Shack Part 2: the context of forgiveness

There are some, that despite the depths within my own soul that grace has touch, I think fall outside the bounds of forgiveness.

Gideon often incited a story from Phillip Yancey about a mother who would prostitute her two year old child to pay for her drug habit. He astutely shared the story in the context of Jonah thinking that perhaps God was offering too much grace in forgiving Nineveh of it’s horrors. I have two children now and the more I spend time with them the more valid responses like Jonah’s seem. That’s too much grace. I’d love if in these scenarios God would suspend the love/freedom project and magically lift this child from this situation and use one of Zeus’s lightning bolts to smite such a heinous sinner. God doesn’t and I wonder both why if the project is worth it.

What’s more it’s one thing for God to refrain from the lightning bolt, but quite another to work to rescue this one who we’ll identify as one of Manning’s ragamuffins. The ragamuffin it would seem is beyond repair and a waste of my rehab funding tax dollars. The ragamuffin should have her child taken away and put in prison where she would suffer and slow and horrible death in retribution.

The problem with our story is that we are a world full of ragamuffins even if we don’t want to admit it. Ever since great grandpa Adam ate fruit there seems to be this undeniable propensity within all of us to choose ragamuffin activity. Choice among our ragamuffin activity is our desire to judge. This is how I get away with calling down lightning bolts on our original ragamuffin. The ability to discern between good and evil, to see clearly that prostituting your child deserves hell. That’s where this raga would send that raga.

William Young’s gift to this conversation is his chapter on judgment. I frame the situation me vs the raga. He reminds me that from the perspective the divine it’s this child vs this child and consequently boldly asks Mack to play God by deciding not between the teaching pastor and the skank, but rather between one child and the other. Who to send to hell?

“I don’t want to be the judge,” he said, standing up. Mack’s mind was racing. This couldn’t be real. How could God ask him to choose among his own children? There was no way he could sentence Katie, or any of his other children, to an eternity in hell just because she had sinned against him. Even if Katie or Josh or Jon or Tyler committed some heinous crime, he still wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t! For him, it wasn’t about their performance; it was about this love for them.
‘I can’t do this,’ he said softly.
‘You must,’ she replied.
‘I can’t do this,’ he said louder and more vehemently.
‘You must,’ she said again, her voice softer.
‘I…will…not…do…this!’ Mack yelled, his blood boiling hot inside of him.
‘you must,’ she whispered.
‘I can’t. I can’t. I won’t!’ he screamed, and now the words and emotions came tumbling out. The woman just stood watching and waiting. Finally he looked at her, pleading with his eyes. ‘Could I go instead? If you need someone to torture for eternity, I’ll go in their place. Would that work? Could I do that?’ He fell at her feet, crying and begging now. ‘Please let me go for my children, please, I would be happy to…Please, I am begging you. Please…Please…”
“Mackenzie, Mackenzie,” she whispered, and her words came like a splash of cool water on a brutally hot day. Her hand gently touched his cheeks as she lifted him to his feet. Looking at her through blurring tears, he could see that her smile was radiant. ‘Now you sound like Jesus. You have judged well, Mackenzie. I am so proud of you!’”

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