The bible and The Shack II: Some questionable presuppositions

I've been a little bit farther into The Shack lately. I'll be posting a review myself when I finish reading it. For the time being, if you're interested, here are few reviews to get you thinking: Christianity Today, ByFaith online.

I just want to take a minute to address some (at least it would seem to me are) underlying presuppositions held by the author.

1.) Apparent Presupposition 1: Either God has stopped communicating to His people or He is still speaking outside and without connection to His Word . But God has given us everything we need to know about Him and how to live through His Word. This is what some have called the "sufficiency of scripture." God's Word is so full of great stuff that it is plenty enough to sustain us, teach us about Him, and direct us with general principles for how to live in our particular cultural setting.

Does God speak with us today like He did with Moses on Mt. Sinai? No. But we don't need Him to. We're actually in a better spot now, since we have all of His Word before us. We have the Holy Spirit who speaks to and directs our hearts through His Word. As we read the Word or hear it preached, the Spirit challenges and encourages us.

We may then feel the Spirit challenging us to quit engaging in a sinful practice. We may feel the Spirit reminding us to be faithful in giving, or encouraging us to stop trying to please God and instead rest in Him. We might be moved to full time ministry, away from it, to a relationship or away from a detrimental one, to forgive, to go to college, etc...God's Spirit enables and empowers us to apply general principles to our specific situations.

Now on to how He does it....

2.) "God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects." Apparent Presupposition 2: you can interpret God's word alone. You don't need help.

We need help in interpreting this Word. Watch out for someone who interprets something a certain way that no one has before him for 2000 years. He or she is certainly wrong! We need to interact with the larger Christian community, Church History, and our present church/denomination to understand how to apply it today. This will reduce our subjectivity and biases, which we all have.

Just because we need brothers and sisters in the faith to help us, does not mean that God doesn't use them to speak to us today. In other words, you shouldn't go away to a shack as your EXCLUSIVE means of figuring things out. You should go away to a shack to spend time with God and His word and in prayer. However this can't be the ONLY means, or else you will go awry.

It's like a tripod. You may have personal experience as a "pod," interaction with the church at large and in history as a "pod," and your home church/denomination as a "pod." If you take one of the "pods" away, you're left with a "di-pod." And who's every heard of a "di-pod?" It certainly wouldn't stand if there were such a thing.