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Old 11-17-2008, 03:18 PM
 
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I beg of you Christians, Put down "The Shack". It is an insult to our God and not as harmless as you think.


YouTube - The Shack Uncovered

Thirteen Heresies in The Shack-By Dr. Michael Youssef « Worth the Wait
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Old 11-17-2008, 05:26 PM
 
3,553 posts, read 5,129,724 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fundamentalist View Post
I beg of you Christians, Put down "The Shack". It is an insult to our God and not as harmless as you think.


YouTube - The Shack Uncovered

Thirteen Heresies in The Shack-By Dr. Michael Youssef « Worth the Wait
Well then, since you probably haven't even read the book, let's take a look at the supposed heresies.

Quote:
1. God the Father was crucified with Jesus.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Because God’s eyes are pure and cannot look upon sin, the Bible says that God would not look upon His own beloved Son as He hung on the Cross, carrying our sins (Habakkuk 1:13; Matthew 27:45).
Then Jesus isn't God, and God isn't Jesus, according to Michael.

Quote:
2. God is limited by His love and cannot practice justice.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
The Bible declares that God’s love and His justice are two sides of the same coin — equally a part of the personality and the character of God (Isaiah 61:8; Hosea 2:19).
Where is this in the book?

Quote:
3. On the Cross, God forgave all of humanity, whether they repent or not. Some choose a relationship with Him, but He forgives them all regardless.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Jesus explained that only those who come to Him will be saved (John 14:6).
Saying that God did not forgive ALL of humanity is belittling the Blood of Christ. Almost like something was left UNDONE. We know, as Christians, that ALL are forgiven, but being forgiven and being sanctified into His Kingdom are two entirely different things.

Quote:
4. Hierarchical structures, whether they are in the Church or in the government, are evil.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Our God is a God of order (Job 25:2).
By God, this is true. People are the ones who need rulers, so since they need rulers to rule over them, God grants this.

Quote:
5. God will never judge people for their sins.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
The Word of God repeatedly invites people to escape from the judgment of God by believing in Jesus Christ, His Son (Romans 2:16; 2 Timothy 4:1-3).
Show me this in the book, again.

Quote:
6. There is not a hierarchical structure in the Godhead, just a circle of unity.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
The Bible says that Jesus submitted to the will of the Father. This doesn’t mean that one Person is higher or better than the other; just unique. Jesus said, “I came to do the will of Him who sent me. I am here to obey my Father.” Jesus also said, “I will send you the Holy Spirit” (John 4:34, 6:44, 14:26, 15:26).
As Christians, we know that God is in ALL. Therefore, since God is ALL and in ALL, then where is the forced hierarchy? Submission is our own free will. There are many today that DONOT submit to Jesus as King. Just as Jesus will one day turn the Kingdom back to the Father. Why? Ask yourself that question.

Quote:
7. God submits to human wishes and choices.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Far from God submitting to us, Jesus said, “Narrow is the way that leads to eternal life.” We are to submit to Him in all things, for His glory and because of what He has accomplished for us (Matthew 7:13-15).
Was not Lot's family saved from destruction, based upon Abraham's concerns? And furthermore, if God allows you to sin, then is He submitting to YOUR will?

Quote:
8. Justice will never take place because of love.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
The Bible teaches that when God’s love is rejected, and when the offer of salvation and forgiveness is rejected, justice must take place or God has sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for nothing (Matthew 12:20; Romans 3:25-26).
God IS LOVE, so the Justice of God must be in accordance with His FIRST Nature. Read on what happens next, since Matthew 12:20 is quoting Isa 42:3
Isa 42:4
4"He will not be disheartened or crushed
Until He has established justice in the earth;
And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law."

Has it been established?

Quote:
9. There is no such a thing as eternal judgment or torment in hell.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Jesus’ own description of hell is vivid … it cannot be denied (Luke 12:5, 16:23).
There is much theological debate going on in the church right now because of "hell". Since I haven't died, and haven't "seen" it for myself, I will reserve this topic for God Himself. He is the Judge.

Quote:
10. Jesus is walking with all people in their different journeys to God, and it doesn’t matter which way you get to Him.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will come to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).
This I actually would agree with. How do you or anyone know the Way of Jesus? From a book called the Bible. So, again, if you place yourself as the sole proprietor of the Truth, for the whole planet? Good luck with that one. I would think a man such as Ghandi would be what Jesus was talking about concerning the Way.


Quote:
11. Jesus is constantly being transformed along with us.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Jesus, who dwells in the splendor of heaven, sits at the right hand of God, reigning and ruling the universe. The Bible says, “In Him there is no change, for He is yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 11:12, 13:8; James 1:17).
Again, show me this in the book.

Quote:
12. There is no need for faith or reconciliation with God because everyone will make it to heaven.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
Jesus said, “Only those who believe in me will have eternal life” (John 3:15, 3:36, 5:24, 6:40).
I didn't read that anywhere, so again, show me.

Quote:
13. The Bible is not true because it reduces God to paper.
http://www.leadingtheway.org/images/content/ltw/clear_pxl.gif (broken link)
The Bible is God-breathed. Sure, there were many men through 1,800 years who put pen to paper (so to speak), each from different professions and different backgrounds, but the Holy Spirit infused their work with God’s words. These men were writing the same message from Genesis to Revelation. If you want to read more about the place of Christ in the Scripture, read “
We Preach Christ” (2 Timothy 3:16).
This I would agree with, as most Fundies, I know, actually treat the Bible as a God. God is so much more than a book. Look at a flower, or a bird. Marvel at His Creation. Look at your neighbor, and feel his needs. Fulfill them.

Mankind has done much to reduce God to a "sinners prayer", or a "thou shalt". Jesus summed it up nicely. Love God first, Love your neighbor second. How many in all walks of life, and from all different religions, practice this faithfully? Now how many, as "Christians", follow this SAME Law? Does this sound a little "Oneness"? Well, Jesus said it, not me.

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Old 11-17-2008, 06:40 PM
 
Location: In the North Idaho woods, still surrounded by terriers
2,179 posts, read 6,995,615 times
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Shaking my head in amazement at the silliness of the OP. Fear the book! Run from the book! Good grief...
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Old 11-17-2008, 07:08 PM
 
Location: among the chaos
2,136 posts, read 4,776,834 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fundamentalist View Post
I beg of you Christians, Put down "The Shack". It is an insult to our God and not as harmless as you think.


YouTube - The Shack Uncovered

Thirteen Heresies in The Shack-By Dr. Michael Youssef « Worth the Wait


I'm sorry, I have not followed the entire "shack" thread. I did, however, read the book. I liked it. I read it as a book of fiction. As I believe the author intended it. I don't understand how reading a book could be offensive to God. I am confused. Please enlighten me. Is there a wave going on across our nation of people putting down their Bible and proclaiming "The Shack" as something other than a book of fiction? Is there a new denomination that I have not yet heard of? Perhaps the Holy Trinity of the Shack? Really, Fundamentalist. I just don't get it.

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Old 11-17-2008, 07:20 PM
 
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I have no problem with this book..In fact, I thought it was a wonderful work of FICTION written to the authors children.
In fact I have piles and piles of my own writings that I expect to give to my children and grandkids one day..A whole lot of it is my PERSONAL thoughts about God, and how I came to know him and just what he has meant in my life..I did not thumb through my bible to make sure everything I wrote down was biblical..I told them of my personal journey in establishing my relationship with God through His Spirit..
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Old 11-17-2008, 09:49 PM
 
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The mere fact the book has so many .. eh hem ~cough cough~ smart bible people in an uproar is all the more reason for me to read it again and tell everyone about it.

Love shack.. baby love shack...
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Old 03-07-2010, 06:05 AM
 
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My name is Aram and I just finished reading The Shack. I then went online and happened across a bunch of people arguing about it, for what looks like a few years now. People are calling this a heresy, a dangerous book, and warning people not to read it.
Why?
I normally never comment on these things, but being an unbeliever – yes that’s right, I am not a Christian – I thought it might be useful for some of these theology spouting authorities to take a moment and look at what I, not a churchgoer in any way, have gleaned from this little book. And then ask yourself - because I really don’t know much about the Bible - is anything I learned leading me in the wrong direction? Perhaps all the way to this burning lake of fire so many Christians love trying to scare non-Christians with? If this is the case, then I guess you’re right, and based on what you believe people shouldn’t read this book.
For me, I don’t believe fear and rules to be the answer, I never have. This has been the main reason for my avoidance of the church. However, when you preach love and forgiveness, through whatever means conveys it the best, whether fiction or otherwise, well now, my heart begins to open a tad. It makes me actually want to pick up a Bible perhaps and maybe read a little further.
Teach love my Christian friends, because people like me, we don’t respond well to fear tactics. And we definitely don’t get turned on by arrogant church leaders who think they have it all figured out.
Below are 57 new ideas I took away from this little book. Many are direct quotes from the book itself.

1.The different appearances of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were used to help Mack break his religious conditioning.

2.You don’t get brownie points for doing something through obligation; only if you want to.

3.Life takes a lot of time and a lot of relationship.

4.How free are we really? - family genetics, social influences, personal habits, advertising, propaganda & paradigms etc. Freedom is an incremental process that happens inside a relationship with Jesus Christ.

5.When all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of God.

6.Pain has a way of clipping our wings, so we can’t fly. After awhile we forget we were ever created to fly.

7.When Jesus became a man he gave up his own ability to heal people and do miracles. His miracles were accomplished by Jesus’ (a man, a dependent limited human being) trust in the Father God. We are all designed to live like that, out of God’s life and power.

8.God exists in three persons so we, his creation, can also live in love and relationship, just like God does. If God didn’t, we couldn’t. “God cannot act apart from love.”

9.Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid wanting power is to limit oneself – to serve.

10.Sin is its own punishment, devouring from the inside. It’s not God’s purpose to punish it; it’s God’s joy to cure it.

11.When people choose independence over relationship, we become a danger to each other.

12.If people learned to regard each other’s concerns as significant as their own, there would be no need for hierarchy. God does not relate inside a hierarchy; God wants us to trust him because he will never use or hurt us.

13.When Christians don’t trust God it’s because they don’t know they are loved by him. They think God is not good.

14.Mack says: “I just can’t imagine any final outcome that would justify all this (pain, suffering etc).” Papa replies: “We’re not justifying it. We are redeeming it.”

15.The choice of God to hide so many wonders from man is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.

16.For any created being, autonomy is lunacy.

17.When something happens to us, how do we determine whether it is good or bad? By whether we like it or if it causes us pain. This is self-serving and self-centred.

18.We become the judge of good and evil; so when each person’s good and evil clashes with someone else’s, fights, even wars, break out.

19.Eating of the tree tore the universe apart, divorcing the spiritual from the physical. All of us died, expelling the very breath of God.

20.We play God in our independence. The only remedy is to give up the right to decide good and evil and choose to live in God and trust and rest in his goodness.

21.God is light and God is good. Removing ourselves from God will plunge us into darkness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from God, you can only draw on yourself. That is death, because you have separated yourself from God, from Life.

22.This concept is difficult for us because the good may be the presence of cancer or the loss of income, or even a life. Sarayu answers: “Don’t you think we care about these people who suffer too? Each of them is the centre of another story that is untold.”

23.About having ‘rights’: “‘Rights’ are where survivors go so they won’t have to work out relationships.”

24.Jesus gave up his rights so his dependent life would open a door that would allow us to live free enough to give up our rights.

25.Each of us is wild, beautiful, and perfectly in process when God is working with a purpose in our hearts. We are an emerging, growing, and alive pattern – a living fractal.

26.We tend to live either in the past or the future; dwelling on the pain and the regret of the past, instead of a quick visit to learn something from it. Or fearing the future, letting our imagination run wild with worry, and forgetting to see the future with Jesus. This happens when: a. we don’t really know we’re loved and b. we don’t believe that God is good.

27.Apart from Jesus’ life, we cannot submit one to another. Jesus’ life is not an example to be copied. Jesus came to live his life in us; so we will see with God’s eyes, hear with his ears, love with his heart, and touch with his hands.

28.Some say love grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it. Love is the skin of knowing.

29.We human beings are constantly judging others because we are self-centred.

30.We say: “Predators deserve judgment, their parents, too, for twisting them, and their parents, and on and on, until finally we go right back to Adam, and then, why not judge God? He started it all…isn’t God to blame for our losses? He could have not created, or he could have stopped the killer, but he didn’t.” If we can judge God so easily then, of course, we can judge the world. We must then (e.g.) choose two of our five children to go to heaven and three to go to hell, because that’s what we believe God does. Mack could not choose any one of his children because he loved them no matter what they did. So instead, he begged that he could go to hell for his children. This response is exactly what Jesus did. Mack judged well. He judged his children worthy of love, even if it cost him everything. This is how Jesus loves. ‘And now we know Papa’s heart.”

31.God’s love is so much larger than our sin could ever be.

32.Evil was never a plan of God’s. We must return from our independence, give up being his judge, and know God for who he is.

33.When we receive God’s love and stop judging him we let go of the guilt and despair that had sucked the colours of life out of everything.

34.God never abandons his children. We are never alone. God could no more abandon us than he could abandon himself.

35.“Live loved.”

36.When we leave the light of God and retreat to the darkness all alone, the darkness makes our fears, lies, and regrets bigger in the dark. Sometimes, as a kid, doing this is part of survival, but now we must come to the light.

37.Jesus will travel any road to find his children. But only one road leads back to heaven.

38.Stories about a person willing to exchange their life for another reveal our need and God’s heart.

39.Even though God can work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies, it does not mean God caused it. Where there is suffering, you will find grace in many facets and colours.

40.‘Love’ bothers to keep trying to touch people and never gives up.

41.Sometimes we hide inside lies that justify who we are and what we do.

42.Ask for forgiveness and let the forgiveness heal you. Take the risk of honesty. Faith does not grow in the house of uncertainty.

43.Our transformation is a miracle greater than raising the dead.

44.All evil flows from independence.

45.God’s purposes are always and only an expression of love. God works life out of death, freedom out of brokenness, and light out of darkness.

46.Emotions are neither good nor bad. They are the colours of the soul. They are spectacular and incredible.

47.The more you live in the truth, the more our emotions will help you see clearly.

48.Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control. Keeping the law grants us the power to judge others and feel superior.

49.Responsibility and expectation are dead nouns, full of judgment, guilt, and shame. Our identity becomes wrapped up in performance. The opposite is when God gives us an ability to respond that is free to love and serve in every situation, with God in us; and expectancy is alive and dynamic with no concrete expectation – only the gift of being together.

50.To the degree we live with expectations and responsibilities is the degree we fear and the degree we don’t trust or know God.

51.If God is the centre of everything, then together we can live through everything that happens to us.

52.Forgiveness is big.

53.When bad things happen, what God had to offer us in response is his love, goodness, and relationship with us.

54.God doesn’t do humiliation, guilt, or condemnation. They don’t produce one speck of wholeness or righteousness.

55.Forgiving isn’t about forgetting; it’s about letting go of another person’s throat.

56.Forgiveness does not create a relationship; it simply removes them from your judgment.

57.Because you are important to God, everything you do is important.

I gotta tell you, this book made me want to explore the idea of God a little more, and I just can’t see how that is a bad thing.
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Old 03-07-2010, 06:45 AM
 
Location: New England
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If orthodox christianity is against it you can be sure God is for it, and if God is against it orthodox christianity will be for it .

The book is available at Walmart for around $10 , if anyone has a problem getting hold of it DM me , i have a spare copy and will mail it to you free of charge .
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Old 03-07-2010, 07:43 AM
 
Location: US
32,530 posts, read 21,840,798 times
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Originally Posted by Miss Blue View Post
I have no problem with this book..In fact, I thought it was a wonderful work of FICTION written to the authors children.
In fact I have piles and piles of my own writings that I expect to give to my children and grandkids one day..A whole lot of it is my PERSONAL thoughts about God, and how I came to know him and just what he has meant in my life..I did not thumb through my bible to make sure everything I wrote down was biblical..I told them of my personal journey in establishing my relationship with God through His Spirit..
I think the Point Fundy is making is along the lines of what happened with other Christian works of fiction...Like the lefte behind series and Frank Peretti novels...I have come accross people witnessing to non-believers in such a way that much of their words were coming from those novels and not the Bible...they were, so to speak, in a fantasy world...I have read all those novels and thought they were well written and exciting however, when it comes to Truth i look to the Bible....many young Christians have difficulty with this and their scriptural knowledge is tainted be these Christian works of fiction...While i would find some enjoyment in these novels, i find much more enjoyment seeing the ordainations of God unfolding according to scripture and seeing His handiwork in all i see, touch, smell or hear...and knowing that it all did not just spontaneously or chaotically happen but that a divine being created it all and has all of it under control...i believe that since nothing is outside of God, that all creation, including the universe, is resident within God, that He holds the entirety of creation not only in His hand but inside of His hand...this would make sense for nothing can exist outside of God...God even created the matter out of nothing with which He created...So, it is true according to scripture that nothing exists without Him having made it and nothing has happened without Him having made it happen...i've push my mind past the farthest limits of the atmosphere for understanding of God and existance...and learned...past the planets God has made...and learned...to the edges of the universe i have pondered the knowledge of God and have learned...it is God that ordains all and holds all together in perfect harmony in accordance with His secret council...
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Old 03-08-2010, 08:20 AM
 
5,925 posts, read 6,907,277 times
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Originally Posted by Fundamentalist View Post
I beg of you Christians, Put down "The Shack". It is an insult to our God and not as harmless as you think.

Yes, put it down, lest you become better than you once was.
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