“If anything matters…everything matters”

So runs the strapline for William Paul Young’s ‘The Shack’.

I wouldn’t have dreamt of reading it – had it not been the subject of our local clergy book club.  But I’m glad I did.

Eugene Peterson writes that “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his.  It’s that good!”  I’m not sure about that – but it was good.

It’s a book about God, and the Trinity, and suffering, and judgement, and forgiveness, and sacrifice, and above all about relationships: God’s with him/her/themselves (you have to read it!), our’s with God, and our’s with one another.  I don’t think it says anything new about any of that – but it does use some novel and interesting metaphors and images to convey it all.  And you can ready it all in a day!

The author uses the quote from the book: “If anything matters…everything matters” as the strapline on his website. 

My own ‘keynote’ quote would be: [Papa (God), to Mack (the central character)] “…just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies.  Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes.  That will only lead you to false notions about me.  Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.”

Darwin or Dawkins ?

I got a flyer through the door a couple of days ago – from my local Evangelical Church – inviting me to a meeting entitled:’Creation or Evolution? How did we get here?’ led by a Dr Steve Taylor Bsc(Eng), MEng, PhD, AGGI, FIEE, Reader of Electrical Englineering and Electronics [I think they mean 'in' rather than 'of'!], of the University of Liverpool.  Wow!  Strange, though.  When I was studying for my BSc(Eng) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, there was nothing on the syllabus that included either evolutionary biology or theology – although the unit on quatum mechanics came quite close to theology.  Is this part of the (long dead?) science v. theology debate?  Hey, look, an engineer who believes! But who may or may not know anything about evolution or theology.

Strangely, too, I am, at the moment, in the middle of re-reading ‘Wonderful Life – The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History‘ by Stephen Jay Gould, an oldish book (1989), but still gripping (if a little difficult to my engineering/theologically trained mind) – and perhaps becoming increasingly relevant today.  Based on the discovery, in 1909, of a mass of fossils in British Columbia dating from the Cambrian ‘explosion’ of life 570 million years ago, and providing the basis for Gould’s discussion about the nature of life and evolution.  Gould is an evolutionary biologist, who sticks to what he knows as a biologist and does not enter into that ‘creation/evolution’ debate – but between his lines about that great blossoming of life all those years ago I read a subtext (mine, not his) that shouts ‘God did this!’  I really cannot get my head around this ‘creationism’ thing.  I would welcome comments from any others who have read ‘Wonderful Life’ and are similarly inspired/bewildered.