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God is being played by a Black Woman and Evangelicals are pissed

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S

Seth Enosh

Member
legend166 said:
The criticism in the article you posted is clearly focused on the theological implications of the book. You've created a thread and completely skewed the perception of the criticism by your thread title and framing that doesn't actually line up with what those critics are saying.

But hey continue the pile on, everyone loves it when it's not their side.
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This. The title of the thread doesn't line up with even the quotes that the OP made from the article. When they talk about theological implications, they aren't talking about whether God the Father is a black or white man.
 
R

royalan

Member
Seth Enosh said:
This. The title of the thread doesn't line up with even the quotes that the OP made from the article. When they talk about theological implications, they aren't talking about whether God the Father is a black or white man.
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“Young’s pretentious caricature of God as a heavy set, cushy, nonjudgmental, African American woman called ‘Papa’ (who resembles the New Agey Oprah Winfrey far more than the one true God revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ — Hebrews 1:1-3), and his depiction of the Holy Spirit as a frail Asian woman with the Hindu name, Sarayu, lends itself to a dangerous and false image of God and idolatry,”
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
Ahasverus said:
I do have a problem with the "trinity" being played separately, they're not supposed to be.
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Yeah right? They took offense at the thing that had to be interpreted, and ignored the stuff that was against Canon. The holy Spirit is a person?

This is clearly not about Christianity, but about these "Christians".
 
K

kinggroin

Banned
123rl said:
Oh, religion.

Never under-estimate the power of a religious nut-job who feels their imaginary friend is under attack
Click to expand...


Or the disrespectful back handed passive aggressive broad stroke remarks of an arrogant close-minded forum dweller.

Is it that hard to point out callous behavior without actually being callous?
 
B

Breads

Banned
legend166 said:
The criticism in the article you posted is clearly focused on the theological implications of the book. You've created a thread and completely skewed the perception of the criticism by your thread title and framing that doesn't actually line up with what those critics are saying.

But hey continue the pile on, everyone loves it when it's not their side.
Click to expand...

This is bullshit. Did you not even bother to read the article yourself?

This is their criticism in earnest. This is it. It's all in there. The critics do did not elaborate on the the theological implications of the book. The author does themself, which is what the article explains. Double down on your bias elsewhere.

Seth Enosh said:
This. The title of the thread doesn't line up with even the quotes that the OP made from the article. When they talk about theological implications, they aren't talking about whether God the Father is a black or white man.
Click to expand...

You too. Only you're worse because you're elaborating on someone else's point, neither of you having read the article.

If either of you did you mistakenly skimmed through it thinking all of the criticism was from critics. Let me TLDR it for you. Point 1 - The critics are racist. Point 2 - the theological implications were explained by the author themself and they intentionally wanted to make people like the critics uncomfortable to challenge their perceptions. You are conflating the two because you didn't read the whole thing. Stop.
 
Rhomega Beta

Rhomega Beta

Member
SpaceWolf said:
God isn't supposed to be a person in the first place but a cosmic, celestial force without true form.
Click to expand...

The Bible mentions several times that God has a face. I recall the Mormons believing that God and Jesus look exactly the same.

Oh, and I remember seeing the book on shelves years ago. Thought it was some dark horror movie about an insane sociopath, wasn't expecting a story about faith.
 
R

royalan

Member
"Ew, look at the apples in that assorted fruit bowl, all red with waxy skin. Probably the kind with mushy flesh, too. Not the crisp kind."

"Yo, what's your problem with apples?"

"Huh? Don't you dare intentionally skew my argument! I don't have a problem with apples, CLEARLY my argument is framed around the implications of a fruit bowl being on that table in the first place!"
 
P

Platy

Member
Eusis said:
Probably, with god being trans(cendent).
Click to expand...

Jesus is probably also trans, considering he does not have an Y chromossome to take testosterone from so it must come from injections.

The whole 12->20 timejump on the bible was because of the transition
 
S

Snowybreak

Member
capitalCORN said:
WMPvB8i.jpg
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Now this is a goddamned argument ender. I will be saving this.
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
You guys think evangelicals care about direct theological constriction based on semantics of English within their interpretation of the King James Bible?

This has nothing to do with that. Evangelicals are corner pastors who use the word liberally to mean whatever they want it to mean at the time in order to bilk people out of money. They need things like this in order to fire up their constituency and congregations that "we are under attack! We need money to fight against this injustice!" then hoard it all.

There's a reason people like Jerry Falwell got to become Billionaires off this schlock.

They are Christian in the most tentative of ways. They are more charlatan than Christian.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
“If the film is a faithful portrayal of the events and the theology of the book, then every Christian should be gravely alarmed at the further advance of beliefs that smear the evangelical understanding of the truth of the Bible,”
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So every other Christian for two thousand years had it all wrong and you're the ones crying "heresy"...
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
Stinkles said:
So every other Christian for two thousand years had it all wrong and you're the ones crying "heresy"...
Click to expand...

Most evangelical congregations I've been too don't even quote the bible. They quote Catholic catechisms (lol) or colloquial expressions about goodlyness in godlyness and play it off like it's in there somewhere because they know most people aren't actually reading the damn book.

Some even have their own bibles with passages added or removed.
 
M

Matt_

World's #1 One Direction Fan: Everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but you~~~
Hmmm
I like the trailer
I like the fact that they cast minorities in these roles despite the fact it would piss off a large part of its target audience (or was the book explicit in the races of the characters?)
and I love octavia spencer

BUT

Sam Worthington!? In a drama? Really!?

Either way people getting upset at this are gross. Christianity neither originated in Europe nor is it exclusive to white populations. To demand the holy characters to be displayed exclusively as white can't even be catergorised as thinly veiled racism at this point, its outright white supremacy
 
R

Razmos

Member
They pick and choose whatever parts of the Bible to believe or not, but the ethnicity and gender of God is absolutely set? Lol ok
 
B

Budi

Member
Some people are just nutters, there were terrorist attacks to theaters for Scorsese's Last Temptation of the Christ. Also banned in many countries. Great film though.

There also were protests against Dogma.
 
S

Seth Enosh

Member
Breads said:
This is bullshit. Did you not even bother to read the article yourself?

This is their criticism in earnest. This is it. It's all in there. The critics do did not elaborate on the the theological implications of the book. The author does themself, which is what the article explains. Double down on your bias elsewhere.



You too. Only you're worse because you're elaborating on someone else's point, neither of you having read the article.

If either of you did you mistakenly skimmed through it thinking all of the criticism was from critics. Let me TLDR it for you. Point 1 - The critics are racist. Point 2 - the theological implications were explained by the author themself and they intentionally wanted to make people like the critics uncomfortable to challenge their perceptions. You are conflating the two because you didn't read the whole thing. Stop.
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You stop. Look up the original source using google. The criticisms are explicitly theological. The OP leaves this out because it's not based on the original source of the quotes. http://christiannews.net/2016/12/20...od-as-woman-could-far-outweigh-harm-of-novel/

Young encouraged Christians to ask themselves key questions about the film’s content.
“My word to the viewers of the movie ‘The Shack’ is this: If they confess to be Christians, they should pay close attention to the statements made by the actors and ask themselves: Does this theology agree with the Bible and Christian doctrine? Or, is it more in line with the old distortions of the truth that Christians have identified as heresy as early as the Council of Constantinople in 533?” he said. “Contrary to UR, 2,000 years of Church history cannot be wrong.”​

Needless to say, sixth century church councils have nothing to say about god being a black woman or any particular focus on race.
 
R

royalan

Member
Seth Enosh said:
You stop. Look up the original source using google. The criticisms are explicitly theological. The OP leaves this out because it's not based on the original source of the quotes. http://christiannews.net/2016/12/20...od-as-woman-could-far-outweigh-harm-of-novel/

Young encouraged Christians to ask themselves key questions about the film’s content.
“My word to the viewers of the movie ‘The Shack’ is this: If they confess to be Christians, they should pay close attention to the statements made by the actors and ask themselves: Does this theology agree with the Bible and Christian doctrine? Or, is it more in line with the old distortions of the truth that Christians have identified as heresy as early as the Council of Constantinople in 533?” he said. “Contrary to UR, 2,000 years of Church history cannot be wrong.”​

Needless to say, sixth century church councils have nothing to say about god being a black woman or any particular focus on race.
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???

The quote that I have posted twice now in this thread is also in the source article.

Schimmel starts out by making what is definitely an explicit comment on the races and genders portraying the Trinity, and then later switches to a completely unrelated argument about Universalism. Whatever the diverse cast from The Shack has to do with the idea that all sinners will eventually be let into heaven, we don't know because he does a terrible job connecting those points. You're being dishonest at this point.
 
B

Breads

Banned
Seth Enosh said:
Needless to say, sixth century church councils have nothing to say about god being a black woman or any particular focus on race.
Click to expand...

And yet you said it anyway.

That literal footnote you quoted from an article twice removed from the OP has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The link you posted was indeed cited as a source to the WaPo article in question which is something you could have found out without googling and there is nothing in the article you linked to that indicates that WaPo's response was in any way unfair.

Now.

You can make a case for James B. DeYoung's criticism being theological... but not Joe Schimmel. Which you conveniently left out even though it was front and center in the OP, WaPo's article, and the one you linked to. Joe Schimmel's quotes, by the way, being the very thing we should be talking about.
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
It's super bizarre reason defense of the Bible as someone who isn't religious

Like this talk of 'real Christians know' and 'this borders on false idolatry' and 'the one truth of god revealed to us'
 
S

Seth Enosh

Member
Breads said:
And yet you said it anyway.

That literal footnote you quoted from an article twice removed from the OP has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The link you posted was indeed cited as a source to the WaPo article in question which is something you could have found out without googling and there is nothing in the article you linked to that indicates that WaPo's response was in any way unfair.

Now.

You can make a case for James B. DeYoung's criticism being theological... but not Joe Schimmel. Which you conveniently left out even though it was front and center in the OP, WaPo's article, and the one you linked to. Joe Schimmel's quotes, by the way, being the very thing we should be talking about.
Click to expand...
Ok. Here's schimmel's quote from the CNN piece. Race is mentioned; but only descriptively.

“Young’s pretentious caricature of God as a heavy set, cushy, non-judgmental, African American woman called ‘Papa’ (who resembles the New Agey Oprah Winfrey far more than the one true God revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ—Hebrews 1:1-3), and his depiction of the Holy Spirit as a frail Asian woman with the Hindu name, Sarayu, lends itself to a dangerous and false image of God and idolatry,” Joe Schimmel, pastor of Blessed Hope Chapel in Simi Valley, California and host of the documentary “Hollywood’s War on God,” told Christian News Network.
Connect with Christian News
Schimmel preached a message at his church entitled “The Shack and the Seduction of the Church,” which he is currently making available as a doctrinal warning to Christians, as well as a list of 13 theological heresies in the novel as outlined by Dr. Michael Youssef.​

I followed the link to "The Shack and the Seduction of the Church" to find if his issue is the race of the characters, as implied by the OP. Of course, the 13 heresies listed don't mention that god is supposed to be a white man. http://cupofjoe.goodfight.org/the-shack-and-the-seduction-of-the-church/

The Shack and the Seduction of the ChurchMany people are being moved by emotional stories and seduced into accepting another Jesus rather than the Jesus of the Bible. Sadly, even Christians are being deceived into this false message about God and embracing an all-inclusive counterfeit Christianity that draws in fans but distorts the Bible. How does the Bible compare to the theology taught by William P. Young’s characters in The Shack? Learn the truth in this one hour audio message presented by Pastor Joe Schimmel. Get your copy now!

Because The Shack continues to be a best seller, and evangelicals and otherwise conservative churches are so taken in by this novel, we felt it was necessary to call attention to this subject again. Evangelicals have embraced the book and pastors have bought the book by the cases for their church members, even centering bible studies around it. Why would a book that contains 13 separate heresies about God be so popular with those who ought to know Scripture? It has caught on like wildfire because Christians today let their feelings determine truth rather than let truth dictate their feelings. Following are the 13 false representations of God found in The Shack.


Thirteen Heresies in The Shack

by Dr. Michael Youssef

1. God the Father was crucified with Jesus.

Because God’s eyes are pure and cannot look upon sin, the Bible says that God would not look upon His own beloved Son as He hung on the Cross, carrying our sins (Habakkuk 1:13; Matthew 27:45).

2. God is limited by His love and cannot practice justice.

The Bible declares that God’s love and His justice are two sides of the same coin — equally a part of the personality and the character of God (Isaiah 61:8; Hosea 2:19).

3. On the Cross, God forgave all of humanity, whether they repent or not. Some choose a relationship with Him, but He forgives them all regardless.

Jesus explained that only those who come to Him will be saved (John 14:6).

4. Hierarchical structures, whether they are in the Church or in the government, are evil.

Our God is a God of order (Job 25:2).

5. God will never judge people for their sins.

The Word of God repeatedly invites people to escape from the judgment of God by believing in Jesus Christ, His Son (Romans 2:16; 2 Timothy 4:1-3).

6. There is not a hierarchical structure in the Godhead, just a circle of unity.

The Bible says that Jesus submitted to the will of the Father. This doesn’t mean that one Person is higher or better than the other; just unique. Jesus said, “I came to do the will of Him who sent me. I am here to obey my Father.” Jesus also said, “I will send you the Holy Spirit” (John 4:34, 6:44, 14:26, 15:26).

7. God submits to human wishes and choices.

Far from God submitting to us, Jesus said, “Narrow is the way that leads to eternal life.” We are to submit to Him in all things, for His glory and because of what He has accomplished for us (Matthew 7:13-15).

8. Justice will never take place because of love.

The Bible teaches that when God’s love is rejected, and when the offer of salvation and forgiveness is rejected, justice must take place or God has sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for nothing (Matthew 12:20; Romans 3:25-26).

9. There is no such a thing as eternal judgment or torment in hell.

Jesus’ own description of hell is vivid … it cannot be denied (Luke 12:5, 16:23).

10. Jesus is walking with all people in their different journeys to God, and it doesn’t matter which way you get to Him.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will come to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

11. Jesus is constantly being transformed along with us.

Jesus, who dwells in the splendor of heaven, sits at the right hand of God, reigning and ruling the universe. The Bible says, “In Him there is no change, for He is yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 11:12, 13:8; James 1:17).

12. There is no need for faith or reconciliation with God because everyone will make it to heaven.

Jesus said, “Only those who believe in me will have eternal life” (John 3:15, 3:36, 5:24, 6:40).

13. The Bible is not true because it reduces God to paper.

The Bible is God-breathed. Sure, there were many men through 1,800 years who put pen to paper (so to speak), each from different professions and different backgrounds, but the Holy Spirit infused their work with God’s words. These men were writing the same message from Genesis to Revelation.​

It still seems quite clear to me that a article from a niche Christian news site about intrachurch theological issues has been repurposed/repackaged as anti-Christian fake news. And it's working great as shown by the responses in this thread. If you had posted longer excerpts such as these 13 heresies, would all the responses be focused on race or would people have just gotten bored and left the thread?

Edit: there's also a note at the top of the page with a response from the ministry saying that some news articles are misrepresenting them, probably reactions to stuff like that posted by OP. http://cupofjoe.goodfight.org/good-fight-ministries-vs-racism/

Interestingly considering some of the posts in this thread about Jesus' race suggesting that the Christians quotes are annoyed with Jesus' racial depiction in the Shack, the pastor actually reproduces some old sermons where he criticized Ridley Scott's Exodus for whitewashing characters and points out that Jesus was a Semite and probably didn't look very "white" himself.
 
U

ultratruman

Banned
God being a woman will always be more subversive than him being a particular ethnicity. The foundation of many people's belief is rooted in paternal protection.
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
This is the kind of thing that people who get outraged by political correctness tend to freak out about. So: good.

Razmos said:
They pick and choose whatever parts of the Bible to believe or not, but the ethnicity and gender of God is absolutely set? Lol ok
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"I don't know what God looks like, but I can sure as shoot tell you he ain't no negro!"
 
R

royalan

Member
Seth Enosh said:
Ok. Here's schimmel's quote from the CNN piece. Race is mentioned; but only descriptively.
Click to expand...

"Only descriptively" is your assertion. As I and others have noted, the racial/gender descriptions of the casting of the Trinity serves as the bases of that particular criticism of The Shack. That he has other criticisms doesn't mitigate that.

Also, stop saying "fake news." This isn't what fake news is, and I'm not going to credit you with the level of ignorance it would require to not know that.
 
H

hammysaurusrex

Member
My experience with Evangelicalism is that racism is an intrinsic aspect of the culture.

No amount of apology gymnastics is going to gaslight me and tell me 18 years of my life was just a "misunderstanding" - I saw it happen.
 
H

Hollycat

Member
Wasn't there a part of the bible where god came down as a man and attacked someone only to end up getting beat up and ending the fight by breaking the guys arm with magic?
 
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