William Paul Young, author of the 22-million bestseller The Shack, is one of the most spiritually adventurous Christian writers I know. And one of the most spiritually mature. Prayer for him is not just a matter of putting in a litany of requests but a wallowing in the love of God. In fact, that love relationship permeates every page of his newest novel, Eve.
More about Eve in a minute, but first about Paul. We had a chance to talk on the phone recently, and as always with Paul, it was a mind-expanding faith journey, and that was within minutes of saying hello. I don’t know anyone else who can deliver such high octane statements like, “Timing is the sandbox of the Holy Spirit” or “There is nothing more certain than the goodness of God,” and sound so cracker-barrel down-to-earth.
Like all his books, Eve was hatched in a crucible of pain when he had to let go of his old view of God, “that God was unreachable, unknowable, watching from a distance and only there to say, ‘You are wrong,’” as he puts it, and he came to embrace a relationship built on complete trust.
“Pain is the friction between the lies that we have embraced – that have become our prison,” he said in another interview, “and the truth that is revealed to us in Jesus by the Holy Spirit.”
I asked him how he made this transformation from a fear-based faith to one of love. He immediately mentioned the experience of being a father and grandfather and spending time with children. “We need to learn to become children again. To let go of ‘future-tripping,’ where out of fear we imagine what’s going to happen and waste today’s grace on things that don’t exist.”
He describes his own prayer life as “a conversation with more listening than talking. It’s a relationship and like any good relationship it thrives on honesty and authenticity.”
Eve came about after years of wrestling with the Scriptures and asking himself why we constantly shut down the voices of women. “When I look around the world, I see that most of the damage comes from men – brothels, wars, fathers who run away from their children and their families.” It took him back to Genesis and the first woman.
I won’t give away a plot that is full of rich theological inquiry. As in The Shack, he doesn’t hesitate to put God on the page, named Adonai here, and I particularly love that when God talks, he refers to himself in the first-person plural, “We.” Of course, God as three persons.
What Paul does as an author is allow his faith to inform his imagination, like great Christian writers of the past, Bunyan, Dante, Milton. He doesn’t rewrite the Bible – he sticks to Genesis as it was first put down. But then he creates a world around it to enhance our understanding and to remind us, indeed, that there is nothing more certain than the goodness of God.
But besides reading him, I wish you could talk to him. He always blows my mind. Here are a couple videos I made with him a couple years back. Just listen.
