Hello Converge. How’s it going? As we go on, we remember all the times we had together.  Just kidding, that’s not what I’m going to write about. That’s just a lyric from one-hit wonder Vitamin C’s “Graduation (Friends Forever)”. If you knew that, you get 10 points! Also, if you knew that, you are either getting old, or you have a lot of knowledge about mediocre pop music.

Anyway, here’s the real topic I wanted to chat with you about: a little book called “The Shack”, by William P. Young. Perhaps you have heard of it, or have read it yourself. There has been some controversy over this book among Christians, so I started reading it mostly out of curiosity, but ended up finding that it gave me a lot of good things to think about.  The book is a fictional account of a man who meets God, you guessed it, in a shack. This shack is not some ordinary tool shed, though, but a place that represents the deepest pain the man has ever experienced. As he spends time with God there, his beliefs about God’s character are challenged and transformed. He starts to discover that God is not as distant from him and his pain as he had previously thought. What’s really cool about this book is that it’s not just a story about a guy who meets God in a shack. It’s also an opportunity for you, the reader, to meet with God in your “shack” - the center of your greatest pain - as you identify with the struggles of the main character.

I highly recommend this book, not as a theology textbook, but as a story and allegory that can help you see your relationship with God from a new perspective. It helps to read “The Shack” like you’d read C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, because, like those books, it’s a work of fiction, but the author intends to creatively share biblical truth through his storytelling. If you have read “The Shack”, I would love to hear your thoughts about it!