"Living Unloved" or "Living Loved" - My Choice

If you have read The Shack you probably have an opinion since few people a left neutral afterwards. You may love it or hate it or even fear it - I've heard all three and then some. Even those who don't like it usually admit that there are some parts that they liked.

What is your favorite quote from The Shack? The most frequent comment I've heard is that people are highlighting or underlining so many paragraphs that they have to re-read it to find what stood out to them the first time. Here is one of the quotes I found meaningful:

Most birds were created to fly.  Being grounded is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around.  You, on the other hand, were created to be loved.  So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around.  Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly.  Not something I want for you.  Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from flying.  And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place. ... It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing to walk and remain grounded.  He doesn’t stop being the bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly. - from The Shack, William P. Young, p. 97, 99.

So true, so true. Who among us cannot identify having been grounded by living as if we were unloved. Feeling unloved seems so true at times  that we don't even doubt it. We get powerful messages from family, friends, culture, and even church that we are either unloved or loved conditionally. "Yes, you are loved, but ...." In so much of the church world there is a confusing double-speak, "Yes, God is love and you are loved but .... you will fry unless you ...." Yes, God may love the little children of the world (do churches still teach kids to sing about the "red and yellow, black or white" children God loves?) but unless they repent they are going to not enjoy His love. Confusing? It is always confusing when we take a word like "love" and expand it's meaning into including the opposite.

Even after someone "repents, gets saved, accepts Christ, says the sinners prayer, etc." the message is often, "Yes, now God loves you even more but ... are you reading the Bible enough? are you praying the way you should? are you giving enough? are you witnessing enough, etc.?" So, we are taught to fear that our experience of God's love is at risk in part (if not the whole) unless we do enough. And we call all of it grace but it is really turns into obedience based on "living unloved."

I, for one, am tired of living unloved or anyone I know living that way. I am choosing to "lived loved" and plan to take as many people as I can on that journey.

Join me?
Dr. Paul