Practice English Speaking&Listening with: You're Included - Did an Angry God Force His Son to Die?

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On this episode of You're Included, author, Paul Young, examines the view of God as being

“angry” and that he requires his son’s death.

Our host today is Dr. J. Michael Feazell.

Thanks for being with us again. This is great.

We’re enjoying every moment of it and appreciate your time in coming back.

I appreciate being here.

The view of God that you present in “The Shack” is a sound biblical perspective that

strangely is foreign to the way many people have traditionally thought about God.

We have lost, or a lot of us have never had, the conversation about the nature of God.

We’ve been so focused on our ability to keep the rule, or the law, or whatever and

it’s all been behavioral. We haven’t had a conversation about what is this character.

We live in such world of uncertainty. Everything about our lives is uncertain. We could get

a call from the boss today and what we thought we were heading toward is no longer there.

A sale could go sideways, a truck comes across the middle line, and changes our lives. So

we’re filled with uncertainty. And especially about what God thinks about

us, we don’t know… we’re afraid of him. We try to create something that will get his

behavior to be certain. “If I can just do the right things, in the right order, to the

right degree, then God is rather obligated to do it” – to do whatever it is that

we think we want him to do. That can be having enough faith, for example… Whatever our

formula is, to get the result… so that we can get God’s behavior to be certain. There’s

a word for that, and it’s called magic. God doesn’t like magic. Magic is, if I have

the right formula, the right incantation, the right something, I can get the right result.

We try to use magic to get certainty. If there’s no certainty in our circumstances,

and there’s no certainty in God’s behavior, where is there any certainty? It has to be

in his character. If we get his character wrong, or if we think that he is not good,

that he is not loving – and we get that wrong, then we are by ourselves, and we’re

back to issues of fear and control, because we try to get control over uncertainty in

many ways. Anger, or dulling the pain of it through addictions of one sort or another,

depression… there’s a million ways that we try to gain some control. Instead, if we

begin to understand the character of God – that he comes into this relationship with us, for

us, to heal us – that is a place we can put our feet down and begin to stand and move

forward. Otherwise, we’re just on our own. So the characterization of God in the book

is an attempt, in fiction, to try to describe that solidity of character that I think a

lot of us have not trusted. We don’t trust… That’s Mack’s big issue – that he doesn’t

believe God is good. But he doesn’t know to get from where he is to believing it either,

and God is very gracious about that process and says, “You can’t do it by yourself,

but together we can do it.” In the midst of tragedy or great pain, that’s

when it’s very difficult to believe that God is good…

Yeah, because everything has become uncertain. There’s a place in the book where you talk

about the Father versus the Son, the Father being so holy and so great that he can’t

be touched by our evil and our wickedness. But Jesus on the other hand is the good guy.

Kind of the good cop, bad cop… Let me just read that section briefly.

Mack [the central character] says, “But I always liked Jesus better than you, he seems

so gracious and you seem so mean.” “Sad, isn’t it? He came to show people who I am

and most folks only believe it about him. They still play us off like good cop, bad

cop most of the time, especially the religious folk. When they want people to do what they

think is right, they need a stern God, when they need forgiveness, they run to Jesus.”

And yet as you portray the characters here, we’re not talking about two different Gods

of different character, we’re talking about one God who is for us…

Unfortunately, we have some theology that has come alongside and said, where God the

Father is, his issue is our sinfulness. He can’t hang around us. That is sort of like

Jesus has made friends with us and God the Father is a little perturbed about it. He

wants to say, “Can you find a better quality of friend? I mean, they come to my house,

they mess it up, they leave things dirty, they don’t do the dishes. If you just find

a better quality of friend. I know I’ll be ok because you love them.” We have the

mentality that Jesus is trying to convince the Father that we’re worth enough to love.

We use the word “advocate” because he’s an advocate with the Father for us, but … he

needs a lot of convincing. And to make even matters worse, we have this

idea that God comes to us and says, “You and I have a problem. Your behavior doesn’t

meet up to the standards required, but I have a solution: For you and I to be ok, I’m

going to take my innocent Son, whom I love more than anything else in the world, out

to the woodshed, and kill him – and then you and I will be ok. Oh, by the way, trust

me.” We’re going, “Is there a disconnect here

somewhere? Is that what had to happen for God the Father and me to be ok?” We’re

going, “That’s not it at all… that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,

it was God the Father that crawls inside of this very thing.”

People say, “What about, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’” That is Christ

on the cross, for the first time as a human being, experiences a sense of separation.

He doesn’t believe that it’s real – because the next thing he says is “into your hands

I commit my spirit.” There is no real separation, but he feels the sense of it, but God is in

him in that whole process. There is no abandonment like that. That cry is a cry of those who

have experienced abandonment. For some of us that is such a hope for us.

There is this sense that you get from preaching sometimes that the Father is so angry, he’s

furious; the wrath of God is cited, because the word wrath appears in Scriptures. The

sense is that he is so angry that somebody has to pay, and so Jesus steps in and says,

“Well, kill me if you have to kill somebody.” So we have the resolution that, “Christ

died for my sins, therefore I’m absolved” – but there’s still that angry God. He

has calmed down, but when he is going to break loose again?”

Exactly – we’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and we fall back on performance,

we fall back on our behavior being the basis for his mood. We have to maintain at least

an adequate amount of behavior so that he feels good about himself and doesn’t take

it out on us. So we have this schizophrenic God, we have the “good cop, bad cop” type

of God. We don’t know whether we’re waking up on the side of his love, or the side of

his justice – or his holiness. We think holiness is a manifestation of his reaction

against sin. The truth is, he was holy before there was sin. What makes God “other”

[i.e., holy] is his very nature of love – that’s what makes him “other” than us. Holiness

then becomes a manifestation of his love, not of his justice, not of his dealing with

sin. Wrath is the right response to things that

are wrong. Anger is the right response when there is pain and hurt, when children are

abused, when people lie to each other, when divorce happens, people taking advantage…

to greed, to all of these things, it is the right response. And for God to have that right

response against everything that is in his creation that prevents the freedom of the

human creation, which is the object of his love, for him to come after that with everything

that he’s got, [wrath] is appropriate, is right.

My friend Wayne Jacobson has a book called He Loves Me. In it he uses the illustration

of being a child running into a hornets’ nest and screaming running in the direction

of his mother, and seeing her coming at him with this look of rage. She wasn’t after

him. She was after these hornets, how dare they touch her precious little child. But

if you look at her face, you’d think he had done something wrong. We have that mentality

when we deal with God. He’s angry against everything that hurts

us. Jesus showing up at Lazarus’ funeral – that intense anger, compassion that comes

out even though he is in the midst of raising him from the dead. Death is wrong, you know.

The impact of sin is wrong. The wrath of God is an element of his love. You can’t divide

his wrath from his love, as if he’s two separate characters. Everything God does is

motivated by love, and everything has a loving purpose.

Scripture speaks of “the enemies of God,” and “the wrath of God against his enemies.”

How does the love of God come into his relationship with his enemies in terms of his wrath?

He is constantly saying that we are to love our enemies as well. There is an understanding

that we wed ourselves to our own lost-ness, to our own independence. It’s like the surgery.

There is a process that is very painful for us. God, even, in dealing with the Egyptians,

or the wonders of the plagues – that was a very painful process.

There are people who set themselves up in an independence stance and I tell you, you

can wed yourself – the people in the New Testament that were most doing that, were

the religious people. They were the most lost when Jesus says, “Woe, woe, woe,” and

he tells them that they are dead men, the inside of them is dead. The “woe” idea

is a warning woe. It’s saying “whoa!”… almost like a horse. “Stop what you’re

doing. Don’t you understand that this process that you’re on, this path that you’re

choosing – of independence, is going to drive you deeper into the darkness, not into

the light that you think?” One of the other questions that has come up

about book is, “Why isn’t Lucifer in the book – as one of God’s enemies?” I believe

in the fallen angels, I believe in the demonic, and I grew up out in the mission field. I

know the reality of these things – the spiritual dimension. We don’t live in a benign universe

as far as the spiritual dimension. I don’t believe God has any rivals, I don’t believe

Lucifer is a rival. I think his power was totally destroyed and now all he has is the

ability to lie. All those things being true, the book was

not intended to be another book about Satan. It was intended to say, “This is who God

is, and this is the process that we’re in – that he comes inside of us to bring us

to healing. We don’t need the juxtaposition in this book, and like I said, there are plenty

of books that deal with that. This was not an attempt for a systematic theology.

When we talk about enemies, Christ died for us while we were yet enemies ourselves.

Who among us has not been an enemy? Right. Then, like you said, we’re told to

love our enemies. Then we proceed with the idea that God doesn’t love his enemies,

but he expects us to love our enemies. Suddenly we have this requirement that even

God cannot live up to. The reality is, that he does. The reality is, that the creation

that he has created, he loves, and human beings as the epitome and apex of what he pursues.

We have all been in the position of being his enemy, and in some respects, we still

fight him in this process, but there’s no shame to it.

That’s the beauty… In your book, the most poignant scene, to me, is the judgment scene

where everyone stands guilty. It’s very beautifully done, and thoroughly scriptural.

That’s what makes it so beautiful. Part of that was to try to get the reality

of this out of the abstract intellectual framework – just like using the loss of a child as

the core part of the story. The term agape is used, that God is agape, he’s this kind

of love that’s so different. The only verse that I can think of (and there maybe other

ones) where somebody who is apart from God experiences agape… (Normally you cannot

be apart from God to express it. But the closest that a human being apart from God can) is

reflected in the verse, “If you being evil…” It’s talking about your core independence.

“If you being evil know how to agape your children…” That’s the word that’s

used. The closest point that we can come to understanding

the way God loves is the way that a parent loves their child, and I tell you there’s

nothing like that – not if there’s any kind of health in your life, there is nothing

that comes close to that. That is the kind of way God is, in his very character and nature.

That’s why I wanted to use the thing that is deepest in us, to raise the deepest kinds

of questions, and (for my children) I wanted this to be the conversation around which to

develop the conversation, the processing, the ideas, and the relationship with God.

I tend to be that kind of person who when he sees a bandwagon, I say, “The last thing

I’m going do is get on it.” So, as people kept saying, “You ought to read this book,

you ought to read this book,” I thought, “I don’t read books that ‘you gotta

read.’” But finally I did read it. I read the first few chapters, and this is where

we get into the story of the tragedy and so on, and the very real anger and so on that

Mack has. He enters the shack, and I lost interest after

God entered the shack. I thought, “I don’t see how he’s going get out of this, because

I’m on Mack’s side here. There won’t be a good resolution to this, I don’t see

how, in fictional form, we’re going be able to – [Find our way out.] – get from here

to there, and resolve this anger without it just being facile, just some easy solution

– what do we call that, a platitude, sort of thing. [a cliché.] I eventually got back

to it and well, I had to do an interview with the author.

That’ll get to you every time. So I better finish the book anyway… That

judgment scene, to me, that itself could be a full treatment of the subject, it was just

beautifully done. Thank you. That scene has become where the

whole book leads to. From there, everything becomes resolution after that. It was to say,

“This is the reality of the heart of God in terms of how he relates to us. Let’s

take it out of intellectual, spiritual, religious kind of terminology and make it real to us.

For Mack to have to struggle with this big question about his own children – that becomes

something very real to him, and all of a sudden it puts us into a spot thinking, “Are you

telling me that God loves us like that?” We’re saying, “He loves you more than

that.” That is as close as we can get to understanding the intensity of that love – he

loves us more than that, and more pure and better than that. I agree, I love that chapter.

Another section that is striking in the book is where Jesus is talking to Mack:

“Remember, the people who know me are the ones who are free to live and love without

any agenda.” And Mack says, “Is that what it means to be a Christian?” “Who said

anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian,” Jesus said. The idea struck

Mack as odd and unexpected. “No, I suppose you aren’t.” Then Jesus says, “Those

who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhist or Mormons, Baptists or

Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday

morning or religious institutions. I have followers who are murderers and many who are

self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians.

I’ve no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation

into sons and daughters of my Papa, into brothers and sisters, into my beloved.” “Does that

mean,” asks Mack, “that all roads will lead to you?” “Not at all,” smiled Jesus.

“Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road

to find you.” Some people have taken from that or responded

that, “You’re saying that being a Christian doesn’t matter,” they accuse you of universalism,

whatever they mean by universalism. Yeah, when somebody asks me if I’m a Christian,

I ask them back: “Would you please tell me what one is, and I’ll tell you if I’m

one of those.” If we’re on the same page, I don’t have any problem identifying myself

as a Christian. Unfortunately, in the world today that has become kind of a Ziploc bag,

and as soon as you say the “C” word, there’s no more communication, no more conversation.

What people think in their minds what a Christian is, is not what Scripture reveals as someone

who is indwelt by the very character nature of …

It has become a caricature, a pre-conceived idea depending on a person’s experience

of a Christian or Christianity. Exactly. For example, we think of anybody

in the Middle East, as Westerners, we tend to think of them as Muslim. As if they believe

all the tenets of Islam, etc. And they’re all the same, and they all fit

this particular category that we have them on.

Most believers from the Middle East will still tell you they’re Muslim, but they’re Christian.

For us that’s a little incongruous. These little boxes, I wanted to get outside. Jesus

died, rose again, ascended to the right hand of the Father before the term [Christian]

had even been created or coined. It happened probably in Antioch, where it was a derogatory

term; they were going, “We like this term.” And so for Jesus to identify himself as a

Christian is moot. The term didn’t exist. That was one piece of it.

Then I wanted to push it even further and say, “It’s not the label that you’re

identified with that is the relationship. A label is a label, and I don’t care what

label you have, let’s talk about what you mean by it. And then we’ll see.”

I have no problem identifying myself as a Christian, or the validity of being a Christian,

or any of those things. But I want some agreement about what we are talking about. What a lot

of people think of a Christian, I don’t want to be identified with, because there’s

a bunch of it that is not true, and not right. I want a bridge to be built in a relationship

with anybody. I don’t want the word “Christian” to become the impediment that stops that relationship

from being built. I don’t want it to be an impediment between them and the love of

Jesus Christ, either. That has nothing to do with faith in Jesus

Christ, or belief in the name of Christ, as some would want to say it.

No. If I can say it as clearly as I can, I am convinced that Jesus Christ is THE only

way into the embrace of the Father. There is no other name given among men through whom

we are saved – he is the sole and only road into the Father’s heart – he is the Father’s

heart who has bridged that gap to us. That was the last edit we put into the book,

because somebody who read a pre-version said, “I love this book, I love everything about

it, but I’ve got a couple of friends who are going think you’re a universalist.”

So that little section where he says, “Do all roads lead to Papa?” Jesus smiles and

says, “No, most don’t lead anywhere, but I will travel down any road to find you.”

That was the last edit we made before it went to the printers in the first edition.

I’m grateful for the brother who sent that and said, “What do you think?” Because

I wanted it to be clear that we are not talking about… I want the centrality of atonement

to be central. This is what God has done to reconcile the world to himself. Now, as ambassadors

of Christ, as if you are the very pleading of God, beg, “Be reconciled back to him,

because he’s reconciled himself to you.” That, to me, is the centrality and the significance…

the exclusivity – if I can use that term – of the person of God who has come in Christ

in the power of the Spirit to make a way for us. I’m not a universalist.

The subject of the Bible comes up in the course of the discussion between the Holy Spirit

and Mackenzie, and in one place here, they’re out together in a canoe. Just reading from

the book: Mack allowed his oar to turn in his hands

as he let it play into the water’s movements. “It feels like living out of relationship,

you know, trusting and talking to you, is a bit more complicated than just following

rules.” “What rules are those, Mackenzie?” “You know, all the things the Scriptures

tell us we should do.” “Ok,” she said with some hesitation. “And what might those

be?” “You know,” he answered sarcastically, “about doing good things and avoiding evil,

being kind to the poor, reading your Bible, praying, going to church, things like that.”

“I see, and how is that working for you?” He laughed, “Well, I’ve never done it

very well. I have moments that aren’t too bad, but there’s always something I’m

struggling with or feeling guilty about, I just figured I needed to try harder. But I

find it difficult to sustain that motivation, [I think virtually everyone, with any honesty

would have to identify with that.] “Mackenzie,” she chided, her words flowing with affection,

“The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules, it is a picture of Jesus. While words

may tell you what God is like and even what he may want from you, you cannot do any of

it on your own. Life and living is in him and in no other. My goodness, you didn’t

think you could live the righteousness of God on your own, did you?” “Well, I thought

so, sorta,” he said sheepishly.” You’re presenting here the Bible not as

the way it’s popularly taught – as God’s instruction book for mankind. So it is used

to rule on behaviors and to judge and to tell everyone what they’re doing wrong, and then

goes back on the shelf. But the whole idea of Jesus in the Scriptures is often missed.

If we are only flesh, if that’s what we come to this writing with, then we’ll drop

back to see it as a behavioral kind of thing without the illumination of the Spirit and

the work of the Spirit. Even those words are dead to us. They don’t produce life. We

are absolutely dependent, even in the words of Scripture, for the presence and life and

illumination of the power of the Holy Spirit. All of us are. We know folks who know the

words very well but have no life in them. There’s that part of it. Jesus on the Emmaus

Road with the disciples: Starting with Moses he showed them himself throughout all of Scripture.

It’s a story, it’s a story of his love, it’s a story of his attraction to us.

I love Scripture. We are very blessed in the sense that we have this so available and just

at our fingertips. Most of our brothers and sisters throughout history did not. They began

with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I think maybe they have a little bit of an advantage, because

we so easily fall back into our intellectuality and don’t even know how to hear the voice

of the Spirit for ourselves. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.”

And there’s a lot of us who are going, “Well, but don’t we just have to hear it through

whatever the leadership is, or whatever the structure is that I’m a part of?”, and

he is saying, “No.” He’s saying, “You individually, you hear my voice.” I think

that’s part of what the work of the Spirit is. It’s to tune us, to allow us, so that

through the purification process, we sense his presence, and we hear him speak to our

hearts. That becomes central. Then Scripture comes, he can illuminate it

– but I’m not at all convinced that Scripture is the sole and only place through which God

speaks. In my life, it’s been through movies even, but also music, creation, relationships,

conversation, art, architecture, incredibly beautiful cultural diversity and uniquenesses

that happen there. The Spirit is very able to speak through whatever the Spirit has available

or what we’ve given the Spirit to be available. And the Scripture provides a rudder, a foundation,

a primary means by which God reveals Christ to us. But isn’t that something that is

often misused in order to maintain some kind of control or to subjugate or to rule over

… That isn’t the Holy Spirit speaking to us through Scripture, that’s us manipulating

Scripture for our own ends, our own selfishness. Yeah, it goes back, in part, to not believing

that people can grow up to hear the voice of the Spirit for themselves – that we need

to interpret that for them so we can maintain control. A lot of people are afraid that if

people move into freedom, and freedom is why Christ came – it was for our freedom – that

if that happens, people will go do crazy things. There is good evidence that suggests that

the amount of coercion and control that’s placed on people is the reason why, when the

control comes off, they go out and do crazy things. They’ve just never matured inside

of that framework. The work of the Holy Spirit is to move us toward freedom. That is his

life in us. Freedom within the context of our understanding

of reality is all based in dependence, not in independence. We are a culture that’s

full of independence, which makes sense, and the Holy Spirit is constantly driving us toward

dependence. That is the only place where we find freedom, because we were designed to

live our life in freedom – in dependence – in that union relationship with God.

Scripture is wonderful. It is definitely something through which the frame of our lives are understood.

But if I was thrown in a prison, without it, I know the Holy Spirit would be present with

me. You have a teacher, you have an anointing on you, and in that sense you don’t need

a teacher, because the teacher lives inside of you, and in all things will teach you how

to abide in him, 1 John. Sure. And yet there’s a submission that

we all have to one another, to listen, to test our ideas, and so on, and make sure that

we are reflecting the self-sacrificial love of God rather than our own agenda. All that

works in community… Exactly, it takes us back to this relational

element that exists in the very character, nature of God, that our relationships are

just a reflection of that unity and diversity in the community of the Trinity. The beautiful

thing is that he invites us into that level of relationship.

I was thinking about Christmas this year, and you have God who is working together for

our redemption and they [Father, Son and Spirit] have this circle of relationship and they

crack it open and invite a 15-year old little girl into it and they say, “Would it be

ok if we did this?” They wait until Mary says, “Be it done unto me.” That’s the

God of the universe who is in relationship with us and submitting the process to us so

that we would join in that process with him. Same in our own hearts, same in the process

of our own healing and nowhere does he use shame to try to produce this. He doesn’t

use law to try to produce it. The beauty of it is, as we become whole, pure in heart,

we begin to see God everywhere. We see his activity, he’s in the details of our lives,

he’s in the present with us. Incredible. Is this good news or what?

You’ve been watching You’re Included, a production of Grace Communion International.