Book review: 'The Shack'

What if God was one of us? Or, perhaps, three of us? And was/were available for questions?

What a list most of us would have -- from prejudice to disasters to cancer to paper cuts to brussels sprouts. But McKinley Philips has other questions. Like what happened to his young daughter after her kidnapping. And why he suffered as a boy under his brutal father's alcoholic rages.

He gets some answers -- but more often general reassurance of God's help and companionship -- in The Shack, a fanciful novel that has somehow caught so much reader attention, it's spent the better part of a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

The book has all the marks of a good novel: pacing, setting, atmosphere, natural-sounding dialogue. Well, most of the time on that last item. More on that later.

Mack's daughter Missy goes missing on a camping trip in the Oregon mountains, and no number of volunteers or state troopers can find her. Early suspicion falls on a known child killer, sending Mack into a chronic depression.

His grief is cut short by an unsigned note in his mailbox -- which he suspects is from the deity -- summoning him to the abandoned shack that held the last evidence of the girl. Surprise #2 -- and #3 and #4 -- waiting for him at the shack are God the Father as a large, motherly black woman and God the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman in a cloudlike robe. At least God the Son is a more traditional Middle Eastern man.

They take turns counseling Mack, alternately comforting him and confronting him with his attitudes and life decisions. How the sessions change Mack, and what they have to do with Missy, take up the rest of the 248-page book.

Much of it is standard conservative Christianity: God loves you and looks after you, even when you don't think he/she does. There's some gender bending, of course, but that kind of license should upset no one who has read C. S. Lewis' novels.

What hurts the book is the preaching, clumsily disguised as dialogue. It's a truism that the longest speeches in a book are the opinions of the author. And this book puts long speeches in the mouth of one or another of the Trinity.

Some of it is comforting, like how God brings good out of bad: "Mack, just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies." Some of it, well, depends on your own outlook. Like when Jesus condemns organized religion -- along with politics and economics -- as part of "the man-made trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about."

It goes on like this for nearly a hundred pages -- more absorbing than it may sound, but still a lot of indoctrination. For those who persevere, Young does paint a vivid picture of the spiritual world through God's eyes, as well as a vision of reconciliation and freedom from guilt.

Young says the book is actually an autobiography; the shack is an allegory for what went on in his own soul over a painful 11 years of prayer and introspection. And from the thousands of responses posted on his Web site, the book speaks to a lot of people.

So maybe he does have room to talk about spirit and emotion. Do you have to swallow it all? Of course not. But as Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Or if he has eyes to read ...

FILM REVIEW: Marley & Me

Have you noticed how many movies lately are pro-family? There's Knocked Up, where a couple's personal agendas melt in the face of their new baby. There's Meet the Browns, which shows the lengths a good mother will take in order to raise and protect her children.

Also note: Not all family films are good to bring kids to.

Put Marley & Me in that category. On the surface, the film is a comedy about a lovable though rambunctious dog. But it's really about how he tests their limits for love, and in so doing, expands those limits. It also explores some very adult life choices.

Child or career? It's a question young couples often ask, especially if each mate is ambitious and talented. And John and Jennifer Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) fit that bill. He's a news writer for the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. She's a feature writer for the Palm Beach Post. (Full disclosure: I work at the Sun Sentinel and used to talk to John occasionally, though I didn't know him well.)

Their solution at first is a large, adorable yellow Labrador puppy. Naming him Marley, for the late reggae singer Bob Marley, they treat him like their child.

That is, if your child chews couch cushions, terrorizes a sitter, howls at South Florida's many thunderstorms and chases just about anything, dragging along whoever is holding the leash. Marley is even expelled from obedience school.

Jennifer finally becomes pregnant -- three times -- and leaves her job for the mommy track. The kids plus "the world's worst dog," as John calls him, cause quarrels. John withdraws, Jennifer calms down and apologizes, they make up.

But long before then, it's clear that Marley has pried open the Grogans' hearts. After all, if they can bear with a big, half-insane dog, they can surely care for human children.

Family values even figure professionally. Jennifer leaves her job to care for the kids. She also supports his decision to move to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There, he crosses paths with a friend from the Sun Sentinel -- someone he envied for his job as a foreign correspondent. To his surprise, the friend seems to envy John, for his beautiful wife and three kids. Thought-provoking stuff on life's tradeoffs.

The cautions? Some "goddamns" and lovemaking scenes, with a bit of partial nudity (hey, it does portray a married couple, and it does have Jennifer Aniston to show off). There's also a squick-inducing scene where John has to sift through Marley's poop for a necklace he ate.

Another question mark is when John and Jennifer want to make love in an Irish inn, but not with pictures of Jesus and Mary in the bedroom. Oh, yeah, there's also when Marley humps the instructor's leg at obedience school (Kathleen Turner, in surely her most humiliating role.)

So, yes, Marley & Me qualifies as a family film. It reaffirms traditional marriage and shows how commitment can overcome difficulties. Just leave the youngest members of the family home.

TV REVIEW: 'Jesus in India'

A major Christian holiday is just around the corner, and sure enough, here comes one of those revisionist "documentaries" attacking cherished beliefs. For Jesus in India, the focus is on historical gossip that has Jesus traveling east during his youth to learn from Buddhist and Hindu philosophers.

The program (9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time Dec. 22) on the Sundance Channel, looks at the "missing years" of Jesus, between his 12th and 30th years, when the Bible reports nothing about him. During those years, some say, he studied ethics and mysticism in the East before returning to the Holy Land. There’s even talk that he escaped crucifixion, returned to India, and died and was entombed there.

Author Edward T. Martin makes a brave, and apparently well-funded, effort to ferret out links between Jesus and India. With Paul Davids as director, he visits St. Thomas Mount in southern India, where Christians say their forebears hearken back to Bible times. He talks to the Shankaracharya, a pre-eminent Hindu leader. He consults a monk in a monastery, where a library is said to hold an ancient account of Jesus' sojourn. He ventures into tense, violent Srinagar, where some locals say Jesus is entombed.

But you won't be surprised to know that Martin finds nothing definite; otherwise, it would have been on CNN before the Sundance Channel. Nope. The Shankaracharya says he knows the story of Jesus in India, but the sourcebooks are long lost. And the monk says the head of the monastery is away, and he's the only one who can approve a search of the books.

Some of the onscreen comments even contradict Martin's premise. In Srinagar, a police officer and a Muslim leader vigorously deny Jesus' body is there, saying it's that of another prophet instead. Jesus in India notes this, then blithely moves on.

Quality control may be one of the problems here. Jesus in India quotes decent sources like a Vatican official, a rabbi from Loyola and two scholars from Georgetown. But it also recruits Elaine Pagels of Princeton, who detours onto her favorite topic, the Gnostic Gospels -- a collection of third century Egyptian scrolls that she and others are trying to paint as lost Bible books. Incredibly, another source is a book by Elizabeth Claire Prophet, former head of the New-Agey Church Universal and Triumphant.

Jesus in India spends a lot of time on Martin's background -- perhaps to help us understand his viewpoint, perhaps to pad the program. Scenes abound of sleepy Lampasas, Texas, and the stark Church of Christ where Martin grew up, in a familiar portrayal of conservative Christians as crude and ignorant. However, the onscreen interviews don’t make them sound like the oppressive bullies that Martin makes them out to be.

It shows the immense shadow cast by Jesus that so many people -- Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, New Agers, broadcasters, even Bible revisionists -- want to claim him. But they're mainly trying to recast him in their own image. That’s a danger for us all, of course, believers or not. But to get closer to Jesus and his teachings, it's best to start with something better than revisionism.

Something about Mary

For millions of people, Mary is more than a mere supporting player in Christmas pageants. Devotees, in fact, claim to have seen supernatural apparitions of Mary in Spain and Portugal, Japan and Korea, Egypt and Venezuela.

For the Festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12, let's take a look at Web sites that promote these appearances.

Catholic Online gives a typically crisp rendition of the Guadalupeapparition in 1531, to a Mexican Indian named Juan Diego. The story is remarkable for yielding an image of Mary on a cactus-cloth poncho -- a picture still visible five centuries later. (See a picture of the original image at the right, from http://www.sancta.org.) It's also unusual for being among the few apparitions that have gained official church approval.

Yet the many Marian Web sites, like this one and this one, cheerfully lump in the approved with the others. You'll see not only accounts of the approved Our Lady of Lourdes and Fatima, but the unapproved Garabandal and Medjugorje.

You can even see videos of some apparitions, courtesy of Google Video. One link leads to GodWay, a Coptic Orthodox site.

GodWay has some of the lesser-known apparitions, including Naju, South Korea, and Zeitoun, Egypt. The Zeitoun section has a collection of fuzzy-looking photos purporting to show a woman robed in light, walking the rooftops of Egyptian churches.

Taken together, the reported sightings reveal some unexpected things. One is a quiet, gentle rebellion against the Catholic hierarchy. Even if the Church doesn’t approve an apparition, people flock to them anyway.

Another observation: For many Catholics, even Jesus isn't enough. They seem to feel a need to see, not just believe.

Finally, some church thinkers are surprisingly indulgent about the apparitions. I once asked Eugene Kennedy, a Catholic psychologist, why people saw Mary so much. His answer: "Why are you surprised? The mother is one of the most powerful images we know."

I was amazed. He artfully left undropped the other shoe: that people may be inspired by the apparitions, whether they're real or not.

Fangs, but no fangs

Vampires get organized, though satirical, opposition from Fellowship of the Sun. This self-proclaimed watchdog group gets a ton of mileage from conspiracy-theory thinking. Not to mention movies like Twilight and TV shows like HBO's True Blood.

Like how? Place tongue firmly in cheek -- or, perhaps, fangs in throat -- and read on:

• Opposing the fictional "Vampire Rights Amendment."

• Warning that humans can be "perverted" into becoming vampires.

• Contrasting pictures of simpering, smiling humans with scowling, fanged vamps.

• Using blog-style shorthand like CoD (Creatures of the Darkness).

• Listing handy anti-vampire measures: garlic, crucifixes, lights around your porch.

• Planting family-style fearmongering: "What will you say when YOUR daughter brings a vampire home?"

The group also mocks merchandising, with silver pendants with the triangular FoS logo, and bumper stickers with lame slogans: "Vampires? No Fangs"; "Mortal On Board"; "Vampires Suck."

So, who is this site aimed at? Well, you think of groups against all kinds of folks: gays, Wiccans, Muslims, racial and ethnic groups. Except for the obit on the fellowship's founder: "Reverend Theodore Newlin, tireless crusader for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." So much for subtlety.

There is, however, a more nuanced look at vampirism and its religious-psychological facets. See Nicky Loomis' analysis on this Web site at the University of Southern California. It's thoughtful and measured. Something to sink your teeth into.

Heaven on earth?

"God is not the voice in the whirlwind; god is the whirlwind," says Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, on the homepage of World Pantheism. Devoted to the search for the divine in everything, the Pantheists don't look for God in the universe -- they see God as the universe.

Their stated beliefs sound nice, at first: the awe of staring at the stars, or the peace in walking through a forest. The group reveres and cares for nature, embracing science, and respects reason and evidence.

The Pantheists post lots of material in support of their beliefs. A History of Pantheism declares common cause with Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Confucians, native Americans, even Pagans and Wiccans -- as long as they see gods and goddess only as metaphors. The site even mentions Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, though it properly calls him a Panentheist -- one who sees the universe as part of God, but not the whole.

It's when the Pantheists say what they're not, that another face shows. They shun "grovelling worship or the expectation that there is some being out there who can answer our prayers." They want to be "free from guilt about original sin." They value "reason rather than fanaticism," and "individual choice rather than pushing prejudice down people's throats."

You know, not like those ignorant, groveling, pushy other spiritual groups.

You can download some interesting back copies of the organization's Pan magazine, like an issue on ethics. And the Pantheists offer several lists to help find one another.

A cool device is the Flash map on Frappr.com. Dots on the map show men, women and local Pantheist groups.

Young faith

Simply Youth Ministry has a lot for sale, but it also gives away an incredible amount, gleaned from sources like Saddleback Church and Youth Specialties. You'll find videos, games, booklets, tips for mission trips, and good-looking guides for small groups and discipleship lessons.

Topics are earnest and relevant. A sound file discusses "God's Extreme Makeover." Young talking heads reassure us that "Everybody Hurts." A lesson encourages high school girls to resist society's obsession with appearance.

Click the "Forms" icon to find nuts and bolts of youth ministry: event planners and recaps, a thank-you card, a scholarship application, a first-time visitor survey, a student leadership agenda.

Most of the freebies are in .zip files, so you'll need WinZip or an equivalent to open them. Once unzipped, some are in Word format, some in .pdf, some in PowerPoint, some in RealPlayer, so you'll need those applications, too.

Finally, SYM has 36 free videos, on various inspirational or instructional topics. But watch out: The files are huge, some over 100 megabytes. If you’re on a church or other shared computer, try to pick a time when others aren't using the connection.

Rumi-nations

What a relief Jalaluddin Rumi is. A holy man who enjoys family and friends. And who sounds like he's had some experience with the opposite sex.

Take this poem, one of the 70,000+ he wrote:

Come to the orchard in spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Start with Rumi.net, a very good assortment of poems, essays and biographies. The work of Jewish-Persian poet Shahram Shiva, the site tells of Rumi's wealthy upbringing in the eastern Persian empire -- and the tragedy that may have birthed much of his poetry.

Some of the poems seem to have a double meaning:

By day I praised you
and never knew it.
By night I stayed with you
and never knew it.
I always thought that
I was me -- but no,
I was you
and never knew it.

Don't leave this site without seeing some of the poems in Flash 10. First you see the poem in Persian calligraphy. Wave your mouse pointer over it, and it morphs into a transliteration. Another wave, and it becomes a word-for-word translation. Wave #4 makes it fluent English.

You can find more Rumi poems here and here. Also check out Rumi's masterpiece, The Masnavi. The six-book compendium holds his teachings about Sufism, the mystical Islamic sect he belonged to.

Another viewpoint on Rumi's life is in the San Francisco Chronicle. The 2007 article suggests that studying Rumi's forgiving nature could help ease tensions between modern Muslims and westerners.

Find your own beliefs

Don't know where your inner compass points? Try Belief-O-Matic, part of the incredible Beliefnet cosmos.

This cosmic version of 20 Questions asks what you think of things like the nature of God, the origins of life, morality, the afterlife, social ethics, eternal rewards and punishments, etc.

A nice touch: The answers are multiple choice, with six to eight options (didn't you love those in college?). Also nice: You don't have to answer all the questions. Nice touch 3: You can weight each answer with one of three grades of importance.

Questionnaires like this often have some weakness. With this one, some of the multiple choices overlap. Take the question, "Why is there terrible wrongdoing in the world?" One answer is original sin; another is "God-given free will plus a weak side." Some people would choose both.

Soooooo, will you divine your divinity by question 20? Wellllll, you may come close, but not necessarily a bulls-eye. I tested as a 100-percent "Orthodox Quaker" (I'm not). Another reply is at the start of the quiz: "Belief-O-Matic assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul."

Beliefnet has a lot of other quizzes, too. They examine topics as questing as "spiritual intelligence," as earthy as your level of lustfulness, as silly as the spirituality of Britney Spears.

Pictures worth a thousand prayers

Traditions are one thing; seeing the spots that inspired them is another. Christus Rex brings them together, with photos and text put together by a Marian priest.

Bearing a distinctly Italian Catholic feel, Christus Rex has a lot of virtual pilgrimages, guiding you around holy sites with devotional as well as historical comments. A nice clickable map shows biblical highlights of Jerusalem, such as St. Stephen Gate and Hezekiah's Tunnel.

An evocative section shows the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, retracing Jesus' steps on the day of his crucifixion. But it does need some updating. The webmaster's idea of a standard page width is a mere 700 pixels.

Check out the Pater Noster Convent on the Mount of Olives. The convent houses plaques with the Lord's Prayer in 1,444 languages. (Pictured: Farsi and Sanskrit.)

Vatican City is shown in a lush collection of photos -- not only the familiar St. Peter's Basilica and Sistine Chapel, but also the little-seen apartments of the pope.

There's more: a Catholic calendar, an online lectionary, a celebration of the dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome (see why I said the site has an Italian Catholic feel?). Two other sections, though, seem out of place.

One section is on the 1989 student uprising in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and the military repression that ended it. The other is on the medieval Khazar Empire, which converted to Judaism in 740 A.D. The section accepts the controversial theory of author Arthur Koestler that the Khazars became Europe's Ashkenazic Jews.

Honest to godless

Herewith the loyal opposition: American Atheists, founded by the notorious late Madelyn Murray O'Hair. The group has largely dropped the nasty persona that O'Hair cultivated, but stands just as ready to defend godlessness.

Instead, the American Atheists give themselves labels like "positive," "independent," "happy," and science minded. They do some deep though pejorative probing, like on whether Jesus existed, or his disciples, or even some of the New Testament towns like Nazareth. They also list alleged contradictions between Bible verses.

But some of Murray's old venom survives. In a reprinted address at Memphis State University, she calls the Judeo-Christian heritage a "disease." She also says that before creating the universe, "God was sitting on his ass in Nowhere . . . picking his nose and farting." (Pictured: Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1983. From Alan Light on Flickr.)

The attitude carries over into the site's news section. One article snickers at an un-baptism ritual using a hair dryer. Another calls Sarah Palin a "fundamentalist right-wing Christian," although the cited article doesn't use such language.

Christianity, in fact, seems the main fixation. The main other target seems to be Islam. Spinoff Christian groups like the Mormon Church and Christian Science also get some pokes. But there's little on Buddhists or Hindus or Taoists or native Americans. The atheists say this is because Christians are the main culprits in trying to limit the rights of others.

To be fair, the site also has some self-criticism. It questions the scientific dogmatism of Richard Dawkins and the mysticism of Sam Harris. And there's some lively give-and-take on the often-updated NoGodBlog.

Messianic messing

Barack Obama as Christ? That's one surprise on Jesus of the Week. This site, published by the Village Voice, seemingly has hundreds of images sent by readers.

As you can imagine, the pictures range from the classic to the classically stupid. Examples:

Slam-dunking a goal in a yellow Los Angeles Lakers uniform.

A reverent painting of Jesus offering bread and wine.

Twin faces of Christ as earrings, his hair studded with diamonds.

A Rasta-locked Lord on a shoulder tattoo.

A cartoon Jesus surfing on a cross.

And assorted Jesus faces on light switches, bandages, sticky notes, black velvet, and of course airbrushed onto vans and motorcycles. And on and on.

You submit the picture -- or someone out there does -- and the Village Voice editors add what they consider witty comments. Like the suggestion that a sitting statue, with hand to the side of his head, looks like he's talking on an iPhone. Tee-hee.

What to make of this site? One lesson: Culture can get pretty silly, even with revered figures. Two: Ridiculing the sacred is funny, at least for some mentalities.

Conclusion three: Ignorance is no handicap online. Whoever wrote the snickering paragraph for a crucifixion painting totally missed that the artist was Salvador Dali.

Thanksgiving on the Web

Thanksgiving holds a peculiar status as a hybrid religious-secular holiday. It combines history, heritage, religious ideals, family values and an opportunity to reach out to people different from yourself.

The day is even more American than July 4, says rabbi-journalist Marc Gellman.

"On Thanksgiving we have it all: football and the Macy's parade, family gatherings combined with an atmosphere of civic virtue that effortlessly morphs into secular thankfulness for the nonreligious and thankfulness to God for the pious among us," his 2007 article in Newsweek says. "Thanksgiving Day embraces us all."

Mary Fairchild of About.com has a fairly crisp report on the purpose and origins of the day, with some interesting trivia thrown in. Example: Seven other nations -- Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland -- have their own Thanksgiving days.

The Pilgrim Hall Museum in modern Plymouth, Mass., has valuable information on the Pilgrims and how their faith affected their Thanksgiving observance. Among the museum's religious treasures is the Bible of Pilgrim leader William Bradford (shown below).

More info is at Plimouth Plantation, a reconstruction of the 17th century Pilgrim settlement. Its Web site has historical background on Thanksgiving, both on the Christian settlers' side and that of the native Wampanoag tribe. But it also questions how religious the 1621 harvest festival was.

Interfaith services are a large and growing Thanksgiving tradition, when people of various religious gather to voice gratitude together.
Here are some suggestions for planning an interfaith Thanksgiving service, from an official of the United Methodist Church.

Some tips: Talk with other faith communities on the meaning of giving thanks; discuss the look of the venue; plan food and drink afterward, so people can mix. The nice thing is that the plans also work for other occasions besides Thanksgiving.

Not that the spiritual facet is unchallenged. Even a year ago, Slate magazine carried a report on a cultural war brewing around Thanksgiving, something like that over religious themes in Christmas. Writer Andrew Santella wrote in somewhat snarky terms about the religious right alarmists who wanted to make everyone thank the same God as they did.

But Santella ultimately lands on the side of thankfulness: "Do we really have to choose between the extremes of calling Thanksgiving a religious holiday or a civic celebration? Can't we assume that the holiday has evolved as some more subtle mix of the secular and the spiritual, one that each of us can adjust according to our own values?"

Quite a lot to digest with our turkey and pumpkin pie.

The U.S. election: The U.K. view

Did the presidential election help or hurt U.S. religion? Five columnists weigh in at The Guardian -- and draw more than 130 reader opinions.

The exchange is part of a large religion page produced by the venerable, century-old newspaper in London. The many columns there reveal some fresh, Brit-style thinking.

An atheist art columnist acknowledges the power and beauty of religious images, though he rejects their theology. A religious affairs correspondent files a video from her recent pilgrimage to Mecca. Another writer says sermons are a good idea -- just not in stodgy church services.

The choice of items reveals what has The Guardian's attention. Anglicans, Catholics, Muslims and atheists get lots of content. Jews, Hindus and Buddhists get less. But Christianity in general, including evangelicals and mainline Protestants, gets a whole separate page.

There's also a bit of weighting. In a special report on Christmas, the Guardian cites several views of Jesus: as Son of God, as a prophet, or just a man who was close to God. No such diversity touches the reports on the Hajj and Ramadan.

Not all the thinking at The Guardian is equally sharp, of course. A liberal rabbi predicts the demise of faith in a supernatural God within 30 years. That funeral has been said for more than a century -- and there are more believers, and more religions, than ever.