The Shack continued

So last night was book club, discussing The Shack. We were a small group, some people had bowling and others had different conflicts. It was a good discussion, though.

Dan asked whether there were any scenes that people found particularly memorable. His example was the one where the main character is told to be the judge, in a way that God is. He was told, you have 5 kids, choose 2 to go to heaven and 3 to go to hell. After agonizing a while, the main character asks if he could go to hell himself so none of the kids have to.

I mentioned the way that God keeps saying she's "very fond of you." That reminds me of a sermon illustration by John Liu, who described God as a father who took out a wallet and had a huge folding fan out of photos, trailing to the floor, then he takes one, points to it and says, "This is my son, John. I love him so much." I like illustrations of how much God loves me, and us.

Another comment someone made was that they liked the way the Holy Spirit was an actual person. Often you picture the Holy Spirit as something different than a person. We had a brief discussion about the fact that God the Father was portrayed as a woman, and we all thought it "worked".

We ended up not yet choosing a date or our next book. We'll do that via email.