Intriguing Quotes From "The Shack"
I just finished reading "The Shack" by William P. Young, and have here included the parts that made me think the most. Perhaps they will make you think too...
So, tell me what you think!!
God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?
Freedom is an incremental process. 95
Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. 97
All love an relationship is possible for you only because it already exists within Me, within God myself. 101
Unless I had an object to love-or, more accurately, a someone to love-if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all. You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could only love as a limitation of his nature. [...] The God who is-the I am who I am-cannot act apart from love! 102
Don't confuse adaptation for intention, or seduction for reality. 123
The real underlying flaw in your life is that you don't think I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything-the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives-is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me. But you don't. 126
Evil is a word we use to describe the absence of Good, just as we use darkness to describe the absence of Light or death to describe the absence of Life. Both evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have an actual existence. I am Light and I am Good. I am Love and there is no darkness in me. Light and Good actually exist. So, removing yourself from me will plunge you into darkness. Declaring independence from me will result in evil because apart from me, you can only draw upon yourself . That is death because you have separated yourself form me: Life. 136
Living fractal. 138
When we see each other or are apart, there is expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking. That expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique give shared by no one else. But what happens if I change that 'expectancy' to an 'expectation'-spoken or unspoken? Suddenly, law has entered into our relationship. You are now expected to perform in a way that mets my expectations. Our living friendship rapidly deteriorates into a dead thing with rules and requirements. 205
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. -Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So, tell me what you think!!
