Meeting God when life hurts most

I have friends of various spiritual backgrounds and beliefs. In fact, no two of them are identical. Spirituality is a personal, evolving journey, and each road taken is unique, having different origins, routes, and destinations. Indeed, spiritual identity is part of what gives us autonomy as human beings.

There are, however, certain questions that tend to transcend these diverse spiritual paths. For instance: If a loving, omnipotent, and omnipresent God really does exist — which is, by itself, an unresolved matter for some — then why does he allow horrible things to happen? Why does he permit people to suffer and die? If there truly is a God who loves and cares deeply about each of us, why doesn't he simply eliminate the causes of death, destruction, and misery?

The answers offered to these questions are rarely satisfying. I do believe in the existence of such a God — and I'd have to set aside another blog post to explain why — but still, I likely struggle with such questions as much as someone who has never entertained the notion of an all-powerful God. These aren't questions that anyone should be ashamed of asking. In fact, they're questions that everyone, regardless of spiritual condition, has a right to explore.

That's why I found great encouragement in reading "The Shack," a novel that tells the story of one man facing such a struggle. Three years after his daughter is tragically kidnapped and murdered during a camping trip in the Pacific Northwest wilderness, Mackenzie Phillips is trying to cope with the emotional scars of his loss while continually questioning how a benign God could have any purpose in allowing such an unspeakable tragedy to happen. One day, he receives a mysterious postcard in the mail, supposedly sent by God, who tells Mackenzie that he'll be at "the shack" that weekend — the place in the wilderness where, three years earlier, his daughter's bloody dress was found.

Mackenzie is unrelentingly skeptical and aware of the insanity of the idea, yet simultaneously desperate for answers. He persuades himself to travel back to the place of his life's worst nightmare. When he arrives, he discovers that God is indeed there — but manifested in a way he never would have expected and with plans for the grieving father that he never could have predicted. During the course of this experience, Mackenzie begins to come to terms with the depths of his anger and personal agony through conversations with the God whom he blamed in large part for allowing the tragedy to happen. In the process, he discovers a perspective on his life that was nearly impossible to see through the haze of his emotional devastation.

From my perspective, this novel is remarkable for a variety of reasons. First, it tackles the questions and struggles that so many people face after experiencing unprecedented suffering or loss. Second, it refutes many of the stereotypes that are applied to God by reminding the reader that a being who exists outside the realm of our perception cannot be reduced to the standards of identification and conceptualization that we use in our limited intellectual capacity. Third, taking that limited capacity into account, it reminds the reader that ours is a deeply constrained perspective — that is, attempting to make sense of our lives solely on the basis of what we can immediately perceive is a bit like a fish attempting to make sense of dry land (or, for that matter, anything that exists above the surface of the water). Finally, perhaps most strikingly, it portrays the existence of a God who is willing and able to meet us where we are in our struggles. In Mackenzie's case, God met him in the place that symbolized the very source of his life's pain and trauma.

I recommend this book for everyone. Not all will enjoy it or agree with its concepts — in fact, some may read it and seriously question my endorsement of it. But this surely isn't a story designed to promote complete harmony and agreement among its readers. Rather, it's a story meant to help people find direction on that spiritual journey I'm referring to; and wherever you're at on that road, I'm convinced that this novel will help you take notice of your surroundings. It certainly did for me.