Listening to our culture

Given all that I have written about it so far the biggest question is: Why has The Shack been so popular among Christians?

If the book has so many things that concern me why are so many Christians reading it and raving about it? I think it shows fundamentally that we desire to have a close, intimate personal relationship with God. We would love to be able to engage with God as Mack does. I think many people will be prepared to put up with the errors they see in the book because the picture of God relating to and with Mack is so heartwarming.

I wonder if this has something to say to us about the formalism of church. I don't want to join in the church bashing the book does - the Bible has a high view of church, it is Christ's bride, it is God's means of declaring his wisdom to the powers and authorities, it is glorious and it will be built by Christ. And yet so many people in churches seem to be saying that The Shack is giving them something new.

It makes me wonder if in stressing the need for good Bible teaching we have missed something, if in all our training Bible teachers with techniques of exposition and composition and delivery if we have taken something out of preaching God's word. Do I love God? As I look at a passage what does it teach me that I can simply glorify and marvel at God for? What new facet of God's character and actions does it reveal to me that should cause me to love him more and naturally to want to praise him for? Is much of our preaching too dry?

I am not arguing for the dumbing down of preaching but I am asking the question about our methodology. The Bible is God's inspired word to make me love him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Does the teaching leave me gasping for relationship with God, breathless at the wonder of what God gifts me in Christ that I can everyday and for eternity call God 'Dad'?

In our concern to teach theologically have we missed out peoples hearts and emotions? As I stand up to preach is it with concerns about my structure or is it about making the God I know personally known to others as he has revealed himself?

I have heard people say that the Bible is hard to understand, sometimes I think it is because we make it hard to understand. When you read books that tell you you should be spending 12 hours a week preparing your talk, 6 hours simply on understanding the text what does that say to us about the Bible. To the person in the pew that says the Bible is too complex - it makes it nearly as hard to understand as when it was written in Latin. I am not saying we should not labour to understand the Bible, we should, as those who preach we must. But I am saying we should not lay that burden on people, the Bible is a book to be read that reveals God to us, it is God's revelation - you do not need 4 technical commentaries and a degree in Greek, Hebrew, systematic and Biblical Theology, as well as Hermeneutics in order to understand it. Certainly never does Paul recommend that to the church, in fact in his letter to the Colossians he continually calls them to one thing to know Christ.

I think part of the attraction of The Shack is that it makes God accessible and people have not found him in the Bible in part I think because they think it is a hard book to read. We need to counter act that. We need to be showing people how they can know the real God who reveals himself to us not in a novel but in his word gifted to us. We need to be calling people to know God through his word, to experience God living in and through them by the power of his Spirit.

"I want to know Christ," Paul wrote "to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." It is a great longing to want to know God.