Facing the Canon with Wm Paul Young ('The Shack' Author)

Paul Young has written perhaps one of the most extraordinary books of our time the shack dealing with the miracle and mystery of human experience he has created curiosity and captivated the minds of millions of readers originally printing just 15 copies for his family the shack has now sold over 14 million copies worldwide poor it's wonderful that you're taking some time out of your schedule to have a little conversation and let a few other people listen in absolutely thank you and we want to hear your story well where were you born Grand Prairie Alberta Canada but you weren't there very long because your parents moved correct there were missionaries in the highlands of New Guinea and I was 10 months old when we went into the highlands of New Guinea yes the Irian Jaya side not the Papua New Guinea side so we were in the primitive side and your parents were missionaries correct to try and reach which particular people grew it was a New Guinea is a strange country it has 800 unrelated language groups and this was a large tribe in the central part and it was the Doni tribe da Ni and the forty to sixty thousand people over a hundred square miles tribal they'd never seen white people before warring spirit worshiping they were ritualistically cannibalistic the first book ever written about the place was called cannibal Valley really Nance and so it was a very primitive world but it was the world I grew up in and the one that I thought was normal and how many years did you live that until I was almost 10 except you know I I lived there but at age six it was required to send your children to boarding school so I went out to boarding school at age six and where did you go to school to the coast which was about 250 air miles away so that period of your life how would you describe it okay yeah in some ways a mixed bag you know I've definitely felt I'd belong to the tribal culture and and that was a wonderful thing there was lots of things that I remember with joy or gratitude but there were terrible things as well so it was a very mixed bag a lot of my great sadness that's reflected in the book comes from that period of time so from there well your parents moved on and went to where they came back to Canada and my father started pastoring in an itinerant sort of way so I went to 13 schools before I graduated high school 13 now that must be quite difficult it's what you're used to so you get used to moving and you get used to not deepening relationships you get it's just temporary every relationship is a goodbye that's just down the road a short period of time so you tend to keep things fairly surface and it works if you're hiding a lot of shame and pain and you know as soon as the facade you have created starts to fall apart you can hear God call you somewhere else yes yeah and then you left school you went to Bible College I did in central Canada did three years there and then that was on my way to Los Angeles to finish up some degrees and ran into a place called Gresham Oregon yes and there was a community of believers there that I never really seen the likes of and and so I needed to go to school on the Canadian and with a student visa so I ended up going to the only school still taking students I was there for a year got an undergraduate degree in religion and then started working with 20s to 30 year olds which was my age for the church and met Kim and we've been in that area ever since yes and him as your wife correct him she is here tonight and she's here tonight and you've been married for 31 years 31 years so you've got the silver medal but you're going for gold absolutely yeah that's really good so then after you the church what happened then I only spent about two and a half years there and then I went to seminary so I got some more education ran out of money and we had started to have children and I just picked up whatever work I worked in insurance and worked in Telecom and worked in all kinds of different situations I've sort of a jack of all trades and master of none sort of person so I know that feeling yeah yes and and then now how did the book come about why did you end up writing the book well I was I was trying to do like the Bible says and submit to my wife and well it says submit to one another and she's one of the other ones so and Kim had been asking me I was a writer all my life in the sense that you write to get the inside world out and so my early writing was very dark and because it's very I had a very painful childhood and and then I started writing for gifts poetry and songs and short stories and and give them away to my friends and family and Kim had been asking me for about four years if I as she said would you just someday as a gift to our children put in one place how you think because you think outside the box and that was the that was the mandate and by the way later when the book was published she told me she had been thinking four to six pages oh but you you you writing it while you were commuting to work yes initially yes I was working three jobs at the time and my main job was downtown during the time that I was writing the initial men the full manuscript and I was working for a web conferencing company so I have 40 minutes each way on the train and I had yellow legal pads and I started with these conversations you know basically the questions you're not allowed to ask when you're growing up in the church yes and and those conversations became living conversations for me and priests and I'm writing them on every scrap of paper I can find and and then I'm afraid they'll blow away so I put them into the computer and that's where I'm asking who's asking these questions and why and the scenario of the book with Missy and McKenzie is just birthed out of that question and that becomes the framework for the conversations and it just poured out I was I wrote it in about six months working three jobs so as well and then you went to a supermarket and printed a few copies yeah Office Depot 15 copies for friends and family for Christmas and that's all I ever thought I mean I never anticipate anything more than those 15 copies yeah and you know I've never published anything I never even thought about it so and you're giving them to friends and family and they love you anyway so at the end of the day they're you know so you don't have any perspective at all and my friends kept giving it away that's what started the whole thing but then but then they your children read the book you know about abduction and murder and all this sort of thing is not your typical children's book is it well no and my children are not little yeah you know my youngest is 17 my oldest is 30 and you know I I struggled a little bit with trying to have the right scenario and I picked what I consider to be the the worst pain a human being can experience which is the loss between a parent and a child yes and that deepest pain asks the best questions and so you know if God doesn't show up in the middle of that I mean are there certain of the situations that we perpetrate on each other that are outside the boundaries and God says well that's just I can't I can't deal with that you know and if God doesn't show up in that situation what's the / what's the point and and so that became the scenario within which I could ask the real human questions that arise in all our hearts so all you the cat many of the characters in the book yeah the writer in Nashville who's a she read the book early on and she sent me an email and she put it the best that anybody has she said I don't know your story but my sense is that Missy represents something murdered in you as a child probably your innocence and Mackenzie is you as an adult trying to deal with it and that's really true and you know we've had the deaths in our family we had a six-month period where Kim's mom died and at 59 and then on either end of those six months my 18 year old brother was killed and my five year old niece was killed the day after her fifth birthday and so we know that piece of it but this really is much more metaphorical than that and and goes deep into my my history in my Shack you know so so how would you define the shack what do you mean when you say shack the way that I look at it is the shack is the house on the inside it's the soul of a human being it's the house on the inside that people help you build and some of us just didn't get good help so it's a Shack it's it's got walls that are have holes in it it's but you know it becomes the place where we then hide all of our addictions and we store all of our secrets and it's the the house of pain and shame and it's the place we never want anybody to ever come into we don't invite anybody there and we you know for some of us so religious kids like me we then try to build a facade on the outside something that we can paint when we pick up people's expectations and and we live from the outside in because we don't think we have anything on the inside you know secrets are a huge part of that and we keep our secrets because we're terrified you know we're terrified that we'll lose control or we're terrified that we will lose whatever the affection and the approval we manage to scratch out but the trap of Secrets is that when somebody offers us love and affection we don't believe them you know because they don't know the secrets if they knew the secrets they wouldn't be giving us this love and so we're caught by our secrets and the the inside house becomes the place where you hate and you think god hates it and so you know for me I'm trying out here with this piece of facade this little quarter-inch piece of plywood I'm hoping if I can just pray enough and give enough and get involved enough and study enough that someday this fake person would become real that's the hope I'm not trying to be a duplicitous person I'm not trying to be a fraud I'm actually trying to perform out here and hope that that performance gets me to something real at some point but you know God loves you the person that's broken she'll not who you think he wants you to be yes can you just give us some examples or the kind of pain that you went through and that you carried for years yeah my first part of my great sadness was my relationship with my father and you know my father had come out of a very dysfunctional history himself and in retrospect he took a big step away from his history but he had never dealt with it and so he was an angry young man he was tasked with something was rather impossible you know people look back now and shake their heads about what the task was I mean they're dropped into a culture that nobody knew anything about they didn't know the language I'm 10 months old so far as I know Donnie's my first language and yes and and when I'm five years old Wickliffe comes in to translate the language and I'm the informant because I'm the only one in the world that can speak the language in English and you know my father was a very harsh disciplinarian and and so I I learned early on that I didn't really belong to him I didn't have any sense of that and at the same time the tribal people had picked me up and actually raised me during this time my parents were given so many things that they had to do that and it was a cultural time where if you were a missionary you were basically told look if you do the work of God and God will take care of the details and children were part of those details so that was a very difficult piece for me and your parents are so preoccupied with what they work of God yeah whole of gone absolutely actually neglect their own children yeah and that's not an unusual story it's you know especially when you go back during this period of time it was it was the call of God isn't is number one and then pretty much anything else can fall apart as long as you do that and and the whole system was set up to reinforce that did you you felt quiet it's a it towards them because of this um no because my circle of family became the tribal people oh you know oh my whole life if you'd have put my parents and then the Doni tribal people on a blackboard and said put a circle around your family there would have been no hesitation it would have been around the tribe people and that's because they're the ones who raised me and they're the ones who played with me that taught me how to do things that you know my memories are with them they're not it's not in fact I was around the conversations where the tribal people were trying to figure out whether to kill my parents or not and I didn't feel in danger because I wasn't one of the ghost people yes and and so they were my family and that's introduced as a second great sadness which was sexual abuse and that started at about age four and a half inside the tribe and people who don't know how sexual abuse works they don't understand by age six I was already bent in such a way that I was somewhat of a predator at age six yes and and then I went to boarding school and and in boarding school it was a Christian missionary boarding school and and I felt a little lost because that's the first time I figured out I was white you know which was a big disappointment and and then it was a place that wasn't safe it was a and and the big boys came and molested the little boys and yes and so the sexual abuse just became just wrapped into my history and I knew from the very beginning I remember my earliest memories are I knew it wasn't safe to talk to my parents especially my father so they never knew they had no idea couldn't tell them no there's no relationship that no when when I came back after my first time away at boarding school I called my mother Aunt Betty and her name's not Betty but there was a white woman at boarding school named Betty White oh that makes sense doesn't it so I figured white women are named Bennie's so I called my mother Betty and and it just shows how that there was such a distance between me and my parents and what was going on inside the tribal culture but you carried this pain with you yeah without articulating you children have a remarkable capacity to survive I think God builds it into them you can put children in front of them in front of devastation and they'll find a way to survive and my way was to perform I started performing started I needed to be the smartest I needed to be perfect you know and if you flip the Shack on its back you have a thin layer of perfectionist performance this facade covering up a notion of shame and so you perform you perform in school you perform in front of people you have to always have the right answer and and be the smartest and and you're just hoping that you can do it well enough that people will begin to believe that that's who you are but underneath you your your mess crying yeah the shack is still the shack you know and and it's your soul you can't run away from it you know some people try to take the pain and they try to drug it or they try to sex it or they try to drink it away or they get busy into business or worse ministry you know and they can hide it all and and and and they just they're there hoping that somehow it'll just go away because you don't want anybody to find out you know and if if you have this little thin layer of perfection and somebody pops a hole through it you know you're not all you're cracked up to be what do you do you either fight or you run you know of course you don't run because you're a religious person so you just hear God call you somewhere else absolutely oh yeah anywhere else yeah anywhere but then then there are other stages of your life as well where you got bruised any significant times well you know they're all wrapped up in this hiding and the secrets and all of this everything kind of unfolds from that I I was praying to God I was begging God find a way to heal me you know but I didn't want to let anybody to find out about this I'm hoping that somehow God could just heal me without anybody else finding out about it no yes and I didn't want that and and I was I really asked God to heal me and and God really set a trap when I look back you know out of the grace of his kindness he set a trap to heal me it didn't you know it wasn't obvious at the time but and her name's Kim you know you know I think a lot of times the men are saved by the you know in some sense by the women in their lives and Kim saved my life but she paid a huge price for it and you know I met Kim I was working with this church right with the 20s to 30 year olds and and I'm in charge and and she walks in with two of her five sisters one night first time I ever saw her so I'm in charge right so I immediately change what we're planning to do so we can break up into groups of two and pray free that's how I met him you know and you know we became friends and we ended up living on opposite sides of a duplex and and her with her girlfriends and maybe some guys and and during this period of time I've been told that I got interested in this girl named Cheryl you know the reason I've been told is because I don't have any memory of it because one day I'm I'm jogging running you know because when you're short and in your 20s you have to be fit in order to compete you know so um I know that feeling yeah yeah yeah so yeah we have a lot in common so so I'm out and I'm running over to the church parking lot which is across East Hill which is two lanes each way with a scepter turning lane and Kim's cars over there so I'm going to pick it up for her and I got hit by a high-risk driver doing somewhere around 55 miles an hour in the center turning lane and he knocked carried me knocked me a half a block and I ended up in this heap in front of the pastor's house just as he's walking out the door and he was on his way to the airport he's an ex EMT emergency yeah person so he was on me immediately and within a couple minutes off to the ambulance off-duty police officer they all converged they say I never lost consciousness but I was loopy which is yes so what happened while Paul you were in this accident you were hit by a car Oh so what happened it's just for 24 hours I'm in this cycle you know and they had to do certain operations without anesthetic because they were afraid of the head injuries sending me into a coma and when I come to conscious awareness the first thing is I'm throwing up in this nurse is there a nice she says you know you might be allergic to Demerol because you did the same thing when we gave it to you downstairs so maybe so you want you want to try it again give me some more you know just be sure you know and I and I suddenly realize I don't know who I am I don't know who I am I don't know what country I'm in I don't know what year this is and I don't know any person who comes through the door and I had absolute amnesia I just didn't know anything and except I knew I had a relationship with Jesus that's the only word a relational reality that made it through that accident and so I relaxed I was fine I didn't know who I was but I figured I got a relationship with Jesus I'm okay and Kim walks in the door burst into tears because I'm really kind of busted up she she leaves and I'm thinking she's cute and over the next you know weeks and months chunks in my memory would come back some things never came back Sheryl never came back yeah so it was good then well you know she wasn't really pleased about it but but what could you do I didn't know who she was I have one little memory of sitting in a car talking to her and that's it I went on a trip came back and during that trip I really felt God speak to my heart you know I've never heard God speak audibly but over time you get to hear the voice and the nudge and and and I really felt him say Mary Kim which I thought wasn't a bad idea but I'm trying to figure out how do I ask her you know we haven't really dated or anything so I figure if I ask her in a group setting it's safer guys can be stupid what can I get so I get as hot as possible for her yeah exactly because you know yeah if you're in a group setting it's a lot of pressure you know and she did I did yeah I set up a party too and welcome us home with 15 of our closest friends and excuse me Kim was one of them and so I wrote cards for everybody and you had to read your card out loud and they were creative and you know touching and hers just said will you marry me so I palmed hers on the bottom because I figured once she reads her cards it kind of depends on how the evening goes and so she opens up and goes William now and and she would tell you this is absolutely true what went through her mind was if I say no he'll never ask me again but if I say yes I can back out it's the truth is that a chief came yeah that is the truth it is the truth and she said yes and we were married eleven days later yeah I don't know if I'd have made it 12 you know you know because I did not marry because I had a free heart and this was a you know I knew what love was in this you know it wasn't like that and and suddenly I'm kind of freaking out now I'd been suicidal off and on during my life but it really intensified at first because see I can't run away not and maintain any kind of facade here you know and now I'm living with someone who is a healthy person compared it to me this is Kim and her large family she's Minnesota North Dakota's salt-of-the-earth people and and she is not a quiet kind of person you know and and she pokes holes through the your performance you know and and she didn't have any idea what that did to me one of the things that Shane does and this really I didn't understand it at the time but I understand it now one of the things that Shane does it destroys your ability to distinguish between a value statement and an observation she would say don't mix the colors with the whites my laundry right yes I heard her say I don't know why I married such a loser of a human being as you because when you pop down through that little performance and you have to be perfect you hit the shame and all you hear is what I heard when my father did what he did and I heard when the abuse took place and the shame that I felt about it you're nothing and I couldn't distinguish between an observation and a value statement and that's you know this may explain for some of you your spouse and why the littlest thing can trigger something and you know it's just that there was just this massive mess in my heart and I covered it up I was smart I went to school I got the education I was a speaker I was a teacher I was all these things and and I was suicidal I mean I it was I just didn't know what to do about it and but I'm a missionary kid and you learn how to adapt and I learn by watching Kim and then her father her father came and lived with us for 17 years and after Kim's mom died and and his name is Willard and we called him Willy he's the Willy in the book as Kim's dead and and I watched him and I learned how to be a father as best that I knew how but I'm still performing right and I'm still trying to repress the addictions and and and not let anybody find out about the struggles or anything and I held it together for a long time Mackenzie's weekend represents 11 years for me and that 11 years started in January 4th 1994 and had it broke the dam what was it a phone call Kim calls me January 4th in the afternoon and this is what she says I'm waiting for you at your office and I know it's all she said and the facade came crashing down because what she knew was I was in a three-month affair with one of her best friends in fact it was the woman that Kim talked to at some point because she felt us separating and the betrayal was just immense and when the when the facade comes down what you've put your hope in all you have left is the shame that's all you have and I had to make a decision whether to face her or kill myself and I to this day I don't know how I made it across town and I pulled into the parking lot and I walk in and Kim's already torn the place up and she lights into me which she had every reason to and a couple hours into it I said look if we're going to do this I have to tell you every secret I have secrets have been killing me my whole life and she basically said bring it on and I told her and it took me the next 4 days and at the end of those 4 days this is stuff Kim she just didn't know and at the end of that time she was just destroyed and she said I will never believe another word that comes out of your mouth the rest of your life and I believed her and I didn't know what to do found in the phone book found a faith-based counseling group that dealt with sexual abuse and I walked into that place and they introduced me to Scott Mitchell who became a counselor for the next nine months and he was he became a friend and I sat across from him the first day and I said my life's over you know I don't even know anymore how to get to point B you know I'm just done and for the first time in my life I said these words to another human being can you help me can you help me and Scott says yeah I can help you but it'll take a year and a half and I said I'm in he said Yeah right everybody's sitting where you are they always say they're in but after a couple months they'll feel a little bit more in control and they'll bail out right before the really hard stuff and I said look I will not leave this process until you tell me I'm done and and I and I gave away control I put myself into the hands of somebody else and I didn't have a clue and he was right it got really hard and when I would call Kim after I would meet with Scott I'd call Kim and say this is what we talked about and every day she'd say the same thing yeah right whatever and that was okay because I knew I couldn't heal her I couldn't heal myself I knew that and did you continue to live in the same house yes which was the grace of God I mean she had every reason to boot me out and and I hit the bottom and I think there's two things that why I know I hit the bottom one is I let go of control you know I I asked for help and I got some help and the second thing is I never pointed a finger at Kim you know I never said well you know some of this is some of your stuff you know it didn't matter it was my stuff I needed to deal with my stuff if I had pointed a finger at her I'd have been gone in a flash is sure but chief but can be accommodated you yeah she if possible she didn't want the kids to grow up without a father and she thought I'd hit she really believed as angry as she was and she was angry for a long time as angry as she was she believed I hit the bottom and and I was allowed to stay in the home and and it was an incremental agonizing process I mean and it really got hard at one point I lost all my hope yeah you lost your hope yeah in this process because finally you're at the edge of the cliff looking down into this abyss of all your stuff and you're and the question is what's real I don't even know what's real I don't know if any part of my life has any reality to it at all what's not a defensive mechanism or a survival skill what do I have to do go back to when I'm four and a half years old and try to figure out who's really here I my hope just disappeared because I'm thinking you know what I've heard every person in my life I've heard my children and I've heard my wife and I've heard her and I've hurt the other woman's family and and um you know it's just a disaster and I'm thinking you know my my children they would be better off if I wasn't here because look I'm just hurting everybody and I started planning a trip to Mexico because I didn't want my children to find my body I mean it was that gone and two friends came one two came and said he said I'm sorry that you've had to come down from the mountain of normalcy to find out what some of us are like he's a broken boy yes and he said you know Paul's doing the best he knows how right now and I think if you hit him one more time metaphorically if you can lash into him one more time right now you're going to kill him and I didn't even know that he had told Kim that and then a friend of ours a woman came and said where are you right now and I described standing on this of this and and I said you know all I am is a piece of dried-up crack and and the wind is blowing and I'm terrified that when it's done blowing there's just not going to be any thing left and kitty says to me Paul there is a seed I'm thinking a seed and then I think you know if there's a seed even if there's a the tiniest seed something could grow I don't know what it is but something could grow and then I think you know seeds they grow good in this kind of stuff and in that little tiny seed all my hope came back one little seed was all I needed and that was the last day of my life I was ever suicidal and that pulled me back into the process and eleven years it took for Kim and I to heal from beginning of of 94 to the end of 2004 and at the end of 2004 we had nothing physically we lost our home we'd lost our vehicles we lost everything it's not because you weren't working no I was working it was no husking oh yeah I worked every day you know I I kept doing the right thing during the process because you had a family responsibility absolutely annular but I was a business situation we got into and I it was part of the healing process actually of losing it all yeah because my last big fear was financial and security and what better way to deal with it than lose everything and you know you find out it's not so bad in fact it became one of the most joyful times in our life and tell you one little thing is that I've gone on this fast because and I don't fast normally I do it to help listen if I've got an issue that's on my heart and I'm asking God so you know I've trusted you my whole life with our finances how come we've been up and down and up and down and up and down and five days into this it's like Papa comes down and says are you ready to listen yet you know and I'm going why do you think I'm fasting you know and God says look you have never trusted me with your finances are you kidding even that little piece of property you say is mine I can't get my hands on because you'll manipulate relationships you'll shade the truth you'll you'll lie to protect it and as soon as that confrontation happen I knew it was true I knew it was true so I went to my brothers in the faith who are friends and I said I know you love me and I know you like to fix things please don't do anything to rescue me from the situation unless you are sure you are hearing the voice of God because you might be interfering with what God is doing in my life and that fall the fall of oh not 2004 7 of these men came and sat with me while they auctioned off my house at the County Courthouse the house we lived in for 17 years and I I cried not because I lost a house but because I had seven men in my life who would come and sit with me yes and my whole life has been alone you know because if that's what secrets do to you and now I've got these men who will sit with me and we lost everything and 2005 flips over and we're in a little rental place out in the middle of a forest of Christmas trees and I'm working three jobs and with all your children as well yeah and I'm finally healthy enough as a human being that I don't have any addictions left not even pleasing my dad you know and I'm not addicted to being significant you know I know now significance is who I am not what I do the book hasn't added any significance to me whatsoever and I was the same person in every situation where I used to be a different person in different situations and people asked me some time I was asked today in an interview what do you think about having your life so open now you have no secrets you know I have no secrets there's nothing Kim doesn't know nothing my kids don't know they say isn't that difficult I'd say you think that's difficult keeping secrets is difficult because you've got to make sure you're saying the right thing to this person and the right thing to this version you can't remember your story exactly so you got to spin it it takes a huge amount of energy to keep secrets this is so much easier and and I finally right yeah yeah and I finally felt like one of the healthiest people that I knew and then I finally felt healthy enough to do something Kim had been asking me to do for four years and that was to write something for my kids and that's what I did in 2005 I was reminded of what Jesus said if you know the truth the truth will set you free no which is what you experienced yeah and then earlier on you said you had a spark of hope and I was reminded of Jesus saying the faith as small as a mustard seed yeah you know your leaven year period when did you get that spark of hope that was in within the first nine months because yeah I was about four months into counseling when I just everything good yes it just went but you got that spark of hope yeah but then it was another 10 years yeah to unravel it all yeah almost like break down and rebuild yeah and that had to do with everything had to do with who I thought God was that had to do with who I thought I was it it had to you know rummage around in the history to see why why do these things happen why do I function the way that I do and so it was a total dismantling in a rebuilding and and that's the transformational imagery that's that's the shattuck and in the eleven years of rebuilding yeah which year did you reconnect with your wife Kim it was an incremental process right it was it was not an event it was piece by piece rebuilding the bridge of trust because you know you do something like that there is no trust and even though she can you know forgive over time that doesn't mean you trust the person anymore and so it just took and probably the event that really marked the conclusion was a few years ago when in a group of people who knew our story she said to them in front of me she said I never thought I would ever say this in my life but it was all worth it and and she's not saying you know God worked the circuit is not the author of evil God did not make me betray some somebody my family and my wife Oh God that was a I mean I thought in my sickness I thought that somebody now loved me unconditionally I wasn't going to let them in the shack either but you know it was just this myth and I got carried away in the sickness of my own heart and God is not the author of evil but God promises to show up in the middle of the damage that we create and bring about forgiveness and reconciliation and she's saying there's not anything so lost that God can't find it yes you know there's not anything so broken that God can't heal it but it's a process it doesn't just happen now there are some plants that produce a beautiful fragrance but they only produce a beautiful fragrance when they're crushed yeah and sounds like Kim began to smell the aroma of healing that gradually exactly kind of embraced did you ever speak to your mom and dad about this well it when it happened when it happened I contacted my parents and my mother showed up she came my father has not yet made mentioned it one time as you'll father Rachael book rumor has it that he has you know and I've been with him four or five times since the book came out and he's yet to mention it to me my mother read it and got stuck when Papa came through the door you know called my sister and said your brother is a heretic you know and and it took her an amazing sequence of events in order to get past that but she is she is mostly comfortable with the book now but my father I don't know you know and we're cordial and you have to understand you know my father is a mixed bag you know he's helped many people and my niece was date raped when she was 18 and told me a couple years ago if it wasn't for grandpa I'd hate every man on this planet yeah so my father has been able to show up in a way for my niece and nephew in a way that he never was able to for his own children and so that just marks some of the great sadness that has never been touched so we have a cordial relationship but I've never known him as a father and it's part of the great sadness you know and so even though God has filled so many and so of friends and community has filled a lot of those things that are still lost you know yes yeah did you did you experience God's forgiveness first and got liberated to forgive other people or did you forgive other people first and then discover God's really how does all that work like for example how did you forgive your mother your father your the time in New Guinea how did you forgive you know have the pimples at your sporting school yeah yeah and you know it's it's a mix of all these things right it's a mix of of incrementally stepping through a forgiveness process you know when in when this happened for the first time in my life I was allowed to be angry you know when I was growing up only the righteous man was allowed to be angry and so I buried all this kind of anger and now I'm suddenly furious I'm furious and it was a part of the healing process to be able to say that was wrong you know you should have been there you know why weren't you there you're my parents didn't you see you left it up to me to figure out what was going on I was four or five six years old and so you're allowed to work that out and in the process you know forgive and forgive and forgive and then God does these amazing little miraculous bits and pieces at different times that you don't expect we have a friend who lives in Annapolis Maryland and I've known him for about six or seven years and and I was a younger man with three children and we were planning this trip where I was speaking in North Carolina and we were on the phone and he's on the side he kind of takes houses and remodels them and uses it to help young men you know learn skills and stuff and and he was he was working for his parents and he lost his finished contractor so he'd been looking around his real estate agent said well I know this kid who's a finished contractor and he's really good at what he does and you'll like him so Dan invited this young man to his parents to do measurements well he talked to me on the phone well when he gets off the phone this kid says so um was that William P young you were talking to on the phone you know the author of the shot the Shaq and the first copies all said William P young although nobody in my world knows me as as William yes I've always been Paul and it was a joke for my kids that was kind of fun when the book came out and people would call me and say have you read this book by this William young you know he thinks just like you right and so this kid says is that William P young and Danny says yeah why well he said my my father-in-law went to school with him in New Guinea I mean think about this and he's in Annapolis Maryland which is on the other side of the country from Oregon right and Danny says really would you like to talk to him and he calls me back and says you won't believe this but I lost my finished contractor and I have my real-estate agent told me that there's this kid and so I I asked him to come over he's doing measurements you're overheard our conversation and his father-in-law went to boarding school with you I said really what's his what's his name oh boy and he says Joe Smith and I went Joe Smith I said the Joe Smith went to boarding school in Centanni said yeah here talk to him so I'm talking to Joe Smith son-in-law and I talked to him for about 15 minutes he's a very nice kid hands the phone back to Danny I said Danny Joe Smith was my primary sexual abuser in boarding school and that's Danny you know I said don't say anything I forgave him a long time ago which was during my 11 years you know I had to walk through all that well he doesn't say anything and I don't say anything but I didn't know that Joe Smith was in the u.s. because he still works overseas and he spent the night at his son in law's house and his son-in-law says you won't believe who I talked to on the phone Paul young and I get an email saying we need to talk from Joe Smith and I'm down in Orlando at a book thing and I've been asked to speak to this group and do qnr during them this breakfast and I walk in and the first question is so you've indicated there was abuse in boarding school huh has any of that come to resolution that's the first question on this day and I just talked to him on the phone and we decided to talk later that night and I just you know yet did there's just levels and depths of his forgiveness process and and she met with him that evening well no I called him on the on the phone and I said to him I don't know if you even care about this but it's important to me that I know that you know I forgave you a long time ago and because I had heard the last he'd ever talk to anybody about it he had just said Oh boys will be boys and he said that's important to me too we talked for 45 minutes about all the junk we went through and he got it you know he was he really did get it the worst of anybody I knew at the boarding school and what we talked it through and then he says I I really want to see you I'm leaving in September and I said that my schedules crazy but it worked out that when I landed in North Carolina he drove down from Atlanta and we had supper together and sat across from each other and completed this entire circle of forgiveness and I mean who would be behind that kind of a process except a God who is good all the time and constantly working within the billions of human decisions that are being made decisions that God will not interfere with because he respects you so much he will allow you to hurt somebody else but he will still show up to begin to weave these things over decades and and bring healing deeper and deeper into our souls yes yeah but you know like you let's say you've got so you have an operation and you've recovered from the operation but you still got the scars yeah do you think we always carry the scars yeah you know people have asked me if I would make any changes in the book right yes there's one one major one and that is when Mackenzie goes back into the shack and he looks over to the place where the stain was Missy blood it's gone I think that was a mistake I would leave it there because even though our tragedies come to healing they don't disappear and and I really think that they that these the damages and the hurts and all these things they don't become scars I think they become monuments and icons of His grace and I think that's a much more beautiful thing than more than a scars yeah tell us about the book come on Paul so how did you get the idea I mean yeah how did it all come about it came it came through the conversations yeah it came through the conversations and it came through the questions and you know I grew up with all the questions like if men are so much more screwed up than women how come they're in charge you know that's a yeah that was a question that took me 25 years to figure out but but you know again I'm going back through these conversations and I grew up with a God who looked a lot like my dad you know distant disapproving I couldn't live up to his expectations he's Western he's the Western monster God right he's the God of Plato he's unreachable unknowable untouchable unemotional and you know Gandalf with an attitude right he's the grandfather right and I like the Santa Claus yeah yeah Santa Claus is coming to town and he's got a list and yeah you better watch out so it's just this this and and I mean it when I say it took me 50 years to wipe the face of my father completely off the face of God and so I'm trying to move away from that imagery that box picture of God and and that's where Papa came from trying to move away from this white grandfatherly mean you know looking it's like Jesus is the good guy who's running interference between me and God the Father but God the Father is looking for any excuse he can find to just you know wipe me off the face of the planet and so there's this tension and and I I don't believe that's true but that was part of the transformational process you know I poured my pain out and came up with a God who met my expectations and then found out that God didn't exist and that's why when Mackenzie goes back to the shack and he blows up and he says where are you that God he expects does not show up because he doesn't exist you know and the God who does is just outside of his box and violates all of his sensibilities and and I believe that God is good all the time that God does nothing that is not motivated by love that love and relationship have always existed because there are three persons in the one essence of God and that means there is other centered love and the healthier we become the more other-centered our love becomes did you discover that during your 11 years of healing is that I had pieces and bits of it from even in college and before and because you get these these pieces of light and you begin to collect them and you don't know how to put them together and they don't match your own heart and even you teach them sometimes and you teach beyond your experience right I'm sure you've met some people who've done that I did that I did that I've done that yeah so and so people think that what you're saying is really who you are and there's this big gap between who you really are and what you're saying and even though what you're saying is true today we want to spy to what we say again it's the facade right yeah aspiring to it is a good excuse and so so you know I had collected all these bits there have been some really significant speakers and writers and musicians who had who had affected me during the whole process but I because my heart was so broken none of that was real yet and so the process of the healing of the soul and and I'm not like done the healing of the soul but you know there's always finish work but you know the major reconstruction pieces you had your mind had to change you had to realize that God I believed in is a lie he's actually a lie and religion has helped reinforce the lie a great degree you know and and I mean that your father realizes yeah we sure do yeah yeah and if you go back to Genesis the first conversation about God is an attack against its character yeah that should tell us something that means that if we have the character of God wrong everything's wrong you know and so you can't trust him he's he's out to get you he he doesn't want you to become everything you were intended to be all of those were in that first accusation the first conversation about God and and if we don't have any certainty about the character of God we have no certainty at all and we're only left to our own devices to control our experience in our lives and that's what we do control is a response to fear and fear is the opposite of love and so when fear exists in your life it's because you don't know how much you're loved so when you wrote the book okay you Ritchie wrote it because you're going to give it to your children yeah okay so you write how you perceive God Jesus yes the spirit and the relationship that the relationship between the trees so when you were writing it because obviously that was your audience you didn't anticipate that 10 million other people would read it not at all no no so I went back to work yeah so you write it for them did when you wrote that and really read it did you kind of think oh that will stimulate some conversation well later when we were getting it ready for publication I knew that it would and actually I thought there'd be a lot more angry people than there are you know and if people would actually read the book there would be less angry people but and but there are I I knew that it there were elements of it that we're going to be problematic especially if you come from certain theological paradigms and and you know what that's okay it's it's a flawed book you know I wrote it I didn't write it by myself I mean though you know though I think that's part of relationship and participation but God didn't write it by himself either and so there is you know it's it's an interesting thing to have a something out there that that really speaks my heart to my children and people reading over their shoulders are going to either be touched by it in a positive way or touched by it because it challenges their paradigms and both are the result in the work of the Holy Spirit absolutely I can't heal or change or save anybody yeah but I mean your what what's your hope let's say someone who's already a follower of Jesus you know a Christian and someone who isn't what what are you hoping that they will get out of this I don't have an agenda like that I actually don't eat I know I I know that it that it'll speak to them in some way you know I I suppose I could say my my hope is that people this will affirm the work that the Holy Spirit is already doing in them yes you know when people say this is what I knew that this this God was the God you know that this affectionate not get letting you get away with anything but you know in your face affection with ferocious affection that I knew that that's that's what my heart cries out for that's the best response I get you know because it's an affirmation of something that's already been happening deeply in their own Souls but people respond to it in so many different ways yeah but much of it is apologetic yeah music I mean you do in terms of you're trying to disentangle things you're trying to illuminate people's thinking you're trying to stretch the boundaries and have you thought of this have you thought of that but you're absolutely doing that and that is very good to do that is what we do in our family you know and so it's a spillover of how you know the reason that I wrote it this way is because I'm writing it to my kids and my kids interact with ideas and thoughts and stretch boundaries and challenge conventional wisdom and all of these kinds of things and and so you know my oldest kids it was kind of like what's everybody so excited about you know and it's because it's been a part of our conversations and a part of our life but I'm thrilled I mean now that you know what a screw-up I am you can understand why people are surprised you know it's like are you kidding I mean the God let him uh participate in this it is proof he still uses the foolish you know and it's it's that kind of wonder and I love to tell that my favorite quote about the book comes from a college he's a graduate and he's a friend of ours in and my daughter Amy gets him to read the book and says well what do you think and he says Amy this book is so far beyond your dad that's a great great right yeah and I love that because things have happened that I could never have even begun to imagine no so if you asked you know how does your family respond to this we laugh about this a lot you know it's just the craziest thing but as you said earlier on a friend started they wanted it they want to give to other friends and then gradually thought well maybe you know we should give this wider circulation well it really was because of a potential film that's what started the conversation about actually publishing it and then so we got it ready for publication and 26 publishers turned it down half of them faith-based publishers half of them secular main press the faith-based people thought it was too edgy and mainstream thought it had too much Jesus in it so you know say you're cool in between I got stuck between edgy and Jesus yeah that's all but you are obviously very persevering because many of us would have been so disheartened rejection rejection you have to understand I had no agenda in this whatsoever so I it didn't I didn't care you know if so if so people reject it you know there was some others who were excited about it and and and we're helping to move this along so two of them created a publishing company it's collect 250 bucks and you can have your own publishing company it's you sign papers with the government you know and and I had a publisher who would publish the book you know so we pooled our resources I had a friend where I live who would loan me some money one of the guys had savings and the other one had a visa in a MasterCard and then you either you gave away first print run you gave away a thousand copies um almost the thousand copies went to a bunch of friends but even before that I wasn't even a thousand it's probably like three hundred but the first thousand went all over the world because of a podcast yes and the podcast talked about you know 45 minutes a week on the Internet talking about life with Jesus and I had nothing to do specifically with the shack but because of we were working on it the concept started filling into the podcast and enough people were interested all over the world that a thousand copies went out all over the world and and those people really started the word-of-mouth and I mean we were we had eleven thousand copies in a garage in Los Angeles and from a local printer and in the first thirteen months we spent less than three hundred dollars in marketing and advertising and we shipped over a million books and we've been told that's not even possible you know and it was really a god thing from the beginning we're not that brilliant and well we like God things I think has so many good ideas and we the absolute rubbish I know but hey we're we can really try to convince God he should follow us yeah but it and it and it is you know your publisher Hodder's picked it up and I mean it just warmed my heart that in one of our national supermarkets called Tesco's yeah you know I saw it there any I just warm my heart and an in book shop so I it's it's everywhere and in the early days I used to take it out because it was like this and I put it like that you're not the only one oh I did it no because my name's on the back also you put it like this so thick but poor it has exceeded your expectations it my expectations were 15 copies 15 clothes for the children and it's in how many languages forty 14 languages yeah is it gonna be made into a film if God's willing and you know when I was working on the shack and I had nope I had two prayers left after my eleven years my first prayer was pop I don't want to be an old man one day looking back at my life and wondering what would it have been like to take the risks that are involved in faith you know I'm so stuck on certainty and control I don't want to be an old man one day looking back at my life and wondering what would it have been like you know to actually trust that you're loved and that there is a relationship here and my second prayer was I'm never going to ask you again to bless anything that I do but you know that's the I'm not going to say hey I got this great idea for me oh it's for you it's for the kingdom of God you know come on follow me right I'm done with that and I'm saying look if there is something that your blessing and it would be okay for me to be a part of that I'd be all over it and I don't care if I'm cleaning toilets or shining shoes and I was cleaning toilets and doing shipping and receiving you know during this time and I don't care if I'm just holding the door open I want to be involved in something that you're blessing and at the end of the day I want to know I want to be able to say you did this I got to be the child you know and I got to I got to participate and I'm praying that you know during the whole year while I'm trying to get this done for Christmas and and it's like you know it's like God says well Paul you know how about if I bless this little book you know you give it to your kids and then I'll give it to mine you know and that's what happened yes and and there was no expectation there was no plan there was no vision there was no dream there was no goal it was I was just doing something that my wife who loves me and loves my children wanted me to give a gift as to my kids and that's where it all started and I'm so grateful I had no idea what I was doing yeah I'm just so grateful you didn't know what you do yeah I know isn't it the best it's so much more fun this way you know it took me that many years to become a child because I never was one you know when I was little I was dealing with adult stuff and trying to survive and finally I get to be a child I get to have a relationship in which there's an adult in my life who knows what he's doing and there's something about just living inside the grace of one day if there is a movie wonderful if God is blessing it I want to be a part of it if God's not blessing it I don't want to have anything to do with it even though it's a fun idea and it's cool and all that kind of stuff I'm really not that interested so if I got a green light today we'll go forward if I get a red light we'll stop yeah yeah and you know if it's done we want it to be done right and we want it to be drunk done with incredible artistic creativity and I'm working on the manuscript over the scrimmage screenplay for it and you know we just we just don't need another movie that gets left behind you know yeah yeah what would you some of you got that I got that left behind all right what song did oh I saw that when I learnt the question is I was so scared yeah I was a Larry Norman song Larry Norman yeah and I love Larry Norman so boy yeah I wish I wish we'd all be good you know that one with Matt yeah maybe we should sing more songs like that yeah well we've tried to scare the hell out of people for a long time but you know it's just that the affection seems to seems to be such a much more of a healing influence until 8 now Paul what would you say to those of us that still have the façades we live with lies pain yeah and we haven't yet you know gone to the shag our Shack to meet with the Father the Son and the howdy spiria oh and don't you find that religion really teaches you even more how to hide a lot of times you know it teaches you how to use words like trust you know I trust you God but then the economy shakes and we freak out you know and real life has a way of you know dismantling our illusions and and and we found that it wasn't safe because we were expected to be something perfect all of a sudden and you know we're just not if when you're still caught in this it's a it's a process and part of the process is you've got to let somebody in you know and not just God God is not going to heal you apart from the participation of a community it's not going to happen I know we're designed to be in community and as you notice God doesn't even heal you apart from your participation we'd love right extreme soul makeover right yeah fix me send me to Disney World and fix me by the time I get back you know and it just doesn't happen and there is a process to this and God loves the process because it's me that he loves that broken person hiding inside his secrets and inside of his lies and that's who he loves he he doesn't want me to become somebody else so that I'm worthy of his affection you know why do I love my children have they do I love it because they have earned my affection well I would die for my children in a heartbeat even if they've done nothing even if they've been antagonistic against my affection I would die for them does that sound familiar it does yeah it does sound familiar and that's the heart of God that we as parents if we love our children in a healthy sort of way we know what a piece of how God loves because it has nothing to do with their performance that we love them and so part of this healing process is you've got to let somebody in and if there's nobody you start asking God because you know relationship with God is just like any relationship it's a con station which is called prayer but it's just conversation inside of a relationship and you begin to tell God who you are and and you begin to listen and you begin to look with eyes that are open to see all these things that are involved you know children see what adults don't right yes we adopt words like chance and lock in coincidence and but as our heart becomes purified we see God everywhere and it's the eyes of a child and and I like this being a child you know I'm not going back to being an adult it was way too much work you know and so the healing process lets somebody in start being honest you've got to make steps against the things that you're afraid of and you've got to allow yourself to challenge the fundamental beliefs why do I do what I do why if I have these reactions why is it yes you know confession and repentance traditional words confession is just saying the same thing as God does about something and repentance is changing your mind yeah and that's a process and it's one that we can't do by ourselves absolutely yeah what about anyone listening Paul it's struggling to believe they've been disappointed or disillusioned by the church whether it's true or not true sir they have been disillusioned and they're struggling to believe but they want to believe what would you say start where you're at tell me what you do believe in do you believe in truth do you believe in hope do you believe in love other centered love do you believe in love start where you're at pray to what you believe pray to love if you believe in love this invisible incredibly healing thing great to love and I and I believe that in time love will become a person and you will find that his name is Jesus yeah if you believe in truth that there is truth that is ultimate in overarching and absolute pray to truth and I believe in time you will find the truth is a person and his name is Jesus and you know don't try to jump to some thing that you're not be who you are where you are and begin to think about what you believe and involve yourself there I trust the Holy Spirit I think most of the evangelism that the church does is because we don't trust the Holy Spirit so we want to convict the world of sin righteousness and judgment right and that's the job of the Holy Spirit we get this incredible participation in the love of God we get to love people and trust the Holy Spirit but we don't want to trust the Holy Spirit because we don't think the Holy Spirit will actually come through and do the job if we don't do it you know it's just like the because we've got a twisted image of God we don't think that God loves our children as much as we do yeah yeah and and it's just because we have this blighted view of the character of God I honestly do think this is a remarkable book I really do and I would imagine that we're here because we've read the book and I would encourage you to maximize the opportunity of giving this book to a friend you know just give it away give it away because it may help them on their journey whether they're believers or not yet believers it may help to disentangle it may help to illuminate you know seize the opportunity of using this as a gift as a resource to help other people on their spiritual journey poor I am you know as Christians we're meant to love everybody but we don't always like them and are you building up to saying something yeah I really like you yeah oh I told you I was going to tell you my favorite joke tell us now okay so a guy gets to heaven and he sees the pearly gates but he's not sure what to do do you just walk in you know and he's a little bit confused and Peter sees his consternation and comes out to meet him and he says so Peter do I just walk in or what do I do Peter says well it depends it depends on something oh yeah well what does it depend on Peter says well it depends on how many points you have I have to have points to get in oh yes well how many points do I need well you need a hundred points oh okay then for the last 15 years I've been serving down at soup kitchen you know helping with the pour on Saturday nights and Peter says okay I'll give you a point for that he says well uh I was a pastor for 35 years you know I married people and buried people and I preached on only took vacations and Peter goes I don't know says come on 35 years okay I'll give you a point for that now he's a little worried cuz that's kind of his whole life and he's got two points and just then he sees his other guy from the same town nice enough guy shows up to church couple times a year you know has a little shop downtown very friendly and he walks right past them and in through the pearly gates he goes Peter are you telling me that he's got a hundred points and Peter says oh no he just doesn't play this game there is after my own yeah you know there's there's this one section that got me into huge trouble actually there are few sections that got me into huge trouble and but one of them is where Jesus says to Mackenzie Mackenzie I didn't come to make people Christians I'm not one and and that got me into a bit of trouble and but he's not a Christian do we know that there you're you know Jesus is a Jew he never became a Christian it wasn't like 40 years after he ascended that he was going man if I had just waited I could have become a Christian you know I wonder if I can ask me into my own heart you know and so he's not he was never a Christian and and he didn't come to start a new religion called Christianity and he he didn't want to create something that would then compete in the marketplace of religions he didn't come to create a religion he came to destroy religious thinking by introducing relationship and relationship will always will always introduce mystery into our lives it will always move us in the direction of losing control and it's always risky I mean ask any married man here and you know there's a mystery about relationship and and this is not new theology I'm not coming up with something new that's faddish this is the theology of the early fathers this is Athanasius IRA næss Polycarp John the Beloved this this is Father Son and Holy Spirit have been in a circle of relationship forever other-centered love has existed forever and there is nothing deeper about the character and nature of God then this love that exists this mutuality that exists in the circle and we whether we like it or not whether we know it or not have been included into that affection and in exchange for including us Father Son and Holy Spirit climb into our shacks with us and begin to heal us from the inside that's the gospel you were included you may not like it you may not like what love is and the risk that's involved with that kind of a transformational process but you were included and you can fight against it the rest of your life and maybe eternity if you want but God will never stop watching for the son who is yet to come home and God will never stop searching for the coin that she is lost and God will pursue us with this ferocious affection forever the gates are always open and that's the beauty of this that it's not what I did that saves us it's what Father Son and Holy Spirit did together for Papa was in his son reconciling the world to himself second Corinthians right he's in his son he wasn't abandoning his son and saying I'm sorry I'm holy their holiness is an expression of this circle of love it's not something hidden behind this circle of love you know the secret agenda of God the Father who's a little bit of a different nature than the son the son is saying look we've seen me playing with the children you've seen the father you've seen me talking to the woman no one will talk to her touching the leper you've seen the father I and the father are one which was this mystery that it took us hundreds of years to begin to understand and that's what we've been included into everyone the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh every good gift the way you love your child the way you put yourself into your work every good gift comes from God is an expression of the character of nature of God and that's the beauty that we get to be a part of this open transformational community of those who are helplessly dependent on the presence and the affection the Father Son and Holy Spirit oh it's been a great pleasure to have you've given us a lot to ponder upon and it has been great just to give the shack a bit more of a context and just understand a little bit about a story but more to understand it a bit more about you and where the how God birthed the story Paul thank you very much for being with us you you

Channel: Facing the Canon

Views: 45,217

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Keywords: facing the canon, j.john, interview, jjohn, j john, philo trust, philo, trust, christianity, Jesus, Lord, God, Holy Spirit, William P. Young (Author), Wm Paul Young, Author, The Shack, Book

Id: IOb6Ao_4zz8

Length: 78min 29sec (4709 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2014