The Shack: A Philosophy on Gender

**Note: This is not particularly what The Shack is about, and it does come across as a little rude to males, but I do not mean to be a feminist.

The Shack is mind bending, and changes the way one would look at the world, but then it is also popular, and it has a popular subject. So I'm not sure if it is classified as lit or pop fiction, therefore I am reading 150 pages just to be safe. I say it is mindbending, though, because it portrays God as a black woman.  Most people percieve God as a white male, as did I, and so this, sad to say, shocked me. I wondered why Young chose to present Him this way. I thought it was an attempt to raise the african american race or the female gender, a direction I did not expect the book to take. But then the character of God says this: "I am neither male nor female[...] For me to appear to you as a woman  [...] is to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning." This stuck out because it felt like it was meant for me, my visions being so narrow.  And so why does God seem to claim the male gender in the Bible by using the word "father"? Young's answer ="Both [genders] are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence."
Just because this has the same subject, I'll throw this comment in the mix : When the protagonist says to Jesus, "I've always wondered why men have been in charge [...] males seeem to be the cause of so much of the pain in the world." Jesus answers, "Women turned from us [God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit] to another relationship, while men turned to themselves and the ground." The truth in this statement if deafening. Men are straight-forward, they want what makes them happy, and they have less emotion, where women strive so hard to be loved, adored, talked about and admired.

We are broken in our own ways.