The American Culture

After just one week, the video game Grand Theft Auto has sold more than six million copies worldwide, earning its maker, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., more than a half-billion dollars.

The entire Grand Theft Auto game series has been widely derided by critics as harmful to children because of the violent activities in which the characters engage. The critics are apparently operating on the theory that adolescents are too stupid to recognize that the rules of video games do not apply in real life.

Positing an allegedly deleterious message of Grand Theft Auto IV, AP reports, Mothers Against Drunk Driving have "complained that the latest version includes the ability to drive while intoxicated."

Here they are just being silly: that ability is embedded in the human Y chromosome.

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Customers are flocking to big-discount clothing stores such as Steve and Barry's, and celebrities are lining up to endorse them. Is it a welcome rejection of materialism and slavery to fashion, or simply making a virtue of limited expectations in relatively tough economic times?

Once upon a time, people prided themselves on being able to afford luxuries. It's a good thing that such materialistic pride appears to be on the wane—but it's ironic that it is being replaced by a sense of pride in one's shopping ability.

The New York Times reports that big-discount clothing stores such as Steve and Barry's are having great success by keeping expenses low and charging bargain-basement prices:

Steve & Barry’s, for the uninitiated, is to fashion what Tower once was to music. Steve & Barry’s is manna, a store that sells stylish celebrity-branded clothes at prices that are absurdly inexpensive, lower than those at Old Navy, H & M or Forever 21, undercutting even Wal-Mart by as much as half.

The fact is, clothes tend to cost a good deal more than most other fashionable cultural items such as movies, books, music, and the like. The celebrity culture and social pressures, however, always incite people, especially the young, to emulate the styles they see in media presentations, as an easy way of establishing a quickly readable identity for themselves.

Thus the rise of budget-friendly clothing fashions. The owners of Steve and Barry's have found success by making a virtue of necessity and selling aesthetic beauty on a budget, by keeping expenses to the bare minimum. Whereas most clothing designers charge a huge fortune in licensing fees, the designers stocking Steve and Barry's stores make their money on volume, as do the stores themselves:

[Steve and Barry's owners] Mr. Shore and Mr. Prevor, dressed in chinos and rumpled shirts, frequently described the company as “the Google of fashion” and rattled off several ways they had devised to make a high-quality product at the low prices. The clothes appear to be well made — several of the Bitten dresses, made in India, were lined, and the strapless dress Ms. Parker wore is constructed with an internal elastic band to hold it up. And the basketball shoes appear sturdy, although they are made with fake leather (well, so are Stella McCartney’s).

Steve & Barry’s saves big, for example, by opening stores in underperforming malls, where the owners are more likely to negotiate rents and offer other incentives; by building its own bare-bones store displays; by maintaining only a small public relations office in Manhattan; and by manufacturing in countries like China, India, Madagascar and more than 20 others, including the United States.

This is surely no return to the early years of the Christian church or an expression of Buddhist self-denial. It's simply a smart way for young people to do what they have always done: use every possible means to give themselves a strong and hopefully likeable social identity. The Times story quotes actress Sarah Jessica Parker, whose inexpensive clothing line is sold at Steve and Barry's as acknowledging that point:

“What has changed,” Ms. Parker said, “is that now people have bragging rights about what they paid. I admired a woman’s pair of pants at a party recently and she said, ‘Fourteen dollars! H & M!’ It really is, among the people I know, part of what they do now.”

Mr. Shore and Mr. Prevor again likened the change to a revolution.

“When you look at clothing now,” Mr. Prevor said, “price is not the arbiter of what is good. It’s the clothes themselves.”

Valuing things on the basis of their real benefits is indeed a good thing, and good fashions do bring aesthetic beauty into the world. That is certainly better than utilitarian drabness, provided it isn't done wastefully, and that is clearly the point behind the cheap chic—beauty on a budget.

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A strange, spiritually infused novel by a troubled Oregonian tech representative has hit the best-seller lists, thanks to plenty of free publicity in Christian media outlets. But it may be a very un-Christian book.

As USA Today reports, a novel aimed at the "spiritually interested" and employing Christian ideas and imagery in decidedly eccentric ways has hit the best-seller lists:

A little novel written by an Oregon salesman and self-published by two former pastors with a $300 marketing budget is lighting up USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list with a wrenching parable about God's grace.

First-time author William P. Young's book The Shack, in which the father of a murdered child encounters God the Father as a sarcastic black woman, Jesus as a Middle Eastern laborer and the Holy Spirit as an Asian girl, is No. 8 on the list.

Published a year ago and promoted by snowballing attention on Christian radio, websites and blogs, The Shack ($14.99) is now in mainstream bookstores and Wal-Marts nationwide, and the trio behind it are talking to Hollywood about a possible film deal.

The book was rejected by Christian publishers as too "edgy" and by secular publishers as too "Jesus-y," co-publisher Brad Cummings said, according to the USA Today story. Thanks to the free publicity on Christian media, the book has sold three-quarters of a million copies.

Here, for example, is the enthusiastic product description from one of those places, Christianbook.com:

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his "Great Sadness," Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

Unlike the Christianbook.com blurb, the USA Today story strongly implies, but does not document, that the book's theology is decidedly unorthodox, and it emphasizes that people connect emotionally with The Shack. The book does seem perfectly pitched to reach people harmed by the disturbed family and social relationships of our divorce-prone and publicly antinomian era:

He wrote the book to explain his own harrowing journey through pain and misery to "light, love and transformation" in God to his six children, ages 14 to 27.

Eleven years ago, Young says, he was hanging on by a thread, haunted by his history as a victim of sexual abuse, by his own adulterous affair, by a life of shame and pain, all stuffed deep in his psyche.

"The shack" was what he called the ugly place inside where everything awful was hidden away. The book is about confronting evil and stripping the darkness away to reveal a loving God within, he says.

Apparently The Shack is reaching a large number of people with a message of personal responsibility and redemption. If so, it would be a very good thing indeed.

Unfortunately, there are strong reasons to believe that The Shackis not doing that at all.

Despite its value as a form of literary therapy, the book may be doing much harm by spreading false ideas about God. In particular, it is easy to see in the book's plot description a strong element of syncretism. A review by Berit Kjos on the Kjos Ministries website confirms this and outlines what Kjos identifies as some of many doctrinally false aspects of the book:

For example, this new "Jesus" never returned to heaven. Was there no real resurrection? Not according to the female "God":

“Although by nature he is fully God, Jesus is fully human and lives as such. While never losing the innate ability to fly [which he demonstrates in the book], he chooses moment-by-moment to remain grounded. That is why his name is Immanuel, God with us...."[1, p.99-100] . . .

But the Bible tells us that Jesus did return to His heaven after His crucifixion.

This does seem an unnecessary and wrong claim for author Young to attribute to God the Father, and it probably would muddle the thinking of anyone who tried to reconcile it with the biblical teachings on the matter.

Kjos then goes on to identify another unorthodox aspect of the book:

Besides, neither God our Father nor the Holy Spirit made themselves finite or visible to man. "No one has seen God at any time," said the true Jesus. (John 1:18) Yet, here we see all three in human form -- on earth! "

Although Kjos makes a valid observation here, Young's narrative choice in this instance strikes me as within the bounds of allowable fictional license—although perhaps only just within those bounds.

Kjos continues his indictment with a direly serious charge:

Unlike the true God, this false trinity exercises no authority over man. That should please today's postmodern church leaders! They seem to shun words such as "sovereignty" and "authority." After all, a reigning God who sets the moral standard for all time could cause division. He could impede their main purpose: inclusive relationships and "authentic community."

Kjos follows this with evidence from the book, making a strong case that The Shack does indeed suggest that God approves of antinominism, a thoroughly unbibilical claim. As part of this analysis, Kjos notes the following:

Notice how The Shack's false "God" mocks our true God by minimizing His sovereignty and judgments:

"I'm not a bully, not some self-centered demanding little deity insisting on my own way. I am good, and I desire only what is best for you. You cannot find that through guilt or condemnation...."[1,p.126]

"You don't need me at all to create your list of good and evil. But you do need me if you have any desire to stop such an insane lust for independence....  Mackenzie, evil is a word we use to describe the absence of Good, just as we use the word darkness to describe the absence of Light. ...evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence."[1,p.136]

Clearly the attempt to create a God more attractive to people who are not yet ready to let go of their sins has led Young to take the idea of forgiveness far beyond its real meaning into an acceptance of evil by defining it out of existence. That, however, destroys the very notion of forgiveness, for if we are not responsible for our wrongdoings (which is what Young clearly implies), then we have nothing for which we need to be forgiven.

In which case, Christ's sacrifice was for nothing.

Kjos aptly quotes another author in this regard:

These absurd claims remind me of Ray Yungen['s] wise words, "Satan is not simply trying to draw people to the dark side of a good versus evil conflict. Actually, he is trying to eradicate the gap between himself and God, between good and evil, altogether."[6]

Noting the similarity between ideas in The Shack and the New Age spiritualist book A Course in Miracles, Kjos analyzes this perversion of the notion of forgiveness:

Both books demonstrate a perverted kind of forgiveness -- the world's way of promoting unity and healing apart from the cross. Not only does Mack learn to "forgive" all who have hurt him, he also forgives "God." As if God had done something wrong!

 

Following the same reasoning, ACIM's "Jesus" offers this bit of twisted theology:

"Forgive, and you will see this differently.... These are the words which end the dream of sin, and rid the mind of fear. These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world."[8]

It may sound loving to claim universal salvation through human forgiveness. But it's not Biblical! This counterfeit "Jesus" has totally divorced himself from God's Word -- the living Word which is the true Jesus. (See John 1:14)

However much we may sympathize with those who have been bruised and broken by the disturbed conditions of our society, giving people temporarily comforting falsehoods will just spread the misery. There appears to be strong evidence that that is exactly what The Shack is doing.

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