William_Paul Young - God and The Shack: Interviews With William Paul Young

God and TheShack :
Interviews With William Paul Young

Copyright 2016 Grace Communion International

Published by Grace Communion International

Cover image: Grace CommunionInternational

About the Publisher

Grace Communion Seminary

Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

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This is a transcript of interviews conductedas part of the Youre Included series, sponsored by GraceCommunion International. We have more than 130 interviewsavailable. You may watch them or download video or audio athttps://learn.gcs.edu/course/view.php?id=58. Donations in supportof this ministry may be made athttps://www.gci.org/online-giving/.

Grace Communion International is in broadagreement with the theology of the people we interview, but GCIdoes not endorse every detail of every interview. The opinionsexpressed are those of the interviewees. We thank them for theirtime and their willingness to participate.

Please understand that when people speak,thoughts are not always put into well-formed sentences, andsometimes thoughts are not completed. In the following transcripts,we have removed occasional words that did not seem to contributeany meaning to the sentence. In some cases we could not figure outwhat word was intended. We apologize for any transcription errors,and if you notice any, we welcome your assistance.

Our guest in the first three interviews isWilliam Paul Young, author of the best-selling book TheShack (Windblown Media, 2007), Cross Roads (Faithwords,2012), and Eve (Thorndike, 2015).

Our guest in the fourth interview is C.Baxter Kruger, president of Perichoresis, a non-profit ministry.Dr. Kruger is the author of the following books:

Across All Worlds: Jesus Inside OurDarkness

God Is for Us

The Great Dance: The Christian VisionRevisited

Jesus and the Undoing of Adam

The Shack Revisited:There Is MoreGoing on Here Than You Ever Dared to Dream

Sharing in Gods Life: Interviews With C.Baxter Kruger (available as an e-book in the same place youobtained this one)

Paul Young and Baxter Kruger teamed up forthe last three interviews. All the interviews were conducted by J.Michael Feazell, then Vice President of Grace CommunionInternational.

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J. Michael Feazell: A new novel hasskyrocketed to the top of the charts, capturing the imagination ofChristians everywhere.

Whats so surprising about The Shackby William P. Young is its portrayal of God: not the solitary Godof popular imagination, such as the one portrayed by George Burnsin the film, Oh, God or by Morgan Freeman in EvanAlmighty, but the God of Christian orthodoxy Father, Son, andHoly Spirit three in one and one in three, the Holy Trinity. Theresult has been hailed as life-changing. Lets talk to the author,William P. Young.

JMF: What is it about TheShack that is capturing Christians imagination?

WPY: I have no idea. (laughter)

No, I have some ideas. I think that for alot of us who grew up inside religious kinds of environments,The Shack allows God to become accessible and understandablein a way that hasnt been out there in the same kind of form.Theres something about a story, theres something about art ingeneral, that has a way of getting past our preconceptions and ourparadigms and everything else. Music does that. It has a way ofgoing right past our intellectuality and penetrating us in theheart.

I think thats why parables that Jesus woulduse were so effective, because they had a way of penetrating pastpeoples preconceptions and their stereotypes and everything else.As a story it has a way of doing it, when you come to the characterand nature of God.

I grew up as a missionary kid and apreachers kid and I went to Bible school and seminary and wealways try to find analogies or some way to comprehend the Trinity.I didnt intend to write a great book on the Trinity, that was anaccident. What I did was want to communicate to my children, thefact that the very nature of relationship has to be embedded in thecharacter and nature of God.

JMF: So you wrote this for yourchildren to begin with publication wasnt something you had inmind.

WPY: No. Im the most accidentalauthor youll ever meet. Ive never published anything, Ive alwayswritten as gifts, whether it was poems or songs or whatever, giftsfor my children, for my friends, for events, and this was nodifferent. This was in obedience to my wife. She wanted me to writesomething for the children. She said, Id like you to writesomething that would help your kids understand the breadth of howyou think, cause youre a little bit outside the box.

JMF: There must be a reason she askedyou to do that, there must have been something shaping. This is apretty enormous undertaking

WPY: Its probably because Ive donea lot of speaking, a lot of teaching, those kinds of things, andthe transformation in my life came about through the process of therenewing of the mind, the healing process in my life, and shedwatched all that and then she also liked how I wrote. So thecombination of the two things. My goal in 2005 was to get it doneby Christmas, and get it to Kinkos, put it in a spiral bound,whatever, and have it for them for Christmas. No thoughtwhatsoever, it wasnt even on the radar that somebody would want topublish it.

JMF: So what happened?

WPY: It got out of hand, is whathappened. Even the electronic version, the first manuscript I sentto a couple of my cousins. It had this huge impact that I wasntanticipating. And it would spill over. People would send it toother people, and we started getting this feedback about the book,and I didnt know what to do about it.

So after Christmas, I sent it to the onlyfor real author that I know that was Wayne Jacobson and heintentionally writes books. I just attached it to an email becauseone of his books had just came out that I really loved and I said,by the way, Ive been working on this. Then he said, of course, hegets buried with these kinds of things. I understood that and said,no expectations, really.

I just had the nudge (and sometimes the HolySpirit gives us a nudge just so we learn how to hear his voice, notfor any outcome). But in this case he actually started reading andhe promised me he would read at least 20 pages. He called me backup and kind of freaked me out, because (Ive come to know thatWayne is like this, but I didnt know it at that time) he startedoff What were you thinking sending me this manuscript? Ithought, I have pushed all his hot buttons. Im backing up in thebasement. Oh man, what do I do? I said, My relationship with youis way more important than some sort of manuscriptjust put it onthe shelf.

He said, No, you dont understand. I cantprint the pages fast enough. I dont remember the last time I readanything where my immediate response was I have six or sevenpeople that I need to send this to right now.

So I said, I trust the Holy Spirit in you.Send it to whoever you want. He said, I already did. This isfrom Friday to Monday. That sort of got the ball rolling.

I went down and met with him and his buddyBrad Cummings they do the God Journey podcast, and Bobby Downsfrom Christian Cinema came around, and we began to just talk aboutand work on how to bring this about, which started a 16-monthprocess, because we all have jobs and busy-ness and everythingelse.

We very collaboratively worked on the book then nobody would publish it. We sent it to everybody. Nobodywanted it. Either they didnt respond, or if they did, they said,It doesnt fit our niche. Its either too edgy or too much Jesus,depending what side of the farm theyre on. So the guys said,Well, weve always wanted to be a publishing company, so theycreated their own with one title