Shack'n Up

Over the weekend I helped out with a One-on-One Father-Child retreat at a summer camp in western New Hampshire. My responsibilities were to assist with icebreaker games, organize a game of Crazy Kickball, perform the hand motions to the kid-friendly worship song, “Pharaoh, Pharaoh,” give a Bible lesson, and facilitate a craft. Sounds like a lot of work, but it was seriously a chill weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday left me with entire afternoons left to nothing other than swimming in the lake and relaxing in the sun at the waterfront beach area.

In addition to eliminating my farmer’s tan line, I used the time at the lake to read a book that I picked up last week called The Shack. The book has received a good deal of notoriety and has quickly climbed to the top of best seller lists. Reading this book is kind of a big deal for me because it’s fiction. I realize that probably sounds dumb, yet rarely do I explore the realm of fiction.

If you ask me, The Shack is a funny name for a book. But it’s appropriate considering that in the book a dilapidated old building in the woods is where a tragic and bloody event occurs. The shack is central to the story. Anyway, the reason I share this bit of information is because my stay at the summer camp had me sleeping in—you guessed it—a shack. No joke, this old staff cabin was a creepy place to lay my head and its striking similarity to the shack depicted in the novel had me nervous.

Regardless, I think I want this post to have more to do with the book than my weekend at Camp Squanto.

To my surprise, The Shack is very theological. It’s full of commentary on the nature of God, human freedom, relationships, sin, and hierarchy. The following is a passage from the book where God is talking about the difference between the relationship that exists between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the social order that prevails in human relationships:

We are in a circle of relationship, not a chain of command or ‘great chain of being’ as your ancestors termed it. What you’re seeing here is relationship without any overlay of power. We don’t need power over the other because we are always looking out for the best. Hierarchy would make no sense among us…Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people could work or live together without someone being in charge…It’s one reason why experiencing true relationship is difficult for you…Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. You rarely see or experience relationship apart from power. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.

I guess it's ironic that I believe humans are made in the image of God, and yet it is unimaginable for me to picture human society without any hierarchy. "Lost and damaged"--that is what we are.