Dokun Ve Hisset: Uyku Zamanı kitap serbest oDF biçim

Claudia Claudia _alaudija060f — Before I say anything, let me make this point clear: I did not want to read this book. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I absolutely hate to read books or see movies that I know will make me cry, so I avoid them whenever possible. (I have never ever seen Old Yeller or Steel Magnolias.) Secondly, I'm not a big crowd follower, and everyone saying, "You just have to read this book," will usually send me screaming into the night. The only thing it had in its favor was that it was not on Oprah's list. I read a number of reviews of this book before I ever opened it. What I discovered was that most readers either felt that it changed their lives forever or that it was heresy. I read some fiery reviews and some equally fiery replies. It was only after a couple of people asked me what I thought of it that I decided to read it myself so that I could draw my own conclusions and speak intelligently about it. (You're free to disagree with the intelligent part.) I still did not want to read it. But I did, so let's talk about it. From a purely literary standpoint, The Shack is a work of fiction...not very well-written fiction, but fiction nonetheless. I read somewhere that this was a story that Young made up as a bedtime story for his kids. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but it doesn't read much better than that. The character development is shallow, and the story is often slow. Yes, anyone with a beating heart will probably cry at some point, but that alone doesn't make the mechanics of the story high quality. Most people, however, aren't really that interested in the mechanics. That leaves the theology. Let me start this by saying that everyone who reads The Shack will do so from their own personal starting point. What I mean by that is simply this: My starting point says that Scripture is the infallible word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), and that anything...anything that contradicts it...even something that appears to be good...is evil. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 that "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." Paul also said in Galatians 1:6-7: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must be so in tune with his Word that we can tell truth from falsehood. This is called discernment...it isn't always easy, and sometimes we miss it. That is my starting point. If you begin from a different starting point, a different perspective, you will almost certainly disagree with some of my review. I respect your viewpoint, and I hope that you will respect mine. After so much of what I had read about it, I expected to disagree with everything in this book. That was not the case. For example, there are many references to the importance of relationship. When I teach Bible class, I stress over and over again that we serve a God of relationship. He gave mankind a choice of obedience or disobedience because without a choice, there is no relationship. Jesus came to earth and suffered our punishment in order to restore our relationship with God. The Christian faith is not one of rules and regulations but of relationship. On page 146, Jesus says, "When I am in your life, submission is the most natural expression of my character and nature, and it will be the most natural expression of your new nature within relationships." Very well said. The biblical example of this is in John 13 where the Creator washed the dirty feet of the created. I was also very glad to see an absence of the "everything happens for a reason" philosophy. In chapter 13, Mack is speaking to "Papa" about Missy's death when he asks if Missy had to die in order for God to change him. Papa replies, "Whoa there, Mack. That's not how I do things," and just a few lines later, ...[J:]ust 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." Not everything that happens is God's will. Not everything that happens is God's will. There are not many things that make me truly angry, but hearing (usually well-meaning) people tell someone who is suffering that "it's God's will" is one of them. There is no doubt that He will allow us...and often those around us...to suffer the consequences of our sins. The Israelites' forty years of wilderness wandering is testament to that. He will, however, work through them if we will allow him (Romans 8:28). One of the my favorite passages from the book was in chapter 14. Again Jesus is speaking: Mack, I don't want to be first among a list of values; I want to be at the center of everything...Rather than a pyramid, I want to be the center of a mobile, where everything in your life - your friends, family, occupation, thoughts, activities - is connected to me but moves with the wind, in and out and back and forth, in an incredible dance of being. While I did agree with these and some other ideas, there were at least as many with which I had serious reservations. I don't want to ramble on and risk boring anyone, so I will mention just three. The first is on page 99 where Young asserts that Jesus lived as fully human and continues to be fully human, that the miracles he performed were not performed through his power as God but by his trusting in God the Father. I quote: (Papa) Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything... (Mack) So when he healed the blind? (Papa) He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone. This is a direction contradiction of John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made [emphasis mine:]; without him nothing was made that has been made. and John 8: "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him... The Jewish leaders would have stoned him for what? For blasphemy...claiming himself to be God. They didn't like what he said because they understood his meaning. The second troubling passage is found in chapter 8 where Papa states, I 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. While I wholeheartedly agree with both the idea that the consequences of sin can be devastating and that God wants to forgive us, the Bible clearly teaches that sin has been, is and will be punished. Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." In Numbers 12, when Miriam and Aaron griped about Moses and his wife, God descended in a pillar of cloud and the Bible says, "The anger of the LORD burned against them." When the pillar of cloud lifted, Miriam had been stricken with leprosy. Aaron is immediately repentant and says to Moses, "Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed." In the New Testament after the establishment of the church in Acts, Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit and were struck dead. There are many, many other examples throughout scripture. God takes sin seriously. Not, I believe, because he wants to punish but because he is perfect in justice as well as in mercy. Perfect justice demands that sin be punished. Thank God for His forgiveness in Jesus Christ! My most serious issue with The Shack is the personification of God. Not because he appears as an African American woman but because He is not represented as holy. I do understand that in the past the image of God that may have come out of some of our churches was one of a remote and unapproachable being whose most important characteristic was his wrath...and that was wrong. Because of Jesus we can approach the throne of God with confidence (Hebrews 4:16), but that does not diminish God's holiness. The prophet Isaiah said in 5:15-16: So man will be brought low and mankind humbled, the eyes of the arrogant humbled. But the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness. In Revelation 7 John puts into human language the grandeur of heaven and the majesty of God: After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" Attempting to portray Holy God as a huggy, joke-cracking human strikes me as blasphemous. I realize that there are many Christians who have read The Shack and feel that it brought them closer to God. I will not argue with that. As I said before, I believe that God can use anything to serve his purpose, and I would not presume to tell anyone what their relationship with Him is or is not. What I do believe is that as Christians we need to draw our knowledge of God from His Word and not from a work of fiction. Do I believe, as some have said, that this book is heretical? From my starting point, even with the few positive things I noted, yes, I believe it is. The few positive things found in it seem to me to be like Satan's disguise of which Paul spoke. Think about it. If Satan were easy to spot, there would be no need for us to learn discernment. He hides himself well, and we must be equipped to recognize him anywhere. Again, I understand that there are those who feel like reading this book changed their lives. What I sincerely hope is that all those who choose to read it will be driven to the Bible to find real answers about the nature of God. The bottom line? For me...because of the theological errors I would never recommend the book to anyone.

Janao Denys _anao — I thought this book was very wittely written (something which is often hard to find these days). I enjoyed the clever literary references and the overall fast-paced plot. I highly recommend this book to all lovers of literature. If you need further convincing, just take a gander at the setting of this novel: an alternate universe-London, where everything revolves around the book world and the main protagonist's job is to preserve literature. Be still my beating heart!

Delicia Wharton _elicia_harton — I loved the TV show Murder, She Wrote. The book was a quick trip down memory lane.