The Shack - Misc. Bothering Stuff

""Are there any (People) who you are not especially fond of?" Mack asks Papa. "Nope"."

I'm no Biblical scholar but I am sure that there are bits of the Bible which reveal God's wrath and judgement on people that He is not especially pleased with or fond of. Psalms 2, 5, and 58 to name a few from off the top of my head. Unless you want to say that abhor, destroy, cast out, derision, displeasure, vex, break them, dash them to pieces, perish, wrath, break their teeth, cut in pieces, vengeance, are terms of endearment.

"I [God] am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it."

Mack is told to condemn three of his children to hell and refuses.

""But I haven't judged anything," Mack offered in confusion.

"Oh, but you have. You have judged them worthy of love, even if it cost you everything. That is how Jesus loves."... "And now you know Papa's heart," she added, "who loves all his children perfectly.""

Norman Geisler, "The book also contains a classic heresy called Patripassionism (Literally: Father Suffering). Young claims that God the Father suffered along with the Son, saying, “Haven’t you seen the wounds on Papa [God the Father] too?’ I didn’t understand them. ‘How could he…?’ ‘For love. He chose the way of the cross… because of love’” (p. 165). But both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) made it very clear that it was Jesus alone who “suffered” for us on the Cross. And that He did this only through His human nature. To say otherwise is to engage in “confusing the two natures” of Christ which was explicitly condemned in the Chalcedonian Creed (A.D. 451). Suffering is a form of change, and the Bible makes it very clear that God cannot change. “I the Lord change not” (Mal. 3:6). “There is no shadow of change with Him” (Jas. 1:17). When all else changes, God “remains the same” (Heb. 1:10-12)."

"His gaze followed hers and for the first time Mack noticed the scars in her [God's] wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his. She allowed him to tenderly touch the scars, outlines of a deep piercing, and he finally looked up again into her eyes...Don't ever think that what my son chose to do didn't cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark," she stated softly and gently. "We were there together.""