Some people believe that The Shack is a true story attributed to the previously unknown author William P. Young to cover up the identity of “Mack” the protagonist.  Young claims it’s an educational story he wrote for his children.  Doesn’t really matter much.  This is a most amazing and thought-provoking book.

Having grown up Catholic, I never got the “trinity”.  Just could never picture it.  It’s one of those mystifying concepts that one can only understand by reading history of the Catholic church and realizing that it’s all a contrived, concocted attempt at massive deceit and control.

The Shack does a decent job of humanizing the trinity in some form, but it really goes much further.  This book really resonates with me because it is a beautiful, insightful illustration of the mechanics of free will and what it potentially means to our daily lives.

A couple of nights ago, a very dear friend of mine and I had a conversation about the “Universal Plan” over dinner.  It’s a comforting concept to feel that everything that happens has a purpose, a lesson, a silver lining, corresponds to a grand plan and everything will be ok. Everything will be ok only to the extent that in the end we will all be dead, the universe will collapse onto itself and nothing that happened in between will have mattered.  But I stopped believing in the Universal Plan a while ago and I feel perfectly fine about that.

The reason that there can’t be a Universal Plan is …  Free Will.  The two cannot coexist.  A Universal Plan is predetermination.  There is no free will with predetermination.  But we do have free will.  The figure I like to use for this is to say that right now I am free to either keep on writing or catch the next flight to Argentina or whatever else I can think of and actually do.  That is free will.  Some will argue that the Universal Plan would have already pre-determined which course I took, so Free Will and Universal Plan operate simultaneously.  Hmm.  Don’t think so.

The Shack is a very hard book.  I read it maybe 8 years ago and I am pretty sure I cried over it or at least choked and shed a few tears.  It’s particularly difficult for parents since it’s the story of a violently abused and murdered little girl and how it destroys her dad’s life and beliefs.  Mack was a man of the cloth who just stopped believing it could be possible for such a cruel and unfair God to exist.

So he gets an invitation (presumably from God) to a weekend at “the shack” where his daughter was likely abused and murdered.  The core of the book is the story of this weekend.  It turns out to be a delightful weekend full of light and hope.  It’s also funny.  Among the many things that happen, Mack is set up to put God on trial for being cruel and unfair.

The punchline ultimately is that there is no silver lining.  What happened happened because the killer had free will and not even God would or could stop him because God created the universe that way.  It’s a space of free will.

This is a very difficult concept for me.  While I understand it intellectually, it runs counter to my perfectionist streak and urgent desire to educate and correct people.  If I “show them” then I’m “helping them”.  It’s hard for a controlling character like mine to accept that this is foolish thinking.  But foolish it is.  People have and exercise their free will all the time and there isn’t much we can do about it.  Even our kids do.  At most, we can use first person statements (I think, I believe, I feel) that may convey information that may or may not matter to our interlocutor.  But once those words have gone up to the Akashic Field, we have no choice but to let go and detach from the outcome.

Another hard lesson in the book is the importance of forgiveness in order for Mack to get to closure.  No forgiveness, no closure.

Forgiveness is also very difficult for me.  I struggled even with its definition for years.  How can one simply accept what is obviously “wrong”?  Isn’t an apology always warranted?  Isn’t forgiveness the magnanimous act of accepting an apology?

The best definition of forgiveness I have heard came from Oprah Winfrey who said that “forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different”.  Love that.  I can live with that.  But as I mentioned in prior posts, that doesn’t necessarily change the way I act since I can, with my free will, choose any course of action such as doing nothing, saying something or cutting ties.  I guess that in a sense forgiveness is like saying “I see you and I accept you even though I don’t condone what you did and I may choose not to interact with you”.

By the end of our cheese and chocolate fondue dinner, my friend and I agreed that while “Universal Plan” sounds too pre-deterministic.  “Universal Design” sounds right, and it includes free will.

But free will comes with another opportunity or threat, depending on our experience and point of view.  And that is, the opportunity for creativity.  That’s for another post.

While this post has been mostly dedicated to accepting that others have free will, let’s not forget our own.  Free will is power.  And for that, I have recorded a new guided meditation.  Enjoy.