One of the blogs I read is Greg Boyd’s. I’ve mentioned him before. He is one of my favorite writers, thinkers, pastor types. He wrote a book entitled “The Myth of a Christian Nation that I’m planning to review on this blog when I get the time that was MONEY in helping me think through some of the issues of Journey’s position on the political involvement with the gay marriage issue.
I saw that he reviewed The Shack; a book that we’ve talked about that I think is must reading. Here are a couple of quotes to wet your appetite:
I felt like the portrait of God in this novel was beautiful and reflective of what we find revealed in the New Testament. And the theological and psychological insights of this book were at times profound and consistently communicated in brilliantly simple ways. A good deal of the dialogue is about the problem of evil, but the novel touches on everything from the Trinity, Incarnation and the nature of free will to the nature of relationships, forgiveness and even the role of our imagination in staying anchored in “the Now.”
Now, you might think that a book with all this theology would be pretty boring, but it’s not — at all. It’s actually a page-turner.
Over and over God stresses that he does not in any sense cause evil. But he does respond to it in ways that always end up furthering his purposes in the world. In fact, the novel contains some probing insights into the nature of love and freedom. Young even has a superb section that explores the irrevocability of free will and the mind-boggling interrelatedness of the “ripple effects” of our choices.
You can get the rest of the review here.
One word of clarification: I don’t agree with Greg’s (Dr. Boyd) view called Open Theism or Openness Theology. But I do find the discussion of it helpful and I don’t think OT is without merit. If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about just read the review & you’ll be fine.
By the way, some other wonderful works by Greg are “Letters from a Skeptic” and “Seeing is Believing”.
If you haven’t yet, I hope this encourages you to pick up a copy of The Shack & read it.
Ed
