Shack Defender Calls Matt an Infidel

My recent letter to the editor regarding The Shack has generated a goodly amount of attention around town. I have had quite a bit of positive feedback on it.  In today's TG though, I was basically called an infidel by a fellow who wrote a rebuttal editorial. After a lengthy summary of my article he said,

The analysis given by Timmons reminds me of the same attitude and approach the Jewish religious authorities had in the 5th chapter of the Gospel of John. How right Jesus is in verse 5:39-40 when Jesus says "You search (the Aramaic translation implies a frantic search) the Scripture because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that bear witness of me; and you are unwilling to come to me (Jesus) so you may have life."

I see in Timmons' letter the same kind of unbelief and lack of faith exhibited by those same teachers of the law that Jesus encountered. To be true, very learned men and men who had studied and committed themselves to preserving ancient traditions and the law, but, nonetheless, men who quenched the life-giving spirit of God by insisting on the "right doctrine" and "the correct theology" and conforming to the Scripture as they had read and interpreted it.

Unfortunately, this poor man does not understand the meaning of the Scripture he quotes.  The religious leaders thought their simply having the Scriptures, reading them regularly, and hearing them expounded each Sabbath gave them eternal life--thus, a form of salvation by works.  Jesus was pointing out though, that it is not the mere reading of the book that gives life, but the person to whom the book points that gives life. 

Moreover, this random quoting of Scripture ignores the deluge of passages that tell us to hold to "sound doctrine" (that phrase alone is used at least 4 times in the epistles of Timothy and Titus).

What I find most humorous is that the author of this article rebuts himself with his own article.  He says,

As God reaches out to us, He does not require us to have the correct doctrine and the correct belief and I think that all of us end up radically changing our view of God as we mature and progress on our life journey. It doesn't take Timmons to warn us because God patiently transforms us and changes our heart and, therefore, the way we think.

In essence, he lays out a doctrine which says that God does not require us to have the correct doctrine.  I wonder if I am supposed to believe that is correct or not.

Nevertheless, this last quote gives us a good insight into why The Shack has such grand appeal in our contemporary Christian culture.  God, according to them, is someone we are allowed to think of any way we want. Doctrine is passe, and it should not determine what we think about God or life in general.

If this is true, then why don't we all just think of God as a golden calf? 

The golden calf incident in Ex. 32 reminds us that God despises it when we conceive of him in ways that are not in accord with Scripture.  When Moses was on the mountain for an extended period of time, the Israelites cried out, "Come, make us gods who will go before us."  Aaron came back somewhat respectively by saying of the image that he had created, "These are your gods who brought you out of Egypt."  In other words, Aaron was not making completely new gods.  Rather he made depictions of the same god, the LORD (i.e. the one who brought them out of Egypt).  He went on to say in verse 5 that there would be a feast to, not new gods, but the LORD.

This tempering of the idolotry by Aaron though, did not appease the Lord in the least.  The incident in Ex. 32 shows God was greatly insenced by what Aaron did.  What Aaron's actions amounted to was what we see with The Shack crowd.  It is a re-imaging of the one and only, true and living God after our own conceptions. 

The Bible teaches us that God is only to be thought of one way: as He reveals himself.  To conceive of him in any other way is to defile his glory and beauty and fall into idolatry.