized that when the bible is used correctly, it brings peace and fairness to everyone. It is about balanced relationships. Whenever someone is using the bible to create an imbalance that puts one person abusively above another one, scripture is being cherry-picked instead of being seen as a whole.

My father was left severely handicapped by child abuse. In spite of the pain he felt emotionally and physically, he broke the cycle of physical abuse by never hitting his own children. I loved him for many reasons, and that was one of them. I remember begging God to help me understand why the bible says to spare the rod is to spoil the child when that scripture was used to leave my father handicapped. Some may think I’m crazy, but I often hear the Lord. Even when I feel far away from him or need to improve my interactions with him, he still speaks to me. I believe he speaks to all of us. He told me to look at Psalm 23. When I did, I saw that the word rod was not used as an instrument of punishment. Shortly after that, God led me to this article on that subject: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theprinciplesofspiritualliving/2014/11/the-truth-about-spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child/ The rod is not an instrument of physical punishment.

I could give many examples of ways cherry-picking scripture leads to abusive imbalances. I have a personal rule of only sharing three at a time, so I don’t exhaust my readers. The second one I will share is how scripture is often used to subjugate women. It is true that Ephesians 5 tells wives to submit to their husbands. What most people miss is that verse 21 tells them to submit to each other. In addition, verses 25-33 tells the husband that he must love the wife and care for her without harming her just like he would never harm his own body. He is told to love her like Christ loved the church, and Christ died for the church. The man’s responsibility to the woman is as great, or even greater, than the woman’s responsibility to the man. When all of the scripture is taken into account, a balanced relationship is created.

In the church of my upbringing, scripture was often misused to sow hatred against the poor. Yet, these many scriptures tell us how to treat the poor: https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/poor.htm Often, the 2 Thessalonians scripture about how a man who will not work will not eat was often used to sow that hatred. If the bible is being seen as a whole instead of being cherry-picked, the logical question is why is that one scripture different than the dozens of other scriptures that say help those in need. If you read the entire letter to the Thessalonians, you will see that that one scripture is talking about people who avoid work to spread gossip that harms the church. In reality, those who used that scripture to sow hate against the poor were spreading gossip when they sowed. Thus, the scripture they were using to condemn others actually condemned them. When the bible is seen as a whole on this subject, balanced relationships are created.

Cherry-picking scriptures to create imbalanced relationships often turns into abuse for the one who is on the receiving end of that imbalance. I realized that is often a factor in all abusive relationships. Abuse rarely happens in balanced relationships. In a non-religious setting, logical fallacies are often used instead of scriptures, but it often reaps the same harvest. As I write this, I think of the many times I experienced or witnessed people use logical fallacies to pressure sick people into continuing to give. The people who do that often accuse the sick person of not being a good friend (or whatever the relationship is) without recognizing it is their turn to give instead of take when a friend is sick. They do not recognize that friendship is a two-way street and there is a time for them to give also. I will talk more about that in next week’s blog post.

Another place where the movie “The Shack” really touched me was when Wisdom tried to help the man understand a role God plays in our lives. To help him understand, he was told to pick which one of his two children would go to heaven and which one would go to hell. He could not choose, so he told Wisdom to take him instead. He loved his children so much that he was willing to sacrifice everything to save them both. That helped the man, and me, to understand why God sacrificed everything by giving his own son to die on the cross to save us from our sins.

That might make it sound like God will let us do anything we want, good or bad. That is not the message. A good parent instructs their children to help them make good decisions that will benefit them. That type of instruction is what happened when Wisdom helped the man understand the sacrifice God made. In addition, when Papa said at the end of the movie that forgiveness wasn’t about reconciliation but was about taking our hands off the throat of the person we needed to forgive, he also said there are always consequences. I believe if we are making decisions that are bad for us or those around us, God will try to use the rod to guide us to better decisions (not beat us with it) just like we try to guide our own children to better decisions when they make a mistake.

I will use an example of something from my own life. I was once in a group where a group leader triggered on me two times over a short period of time. The first time it was mild. Minutes after this leader had finished leading a group designed to help us heal, she quickly switched from healing guide to angry judge. The switch was triggered by me saying how much I liked a member of the group as that member was leaving. Even though the two often came together and gave the impression they were best friends, this leader went on a rant about how her friend was crazy, she would never go on a vacation with her, etc. I personally think she was jealous of her friend, because the friend had greater beauty and a warmer and more bubbly personality, but that should not matter between friends. A few weeks later, this same leader went off on me in a similar but more aggressive way for not turning my medical care over to her magical powers instead of going to my doctor. During that episode, it was revealed she had been talking about me behind my back like she did the other woman. Therefore, repeated gossip and repeated triggering were revealed as a part of this woman’s character. Once I looked past her ability to charm and admitted that to myself, I didn’t think she was a safe person to lead a group designed to help vulnerable people heal. I talked to the founder of this group several times, because a pattern was being revealed that let me know it was not safe for current and future members if someone who triggered that easily continued to lead groups. I did not want this person to be punished in some way that would harm their spirit or their body. I wanted a boundary to be set that would give them the opportunity to learn a lesson about proper behavior, especially the proper behavior required when working with vulnerable people. There is a big difference between wanting someone to be punished and wanting them to have the opportunity to learn a better way. I believe God gives us the opportunity to learn a better way. I think if people don’t give them that opportunity or they reject that opportunity, it’s perfectly okay for us to separate from them for our own safety, as long as we do so in forgiveness – or as Papa said in the movie, as long as we don’t have our hands around their throat. I do not have my hands around this woman’s throat. I pray for her well-being. I pray that God will keep current and future members safe since the right corrective action was not taken even though her second episode was witnessed by the person who should make those decisions. I pray that God will teach those involved what they need to learn before anyone else gets hurts. I pray for the safety of all current and future members. I also pray that God will give her everything she needs to have to allow her to heal and become whole.

God loves all of his children equally. He will try to guide and correct us when we create imbalances. He allows those who are being harmed by imbalances to find safety. He doesn’t choose one child over the other any more than we as human parents would chose one child over the other.

I highly recommend the book and the movie “The Shack.” I recommend the testimony of the book’s author even more highly. “The Shack” was a life improving experience for me.