“Then I fell at [Aslan’s] feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, ‘Son, thou art welcome.’ But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?’ I said, ‘Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.’ But I said also (for the truth constrained me), ‘Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.’ ‘Beloved,’ said the Glorious One, ‘unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.’

“Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much, but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.”

I have read the Shack of Mack.
I have read this paperback.
I would not give it to my friends.
I might just spoil how it ends.

[. . .]

That Mack in Shack!
That Mack in Shack!
I do not like that Mack in Shack!

Instead of writing like his favorite authors, though, he simply asserts in his own sentences the effects that their writing has on him. The result is oppressive, as in the description of a tree that the character Mack crashes into: As he lies prone and looks up into the tree, it is said “to stand over him with a smug look mixed with disgust and not a little disappointment.” Take a moment right now, reader, to see if you can arrange your face into an expression that communicates smugness mixed with disgust and disappointment. You will find it “not a little” impossible, and you have greater expressive range than trees. This is typical of the way Young projects attitudes rather than actually describing anything.

[. . .]

Whatever religious readers may make of the theological Trinity in this book, the most heretical trinity is surely this trinity of the Foreword and the first chapter, wherein three personas speak to us in a single confused voice, crying out with a shrill faux-folksiness, “Please like me! Please like me! I’m ever so authentic!”

[. . .]

And the clichés became flesh, and they dwelt in the shack. Throughout this section, the worst narrative passages sound something like “By the time Mack woke up, Jesus already had the waffles a-cookin’, and the Holy Ghost had cracked a couple eggs.” That is not an actual quotation, but here is one: Papa, the woman who portrays God the Father, reflects on her tendency to love everybody by saying, “”Guess that’s jes’ the way I is.” And before the reader can finish rubbing his eyes in disbelief, three lines later Papa says “Sho’ nuff!” Though he comes perilously close, Young at least manages to keep his God character from saying “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout rulin’ no universe!”

Eugene Peterson
Said it was good as Bunyan.
He must have meant Paul.

[. . .]

My copy was free
But I almost lost my mind
Inside of the Shack.

Curiously, some people in the more left-leaning side of our dysfunctional Christian family are backing away from the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Those in the more established liberal churches, along with their emergent offspring, are routinely decrying the concept that Jesus paid the penalty (death) for our sin in our place on the cross. They say it is too gory, too scary, too bloody, too masculine, and too violent. Furthermore, they say that in our tender little world of kindness, such teachings won’t help further the kingdom of meek and mild Jesus.

Meanwhile, non-Christians in the culture seem to have an insatiable appetite for the doctrine. The storyline of masculine sacrifice of one’s life to save others remains one of the most powerfully moving themes in pop culture. It was amazing, for example, to sit in a theater watching The Chronicles of Narnia [LWW] and observe the reaction of a largely non-Christian audience to Aslan. If you remember, Aslan is the Christ figure in the story, or the lion that represents Jesus as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” In the story, Aslan willingly and nobly lays down his life as a substitute for those he loves to save them from the rule of evil. The theater became quiet and still at the sacrifice of Aslan—even non-Christians were moved to deep sorrow and tears. Later in the story, when Aslan returns back to life as a victorious king, a heartfelt joy returned to the crowd, and some people even broke out in applause and cheers.

Why? Because deep down, even though we are sinners, we remain God’s image bearers. Like Solomon said, God has set eternity in our hearts and we cannot shake our yearning to be delivered from evil and death by a conquering hero who loves us enough to give us new life through his death.

While fiction is by definition a story that doesn't pretend to be true, it still must adhere to certain basic rules. You can create any universe you like, but once you've created it, you must stick to its internal logic. If zurts are green and fly and jurts are blue and don't fly, you cannot willy-nilly switch these “facts” around, even if they are totally products of your imagination. And if for some reason in your story we see a blue jurt that is flying, you'd better have a good narrative explanation for why or else you've confused the reader.

[. . .]

If you're going to ground your fiction in the real world, then it must conform to the rules of the real world we live in. No unicorns or magic squirrels allowed. Even one of my favorite literary genres, Magical Realism, adheres to certain basic rules.

So if you're going to have God as a character in your real-world fiction, then you must deal with God as he has revealed himself in Scripture. By using the Trinity as characters in this story set in the real world, The Shack author William P. Young is clearly indicating that he's supposedly talking about the God of Christianity. But God has said certain things about himself in Scripture, and much of what Young does in this novel contradicts that. I don't care if he's trying to make God more “accessible.” He's violated the rules of fiction.

[. . .]

To those people who have snapped up copies of The Shack to give to non-Christian friends, you are doing them no favors. You are introducing them to a false god. You are inoculating them against the claims of the True God of Scripture. And more to the point, you're just giving them bad fiction.

Worshiping John Piper. What a bitter irony. Piper seems aware of the problem. “The test of whether you are seeing and savoring Christ or humanly drawn to me will now be put to the test,” Piper told his congregation when I visited shortly before he left on sabbatical. “My prayer and hope is that you will show in these next five months that your allegiance is not primarily to me.

2. Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be)

Thus far I've only skimmed through this book, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, but it's apparent to me that they are trying to beat the ”emergent church“ types at their own game. This isn't a negative reaction, either — the book cover is colorful, and readers will also find occasional grayish illustrations inside, accompanying text that's easy-to-read in both style and substance. The authors are quoting trendy ”emergent“ dudes such as Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and what's-his-name who wrote Blue Like Jazz — Donald Miller. Their style is very informal, similar to the ”emergent“ dudes, and similar to my attempt in the last sentence when I wrote ”what's-his-name“ (see, I can do it too). And they're directly presenting doctrine and defense for Jesus Christ and real Truth in Christendom.

Young, Restless, Reformed is a relatively short book; Not Emergent is about 40 percent longer. Methinks each one of these, but perhaps particularly the latter, will result in a book review, here and perhaps even elsewhere.



3. For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

This is volume 1, and Carson had apparently just had volume 2 published. It was available and recommended at New Attitude; however, I had figured that I might as well purchase the first one first, then work my way around to the second.

That may take about a year, because this is a one-year devotional sort of book, with 365 short articles by Carson to accompany a daily schedule for Scripture reading. However, I haven't yet tried it for today — perhaps I will. Today's selection, then, would be Deuteronomy 13 - 14, Psalms 99 - 101, Isaiah 41 and Revelation 11. In what order, though, are these? The book's schedule in January starts with Genesis, Matthew, Ezra and Acts. Perhaps I'll find out when I begin following the schedule and reading the articles, which should be soon. Carson seems to base his mini-essays either, on the Old Testament selection, and some on the New, again, seeming (thus far) to be in no particular order.



Meanwhile ...

Throughout the past several days I've dabbled back into my ”big blue book," an older-edition copy of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem. I've also read a few chapters into The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky's nonfiction about historical Western solutions to societal poverty problems compared with today's flawed and impersonal approaches.

Methinks more discipline is in order: surely I should be picking one book and sticking with it to the end. ... However, even the two editors say they don't expect most readers to burn through Recovering from cover to cover (which I already have once, to some extent).

At the same time, I'm continuing review of notes from the New Attitude conference itself, for which I took adequate notes — off and on throughout that four-day event, that is.

Author/pastor/Sovereign Grace Ministries leader CJ Mahaney, for example, is somewhat (and positively) repetitious in his messages. He — can — be — speaking very slowly — drawing out a point ...

Andthensuddenlyhe'sworkedupandtalkingrapidlyandcausing anote-taker'stypingfingerstogetveryannoyedveryfast.

And with John Piper — well, even a fast typist might as well give up sometimes. Plus, he's just plain fun to watch.

Therefore, I have a combination of typed notes, handwritten notes, and notes yet-to-be-written while I actually re-listen to the messages, which are available here in free MP3s anyway. But I've learned so much all over again simply by reviewing them for myself, and adapting them into written forms that approximate articles. Even only Al Mohler's material — which is due to be posted sometime this week — is worth the effort.

Well, here’s the part where I take my turn writing a column about the whole Phillip Pullman / His Dark Materials / my-books-are-about-killing-God muddle that’s been going on recently.

In fact, here’s also the part where I take my turn, finally, writing a column about anything.

(To those who keep up with these sorts of things, I offer my sincerest and most humble and personal apologies for what as of today amounts to several weeks of absence from Speculative Faith column contributions. My days are supposed to be Wednesdays; today is Thursday, of course. Yet late is better than never — either one day, or about 1.5 months.)


The Mohler-nator speaks

My focus here is partly inspired after I read the Dec. 4-posted
blog column by Dr. Albert Mohler, author-speaker-pundit-radio-host, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and eminent theologian-on-the-field extraordinaire.

In the piece, Mohler runs down, for the first time to me anyway, the general plotlines of atheistic author Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, recently released as a film, and the rest of that British writer’s books.

Following the Harry Potter series’ closure and the near-simultaneous seeming dearth of controversy over that, not even J.K. Rowling’s “outing” of Prof. Dumbledore got some Christians nearly as riled as they are now about the Dark Materials movie and books. J.K. Rowling may not be at all as “Christian” as her over-eager Christian defenders have been out to contend, but she wasn’t out to convert people to Satanism either, as other religious hyper-activists strongly maintained.

In this case, though, all those intensely fierce and frantic email forwards floating out there about how evil Philip Pullman is out to brainwash children toward Atheism with his books are, in fact, absolutely true. He’s said before — I’m already weary of the quote being frequently cited — about how all his stuff is ultimately about “killing God.”

(Read the column's remainder at Speculative Faith ...)

Chuck Norris doesn't actually write books, the words assemble themselves out of fear.

-- “Chuck Norris Facts”

Perhaps that explains this?

About two days ago I saw this item in a Christian book catalog and was slightly stunned. After all, hardback copies of the first book in this series were once available by the dozens on the shelves at the Christian bookstore where I used to work, at about $24.95 apiece. After less-than-lackluster sales, the store finally shipped many of them back to the publisher as dead weight and sometime later received paperback reprints at about $10 apiece, which gained similar non-blockbuster status.

Perhaps the credits on the front, strongly implying the book was actually written by CHUCK NORRIS (!!!) but may actually be the combined products of the three-man committee whose members' names follow, had something to do with this?

Surely, Chuck Norris may be able to beat everyone at the computer game “Oregon Trail,” change the law of physics, bench-press the Earth, etc., but no one has time to do all that and become a real professional novelist.

Yet the mere strength of the name seems enough to warrant a sequel — albeit a $10 paperback first print — even to a first book that only got 10 reviews on Amazon, some negative, and the others positive mostly only because this was a Clean Old West Novel (as if no Christian writer ever thought of that idea before).

The publishing industry is indeed strange; the Christian publishing industry, even stranger.

Disclaimer: I realize that, especially as I have not actually read the book, I am supposedly risking horrible deaths by roundhouse kicks and possibly subsequent cannibalism by the inimitable Chuck Norris.

However, in my defense, I must reluctantly cite the karate fighter/actor's columns at the uberconservative WorldNetDaily cyber-newspaper — especially this one — as proof that the man is actually a rather gentle, overall harmless soul; and aside from the apparently poor forays into fiction “authoring,” thus far I have much admiration for his accomplishments and Christian faith.)