SPEAKER 1: Well,
welcome everyone.
We're excited to
have everyone here
to hear-- to speak with
William Paul Young.
Part of trying to organize
these talks to people that
can talk on issues for answers
that Google doesn't have
answers for.
And so we're excited to have
William Paul, that certainly
has opened up a lot of questions
with his book "The Shack."
So it was released
over 10 years ago
and has become one
of the best selling
books of the 21st century.
It was actually recently
made into a film,
which Google is very proud.
We were one of the first
to have electronic rights,
so it was released
just this week
on Google Play and YouTube.
So for those who have
not read the book,
we have free copies today.
You can actually watch
the movie as well.
Paul is actually the
author of many other books,
including "Eve," "Crossroads,"
and the recently released
"Lies We Believe About God."
So for any other questions,
please Google his name.
There's plenty out there, but
I will give plenty of time
because he has a lot
to share with us today.
[APPLAUSE]
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG:
Good afternoon.
Just barely, but it's so
good to be here at Apple.
I'm just kidding.
I figured with a
minimalist stage--
I'm just saying.
So let me tell you a
little bit about who I am
and what my background is.
I'm married to Kim.
It will be 38
years in September.
I have-- we have six children.
Our age range is 23 to 36.
We have our 10th
grandbaby on the way.
They're all nine
years old and under,
and that's the best
thing I've ever done,
being married and having
children and having
grandchildren.
My background, which
I thought was normal
until I left the world
that I grew up in--
I'm a missionary kid,
third culture kid.
I grew up in the
highlands of New Guinea.
My parents were missionaries,
pioneer missionaries,
Protestant, fundamentalist,
evangelical.
And I was a year old when
we moved into the highlands.
So I grew up in
a tribal culture.
New Guinea is very unusual.
It has over 800 unrelated
language groups.
And our tribe was one
of the bigger ones--
40,000 to 60,000 people
over 100 square miles.
But their language
had never been
heard outside of their culture.
And going in as a year old,
it became my first language
and my first dreaming language.
It was my language.
And when I was five
years old, Wycliffe
came in to translate
the language,
and I was the
informant because I'm
the only one that could
speak it fluently, Ndani--
and Ndani is a
dialect-- and English.
So sent to boarding
school when I was six.
I had some really great
advantages growing up
in a multicultural world.
It gave me an ability to
look from outside the box.
I think that was a great gift.
It gave me a facility to
move in and out of culture,
but it left some really deep
losses at the same time.
Part of it was the
way that I grew up.
I had a very angry
young man father
who didn't have a
chip for being a dad,
and so he was an
abusive disciplinarian.
And it took me, in
terms of my journey,
so that you have
a sense of this--
it took me 50 years to
wipe the face of my father
off the face of God.
And then the second
great sadness
that I had was the
sexual abuse that
started in the tribal culture
and that then continued
in missionary boarding school.
The big boys would molest
the little boys at night,
and so that kind of tore the
fabric of my soul to shreds.
And then the issue of belonging
that a lot of third culture
kids have.
If we don't find
someone to belong to,
we never belong anywhere.
It's not a geography anymore.
And so as a first-born
missionary kid,
preacher's kid-- because
when we came back to Canada--
I was born in Canada--
my father was an itinerant
pastor, and we moved a lot.
I went to 13 schools before
I graduated high school.
And I became a performer,
first-born performer.
And at the same time, I'm on
a journey of spirituality,
trying to figure out
my roots, being based
in evangelical Christianity.
And I'm lost in my head.
I became an intellectual
rationalist,
because that's the only safe
place that I could find.
Because everything below
the neck was pretty broken.
And I functioned by trying
to live from the outside in.
So "The Shack," in a sense,
besides just being a story,
becomes a metaphor,
becomes a parable.
And the shack
itself, on one level,
is the house on the inside
that people help us build.
And a lot of us, we
didn't get good help,
and so it becomes
a broken place.
It's our own soul.
It's the broken heart
of a human being,
and it becomes a place we
store all of our addictions
and we hide all of our secrets.
And we never want to
invade another human being
into that place because we're
terrified that if we do they
will hate us as much as we do.
And so we become a performer.
We set up something
outside, a facade
that we can paint as
fast as we can pick up
people's expectations.
And that became the
metaphor for my own heart.
I've always been a
writer, like anybody does.
You know, you write
stuff and you give it
to your friends and
family, and they
think it's the best
thing in the world
because they're your
friends or family.
And I had written gifts over the
years for friends and family.
And Kim, my wife, had been
saying for about four years,
Someday, as a gift
for our children,
would you write something
that puts in one place
how you think?
Because you think
outside the box.
And I didn't feel healthy
enough to do that.
I didn't know what that was.
She didn't, either,
and by the way,
when the book eventually
got printed, she said to me,
you know, when I
asked you to do this,
I was thinking like
four to six pages.
But I love story,
and story has a way
of sneaking past our watchful
dragons, as Lewis would say.
And story-- we have
an affinity for it,
because every single
human being is a story.
And so I wanted to
write them a story.
And the year I
turned 50, I finally
felt healthy enough
to do it, and I
did it mostly on the train
to one of my three jobs.
I was working three jobs.
I was doing shipping and
receiving for a circuit board
manufacturing company.
I did all the
janitorial, so I did
all the toilets and the floors.
And then I was a hotel night
clerk on the side part-time,
and part-time was doing web
conferencing on the web.
And then I worked on a hotline
in a food processing company.
And the year before
I wrote the story,
was the 11th year of a
dismantling and rebuilding
process that is represented
by Mackenzie's weekend
in the shack.
In the book, Mackenzie
is the main character.
People ask me, is
this a true story?
And I tell them,
yeah, it's true.
It's just not real.
Like all parables-- they're all
true, they're just not real.
And I wrote this as a story
to communicate to my children.
I wrote it for
them for Christmas.
That's the whole goal, was
to get it done for Christmas.
At Christmas, I made 15
copies at Office Depot.
And I like to tell people there
are two things that you need
to understand about
this whole crazy thing
that I'm in the middle of.
Those 15 copies did everything
I ever wanted that book to do.
I had never-- it never once
crossed my mind to publish it.
I mean, that's not my world.
I didn't know anything
about it, and it just
wasn't on my bucket
list or anything else.
I wrote this as a
gift for my children,
trying to say, let me tell
you about the God who actually
showed up and healed my heart,
not the God I grew up with.
That's why when Papa God
comes through the door,
he doesn't come through
the door as Gandalf
with a bad attitude--
white-bearded,
distant, grandfatherly,
that whole thing.
Because I'm trying to
get as far away from that
imagery as possible.
And the other
thing I tell people
is that you need to know that
everything that matters to me
was in place before
I wrote the book--
identity, worth, value,
significance, security,
meaning, purpose, destiny,
community, and love.
They were all in place
before I wrote the book.
And I'm so grateful for
that, because a lot of times
if those things are not
in place, you use work
or you use creativity
or you use whatever
to gain identity, worth,
value, significance, security,
meaning, purpose, destiny,
community, and love.
And then you start to suck the
life out of your relationships
and the people around you.
And all of those
things were in place.
The book didn't add any
of those things to me.
What it gave me as a gift, which
I will be forever grateful for,
is an invitation
into the holy ground
of other people's stories.
Let me give you an example,
and I'll do it from the movie.
I didn't anticipate being
involved in the film.
When I laid the rights down,
I laid them down 100%--
no creative control,
no rights, period.
Which was fine-- in the
course of how this unfolded,
it worked, and it
was fine by me.
So I did not anticipate
being involved.
Lionsgate called me up and
said, would you come talk to us?
I think they were
partly checking me out
to see if I would be an
enemy of the project,
but I don't know that for sure.
But we didn't end up talking
about the movie or business
or anything.
All we did is told
stories and cried a lot,
because everybody in this
room, everybody in humanity,
knows about love and
knows about loss.
All of our divisions,
politically,
ethnically, all of that,
we do have these things
in common, love and loss.
And the book is a human
story about loss and love.
And so it was great.
I had a great time with them.
Well, a number of months later,
I get a call from Gil Netter.
He was the producer for "Life
of Pi," "Marley and Me,"
"Blind Side," and
20 other movies,
and he was the producer
for "The Shack."
And he said, would you
please look at the script
and give us your feedback?
Sure.
So I was able to do that.
Then they said, what do you
think about these actors?
And so that was part
of the conversation.
Not any of it did they have to
take seriously, you understand,
because I had no creative
control, no rights.
They said, well,
would you come--
Lionsgate calls me
and says, would you
consider coming on
the first day's shoot
and praying a blessing over
the entire cast and crew?
Yeah.
So I did.
So the first day I'm on the
set, and they shot most of it
in British Columbia.
And so I'm on the set, and
I mean, it's so surreal.
You write a story for your
kids, and it's becoming
a major motion picture.
And there are, like, 60
people being paid to do this.
It is the weirdest thing ever.
And at the end of the day, I'm
just standing there watching.
And Gil Netter yells, hey,
Paul, you want to be in a cameo?
I said, like in the movie?
He says, yeah.
He says, I've never shot a movie
where the author was alive,
a book adaptation that I
didn't put the author in it.
I said, sure, my kids
are going to love
this, what do I have to do?
He says, all you have to do
is walk through this scene.
Well, I've walked
most of my life.
How hard can this be, right?
And it only took five takes.
Because you don't think
about walking when you walk.
It's like, oh.
So he was like, oh,
let's do it again,
this time slow down a little
bit, don't photo bomb--
whatever.
And so you'll have
to look for it.
It's all of two seconds.
But just look for kind of
a short, elderly, balding,
overweight white guy who
just walks through the scene.
But it was just incredible.
Well, a few months later, I
get a call, and they said,
would you consider
coming back on the set?
And they were near the
end of their shoot.
It was like 60 days.
And if you know
anything about movies--
which I didn't but it's
a great learning curve--
they have multiple
locations being shot.
And they're all out of
order, depending on when
the actors are available.
So sometimes the
actors are available.
And so the first day shoot,
in fact, was the scene--
and the one that I walk
through, is the scene
when Willie, played by Tim
McGraw, and Sam Worthington,
played by Mackenzie--
they're having
a conversation as the kids
are being piled into the car
to go camping.
And this is the one
where Tim walks over,
and the scene begins with
him saying he's got a dog.
And he says,
summer's last hurrah.
That's the first line.
And in that scene, there's
a shot right at Tim McGraw,
and that's when you'll see
me walk through that scene.
But on that day, Octavia
Spencer, who plays Papa,
was not there, nor Graham
Greene, who also plays Papa.
But Aviv wasn't there,
who plays Jesus,
and Sumi, who plays the
Holy Spirit, wasn't there.
So the first day's shoot, the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
are absent, at least
in any visible sense.
So later, 60 days later,
I get a call saying,
we're near the end of the shoot,
would you consider coming back
on the set for another day?
And I said, sure.
They said, here's what
we're going to do.
Wednesday, we're going to
fly you up to Vancouver, BC,
and then transport will take you
to a hotel in Chilliwack, which
is about two and a half
hours from Vancouver,
depending on traffic.
And it's in the valley.
And then that night, Wednesday
night, you'll get a call sheet
that will tell you when
we're picking you up Thursday
and where we're taking you.
And then you'll spend all
day Thursday on the set.
Friday, transport will take you
back to Vancouver to fly out.
Simple.
This is great.
Well, I'm thinking about this
as I'm sitting at my desk
after we've got this all set up.
And I think, you know what?
There's a guy I've
been trying to meet
who lives in Abbotsford,
which is right next door
to Chilliwack,
where my hotel is.
And I've been
trying to meet him.
I had a lot of email
conversations with him.
He's a theologian
named Brad Jersak.
And in fact, I'd endorse
his last book, which
is "A More Christlike God."
And he'd read "Eve"
and was all over it.
He's a patristic theologian.
And so we'd had all
these conversations.
I'd actually met his wife Eden
once, a number of years before.
But Brad spends a good
chunk of his year in London
because he's a
seminary professor
at a seminary in London.
And so he and I had always
been passing but hadn't met.
And I'm thinking, I don't even
know if he's on the continent,
but I'll send him an email and
see if he happens to be around.
So I send him an email
telling him what I'm doing,
coming up Wednesday.
Do you happen to be in town?
I immediately get an email back.
Can I come pick you
up at the airport?
He said, we'll spend
the whole day together,
we'll have supper with Eden,
and then I'll drop you off
in Chilliwack at your hotel.
Great.
So I called transport.
They're thrilled because it
saves them five hours round
trip, and it's great.
So it's all set.
Well, 10 minutes later I
get another email from Brad.
This time it's got a
photo attached to it,
and it's got a picture of Brad.
Because I'd seen
pictures of him.
And there's another
guy next to him,
and they're in the
middle of the woods.
And Brad says, hey, Paul,
while we were emailing,
one of my long-life
best friends Dwight
and I were walking in the woods.
Dwight and his wife Laurie
have a cabin summer cottage
up at Cultus Lake.
And we are spending
a few days with them.
And while we were
emailing, Dwight and I--
and he says, Dwight, by
the way, is a business guy.
His wife Laurie is a
spiritual formations director.
But Dwight is the first person
who told me about "The Shack"
in 2008 and gave
me my first copy.
But we're walking in the
woods, and look, next to them
is a big arrow that's
green or yellow--
I can't remember what
the color is supposed
to be in British Columbia.
But it says "The Shack."
There's a set location
two and a half blocks away
from Dwight's house, and
he didn't even know it.
And as they're walking in the
woods, as he's emailing me,
they run right into it.
And it's like, look,
how cool is this.
So I'm going, like,
this is great.
And then he sends
me a second email
right on the heels
of that one and says,
I don't know if
it would work out
because I don't know
where you're going to be.
Because I don't know.
It could be at any one of
these multiple locations
for the set sites, and I don't
know what they're shooting.
So he says, if
there's any way, I
think it would be
really important if you
could find even 10 minutes to
spend with Dwight and Laurie.
Your book had a massive
impact in their lives.
About three years ago the
youngest of their children,
16 years old, took her own
life in the middle of the woods
in a tree house.
And Dwight's stuck and
Laurie is completely stuck.
And Dwight believes
that if he could just
read "The Shack" again,
he could get unstuck,
but he can't get
past chapter one.
And Laurie is so angry
because her daughter is dead.
Her daughter is dead, and she
is furious, furious at God.
And she can't get past this.
And they're lost, so even if
you could spend 10 minutes.
And I am like, [GASP].
And I email back and
say, we'll figure it out.
Even if I have to spend
an extra day or something,
we'll figure it out.
So I fly up on Wednesday.
Brad picks me up.
It's like meeting a
long-lost brother.
You know those relationships
where the first time
you meet it's like,
it's fully on?
I mean, it's like,
where have you been?
So it was like that.
We had supper with Eden,
and then Brad drops me off.
And I told him, I
said, I'll let you
know when I find out where I'm
going, and we'll figure it out.
And so I don't get a call
sheet until 11:30 that night.
And it says, we're picking
you up at 9:30 in the morning
and taking you to
Cultus Lake, the site
location on Cultus Lake.
So I'm going to end up being
two and a half blocks away
from their little
summer cottage.
And I'm going, like,
OK, that's cool.
So I get up there in the
morning and I'm texting Brad.
And he's saying, we're here.
We're 2 and 1/2 blocks away.
So we'll have food ready
for you any time you
want to take a break.
You just let us know, and we'll
meet you down the waterfront.
And even if you can
spend 10 minutes.
So I walk over to Gil
and Lonnie Netter--
Lonnie is Gil's wife--
and Stuart Hazeldine,
who is the producer.
And they're standing,
talking to each other.
And I walk over to them because
I had just gotten there.
And one of the reasons
that they wanted
me to come to this
site location is this
is where they built the shack.
And they built it
three different times,
but it's all on the same site.
And they wanted me to see it.
Plus Octavia was there, Aviv
was there, and Sumi was there,
and I hadn't met them.
And so when I had gotten that
email, after my little nudge
to contact Brad, and he had
told me about Dwight and Laurie,
I sent Gil and Lonnie
Netter and Stuart the email.
And I said, here
is another story
that pertains to the movie
that you guys are working on,
just so you know.
Well, I walk over to
them and I say, hey,
you know that email
that I just sent you
about Dwight and Laurie Martin?
Would there be any possibility
that my four friends could
come on the set for the day?
And not only did they say
yes, they said absolutely.
And 20 minutes later,
down the waterfront,
comes Brad, Eden,
Dwight, and Laurie.
And they get embraced
into this community
that is creating this movie.
We don't know what
they're shooting that day.
We're just thrilled to be there.
So when they shoot a movie,
especially outside shots,
you can't get close enough to
actually hear what's going on.
Everything's miked up.
And you can watch it at
a distance if you want,
but they have what's
called a video village,
which is just a big tent.
And in that tent--
it's set up for the
producer and the director--
and they've got huge screens,
like five times bigger
than those.
And then they've
got headphones so
that the producer and the
director can actually hear.
And whatever they're
going to shoot,
they're going to shoot
it multiple times.
They had one shot
that they wanted
to do all morning,
two and a half hours,
one shot in the afternoon,
and one shot in the evening.
So we still don't know
what they're shooting.
They had five
chairs for us right
in front of the monitors with
headphones so we could hear.
And they're going to
shoot it over and over,
because they want to get
different camera angles.
They want to get different
expressions from the actors,
whatever.
So we sit down, put
our headphones on,
and this is the first
scene that we see.
It is the one where
Mackenzie has spent
the night having nightmares.
And he comes out on the
porch for breakfast,
and Papa's got
breakfast for him.
And you can see that he's just
struggled with these nightmares
about the loss of his daughter.
And he comes out.
And this is the
one, if you've seen
the movie, where Papa starts
the conversation with,
you like Neil Young?
I'm especially fond of him.
And in the original, in the
book, it's Bruce Cockburn,
but we couldn't get
the rights fast enough
to get Bruce Cockburn's
name in there.
But Neil said yes.
And I like Neil, too,
just so you know.
But that's how the
conversation starts.
And Mackenzie goes and sits
down and doesn't touch anything,
and they start a conversation.
And at one point, Papa says
to Mackenzie, Mackenzie,
the great flaw, the
fundamental flaw in your life,
is that you don't
believe that I'm good.
I am.
And I'm at work in your
life for good in what
you consider to be a mess.
But until you believe
that I'm good,
you're never going to
be able to trust me.
And he looks at
her with this fury,
and he smashes the plate
out in front of him.
And he goes, why would
I ever trust you?
My daughter is dead.
Smash.
And nothing you can
say will change it.
Walk away.
And we're like, [GASP].
And I look over at Dwight and
Laurie, and they're in shock.
And then we watch it again.
And then we watch it again.
Why would I ever trust you?
My daughter is dead.
Mackenzie, until you
believe that I'm good,
you're never going to
be able to trust me--
the fundamental
flaw in your life.
Why would I ever trust you?
My daughter is dead.
And by the third
time through, we're
bawling, because this is
right at the core of where
Dwight and Laurie are stuck.
Well, for two hours,
right, we're watching this.
We take a break.
Octavia comes over and
just hugs on everybody.
So does Sumi and so does Aviv.
Aviv plays Jesus.
Aviv is a Jew.
Can you imagine?
A Jew playing Jesus?
Who would have thought?
You have to understand.
I get emails from my people,
evangelical fundamentalists,
and I've gotten at
least five of them
go like, how dare you make
Jesus a Middle Easterner?
What, you've only seen
him in the movies or what?
I checked with the Jews--
I mean, the Jewish consulate.
They are Jews.
They're Middle Easterners.
But they come over and
they just love on us.
Well, in the afternoon, we
sit down for the second shot.
And it's the one where Papa
is talking to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie is
sitting on the porch
and they're talking
about a bird.
And Papa says,
you know, pain has
a way of clipping your
wings so that you forget
you were ever created to fly.
You're looking through this
little knothole of your loss
and defining the whole universe.
And we're gone.
The first shot we're
just, like, toast.
And it was two
more hours of that.
At the end of that day,
we're hugging goodbye.
And Laurie says,
you have no idea.
And that's true.
I don't.
I don't know how the ripples
go and how the layers are.
I don't know.
But to be able to participate
in the holy ground
of other people's stories--
how incredible is that?
And we all do it.
We just don't spend enough time
staying present to realize it.
Our choices actually matter.
Our participation
actually matters.
And that's just
one of the stories
that just happened inside the
context of a movie being shot.
The book has done it,
too, all over the world.
I made 15 copies that
did everything I ever
wanted it to do, and
it's the number two
book in the history of Brazil.
You know who my
distributor in Brazil
is, my number one distributor?
You would not believe
this, but you will.
But it's just so--
you wouldn't think of it.
And that is, there's
no distribution system,
and Brazil is the same size as
the continental United States.
It's just that American
cartographers used
to make all the
maps, so they always
made America look the biggest.
But the only reason the US
has more land area than Brazil
is because of Alaska.
But other than that,
it's the same size.
They have no distribution
system, no mass delivery
freight system on the ground.
And my number one distributor,
who sold over 3 million copies
by themselves, is Avon.
Avon-- door-to-door
cosmetics and books.
AUDIENCE: Crazy.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: It is crazy.
And then Croatia
dubbed "The Shack"
their book of the decade,
and the Ministry of Culture
asked me almost
two years ago now
to come speak to the country.
And I did that.
I was cleaning toilets.
You understand how bizarre
this whole thing is?
This is totally
God's sense of humor.
And so it has been
an unanticipated
and unprecedented, in a lot of
respects, adventure or journey,
complete with its
own set of crosses.
But it's been fantastic.
I'm thrilled to be a part of it.
Kim would tell you, and my kids
would tell you and my friends
would tell you, that if all
this-- notoriety, platform,
all this stuff--
if it all went away
tomorrow, I'd be fine.
I'd be great.
I was great before this.
I finally was comfortable
inside my own skin,
and that took a lot of time.
It took all of 50 years
to get to that place.
So that's the big
bird's eye view.
So your questions.
And we'll just have a time
of question and response.
I'm a Canadian, so I
don't have the answer.
So I don't do Q&A. I tell
them, if I was an American,
I probably would do Q&A. So
I do questions and response.
Q&A may be if I do
questions and apologies,
because we're kind of famous
for being sorry about stuff.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
How are you?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG:
I'm very well.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thanks
so much for coming.
So I have kind of an unrelated
question to your book,
but I know you mentioned
right at the get
go, which really
caught my attention,
that you've been
married for 38--
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: It
will be 38 years this fall.
AUDIENCE: 38 years.
Can you just describe how did
you make that work in a culture
that we live in that's just--
I think the statistics
are showing at least 50%
divorce rate in our country.
I could be a little off on that.
But could you just
talk about that?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Yeah.
That is not an easy
short answer response.
So one, I married
the wrath of God.
I now believe the wrath
of God is the love of God.
But you've got to understand,
kim is from North Dakota.
She was born in
Minot, and her family
migrated west-- big family.
She has five sisters
and two brothers.
Her and her five sisters
are called "the force,"
and may the force be with you.
So these folks,
Minnesota, North Dakota--
I mean, there is no
fifty shades of nothing.
It's either this or that.
But I grew up in a
religious family,
so we hid everything,
lied about most stuff,
had to have an Order of
Service when we got together.
Her family is just out there.
Me, I got all these
survival mechanisms
from my abuse histories,
so I'm all hyper vigilant
and know how to shade
the truth in 5,000 ways.
And at the same time, I'm
desperate for some healing
in my own heart.
But I wanted God to heal me
without anybody else finding
out about it.
And frankly, I didn't marry
Kim because I loved her.
Because at that
point in my life,
I didn't know how
to love anyone.
I had no love for myself,
because I believed
all the theology about
being a piece of crap
that I grew up with and
about the nature of God
as different than Jesus--
all that kind of stuff.
But it turns out I'm smart
and creative, which actually
was an inhibitor to healing.
It empowered me to hide.
And so I hid.
I married Kim because I thought
I got the nudge from God
to do that.
I'm forever grateful
because she saved my life.
Now, at the point where all of
my facade, all of my hiddenness
was exposed--
and I now believe that
exposure is a gift,
but it's a severe mercy--
when that happened,
I blew it all up.
I blew my whole world up.
And that's what started my
11-year dismantling/rebuilding
process.
And it was the
intensity of Kim's fury
that pushed me to deal with
all the darkness in my heart.
And so how did we make it work?
One is when it all blew
up, I hit the bottom enough
to own what I'd done--
no more secrets.
So when I got to 50, which is
at the end of that 11 years--
it was 38 to the
year I turned 50.
When I got there, I
was finally at a place
where no secrets, no addictions,
and I was the same person
in every situation.
And there was reconciliation
in the midst of all the damage.
So what I say is
Kim saved my life
and paid a high price
for it, and she does not
regret the high price but
it's totally not fair.
It's grace.
So part of it was
if I had deviated
from dealing with my
stuff when I got exposed,
we wouldn't be together.
It would not have happened.
But her intensity is what
kept me dealing with it,
at the same time
as my desperation.
So I think that
one of the things
I understand about
marriage-- and you remember
when Jesus is talking
to the Pharisees
because they're all
griping about the fact
that his disciples are
violating Sabbath law?
They're going, eating stuff
on the Sabbath, picking corn,
working--
all the rules, all
the religious rules.
And Jesus says this
one line that just
changes the entire universe.
He says, don't you
realize that the Sabbath
was made for the
human being, not
the human being for Sabbath?
Well, put in that
marriage, that marriage
was made for the human
being, not the human being
for marriage.
And that begins to
change everything.
That means that
marriage is defined
as an outward expression of
the uniqueness of the two
individuals involved in it.
There is no external law of
the Sabbath, law of marriage,
that defines what that's
supposed to look like for you.
And that's what the Church,
frankly, has been good at.
We come up with all kinds of
Sabbath laws or marriage laws
or expectations.
And as soon as something goes--
suddenly the man who's supposed
to do this can't anymore--
or whatever, whatever
the rules are.
No.
So part of it is to recognize
that marriage is something
that you have to figure
out with the person
that you are in a
relationship to,
and it involves mystery
and a loss of control.
Any relationship does.
Ask any married man.
And the thing about it is
that person is not static.
They don't stay still.
They keep growing, too.
So this mystery that
you then move into
is an ever-expanding universe.
And in the middle of that,
I was with Richard Rohr.
I don't know if
you know who he is.
So I did a conference
on the Trinity
with him a couple of months ago.
And so we were driving
along in his car.
He's a Franciscan
celibate monk--
vow of poverty, chastity,
and something else.
And he says, Paul--
and he's a Kansas City
farm boy who didn't ever
expect to be involved
with writing the things
that he does.
And he says, you know what?
This sounds weird coming from
a celibate Franciscan monk,
but I'm convinced that marriage
is the greatest gift that God
has given humanity,
as a crucible
in which transformation
becomes a possibility.
So part of the
integrity of marriage
is that we commit ourselves
to the transformation
of our own hearts and
recognize that this is a gift.
So the difference is
that each person then
becomes part of the
catalyst for change,
but it's going to bring all
your crap to the surface.
And we live in a world where
fear of missing out or 2.2
becomes more attractive than
having to work through dealing
with our own crap.
And so that's part of the
problem that we're in.
We don't know how
to make a commitment
and stick with it when
it gets really hard,
and it does get really hard.
So those are parts of a
response to your question.
I mean, I could spend the
whole day talking to you
about some of that.
And then at this point,
don't make choices based
on what the culture is doing.
If you work through the
stuff of your marriage,
it will become attractive
to those who watch it.
That's not the
reason why you do it.
You do it because
you want to become
an authentic human being.
That's why you do it.
And this is a gift, as severe
a mercy as it is sometimes.
13 years after I
blew my world up--
I got a one-sentence phone call
on January 4, '94, from Kim.
And all she said was, I'm
waiting for you at your office
and I know.
And what she knew was I was in
a three-month affair with one
of her best friends, and that
was after our sixth child had
been born.
So I mean, I blew up the world.
I broke-- I broke the world.
Yeah.
And at that point, I had to
decide whether to kill myself.
Suicide has always been
a relative, a companion,
because it's the last way to
run away before you actually
hit the bottom.
Or face her.
And I still don't know
how I made it across town.
I mean, I went into--
I pulled the Yellow
Pages off the shelf,
and we can go into so many
mysterious graces that
were in the middle of this.
I pull the Yellow
Pages off the shelf
and end up sitting in front of
a total stranger who becomes
a friend and a therapist.
And that was part of it.
Kim didn't demand that.
For the first time in
my life I needed help.
I wish I had
acknowledged it before.
But some of us are so broken,
we have to get caught.
And 13 years later,
we're sitting in a group.
Because we never made my
adultery the new secret.
And we're sitting in a group of
friends, all who knew my story.
And Kim says to them
in front of me--
she says, you know, I never
thought I would ever say this.
It was all worth it.
And she's not
justifying adultery.
She's not saying the means
justify the ends or the ends
justify the means.
She's saying, there's nothing so
broken that God can't heal it,
or so lost that God
doesn't know where
it is, or so dead that God
can't grow something in it.
And she was saying,
he's worth it.
AUDIENCE: What a lovely story.
That was so great.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Well, you
asked the question, darling.
But it's the way it is.
So to be involved on this side,
in the ripple effect of all
this, it's an incredible grace.
I'm very grateful.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I recently read "Lies
We Believe About God."
I felt like I was
having difficulty
understanding your position.
Because while you
include many proof texts
for a universal
salvation of man,
there was no address of the many
verses that suggest otherwise.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG:
Did you not read
the [? catina ?] at the back?
AUDIENCE: I did.
Yeah, those all seemed to
be proof texts for, right?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Well,
they were just a list.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, it was
just a list of verses,
but I wanted to see
verses that seemed
to suggest against the
universal salvation of man.
I wanted to hear what you
had to say about those.
I have one verse
I'd like to read--
or, well, two verses
I'd like to read--
and then I'd like to ask
a clarifying question.
Revelation 20: 9-10 say,
"And they marched up
over the broad
plain of the earth
and surrounded the camp of the
saints and the beloved city,
but fire came down from
heaven and consumed them.
And the devil who
had deceived them
was thrown into the
lake of fire and sulfur,
where the beast and
the false prophet were.
And they will be tormented day
and night, forever and ever."
So the clarifying
question is, do you
believe that, in
addition to mankind,
that also the devils
are redeemed, forgiven,
and spared eternal punishment?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Well,
you couched your question
with an assumption that's false.
AUDIENCE: OK, sure.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: So the
first part of your question
was, do you also believe that?
And then you made a
statement about what
I believe about everybody.
AUDIENCE: That's why it's
a clarifying question.
Thanks.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG:
So let's talk
about universal
salvation for a second.
That's a very different
thing than the idea
that everyone will ultimately
be reconciled back face
to face with the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
Do you understand
the distinction?
AUDIENCE: I do understand
the distinction,
but I understood the
former from the book.
But go ahead and continue.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: No, I went
to great pains to say, no,
I don't know.
Here's a question that
I'd like to ask back.
If God, in God's wisdom and
counsel within the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, from
prior to creation,
knew how to win every
single part of creation
back and redeem it, would
you be opposed to it?
AUDIENCE: Would I
be opposed to it?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I am for
whatever God is for.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: So you
wouldn't be opposed to it?
AUDIENCE: I'd have to think
more about what you're saying.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Well, I'm
saying I'm not opposed to it.
Actually, I hope that that's
true, but I don't know.
So I'm not holding to a doctrine
of universal reconciliation.
But universal salvation,
that goes all the way back
to the early Church, as far
as saying that what Jesus did
affected every
single human being
on the planet who
would ever exist.
He died once for all.
This is a statement that is true
and worthy of full acceptance
that Jesus Christ is the
savior of all mankind.
If I be lifted up, I'll
drag all men to myself.
That word is only used
for dragging the fish that
were breaking the nets, Paul and
Silas in front of the council,
and in that verse.
So the majority statement
throughout Christian history
has been that universal
salvation exists for everyone,
and it was accomplished.
It was finished in Christ.
The question is, do
you want it or not?
Because your choice continues
to matter in an ongoing sense.
So relationship is
always contingent.
Relationship is always about
your ability to choose.
We have six children.
If one of my children--
say our oldest son, say Chad--
decides that he never
wants to talk to me again,
wants to change his name,
whatever, ontologically he's
still my son.
But it completely
affects the relationship
in an ongoing sense.
Because part of
relationship is that I
respect the choices that he
makes as a human being to say
no.
Well, that impacts relationship.
Does it ontologically
make him not my son?
No.
And we're saying--
and I say "we"--
the tradition of the
Church historically
is that ontologically,
our salvation
is accomplished in Christ, yet
we still have to work it out.
What he has already worked
in, we got to work it out.
Our choices actually matter.
You can participate or not.
Potentially, you can
say no to this forever.
But part of my belief
is, my opinion is,
is that love will
never stop pursuing,
and death is not
what defines things.
It is God who is life
who defines everything.
That's a whole
different question
than the issue of looking at
Revelation, that whole passage.
Are we dealing with symbols?
What do those symbols mean?
What's it talking about?
AUDIENCE: I wasn't so much
asking about the passage,
just reading it.
And then this question
comes up of devils.
You say in the book
that death does not
stop someone's free will.
They can continue
to choose that.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Yeah.
The potential is that everything
is restored-- potentially,
because it depends on
how you define fire.
When I say I married the
wrath of God, which I believe
is the love of God,
I'm making a statement
about the nature of fire.
And that's a huge conversation.
If you want to explore it
more, because I don't want
to get stuck in a
mind conversation,
scriptural, proof
texting conversation
at the moment, because we just
don't have the time for it--
but read Brad Jersak's
"Her Gates Will Never Be
Shut," which is a reference
to that very passage
in Revelation.
But it's one of the best
explorations about this.
My opinion is that the fire--
God is fire, and
I believe in fire.
In fact, I count on it.
Like George MacDonald says, "If
you trust the goodness of God,
you will run to him with
your arms wide open,
and you will say, please,
judge me to the core
and burn out of
me everything that
keeps me from being fully
human and fully alive."
But I believe that the
furious fire of God
is always for us,
not against us,
but is always against everything
that is not of love's kind,
that God will not stand
idly by while anything
that is not of love's
kind remains unchallenged.
So that's the statement that
I would categorically say.
So again, for the sake of
time and this conversation,
we can pick that up, but
check out Brad's book.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
Great to see you again, Paul.
So during this
11-year process, what
was the key moment
in there that led you
to this new view of God,
to view God as relational,
to view God as this community
of persons, Father, Son,
and Spirit?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Yeah, the
key moment was getting caught.
AUDIENCE: So many Christians
have no conception of that,
so what triggered that?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG:
Well, that is a process.
You have to have the lies
exposed that underlie, that
bring the disconnect and the
incoherence to your life.
And so it happened in
many, many different ways.
It happened through opening
my world up to relationships,
not just with Kim and our
kids but with friends.
And it had to do with
beginning to question some
of the fundamental tenets that
I grew up with-- the nature
and character of God.
Is God good all the time?
Is this a love that is
for me or against me?
Is there a difference in
the nature and character
of the Father and the Son?
What do I do with
some of the atonement
there is that we're
not taught as theories
when I was growing up?
So that reinforced
this separation
and fear construct,
all of those things.
And then beginning
to realize that there
is nothing deeper as I
journeyed into the questions
about the Trinity, which
I had been since I was 18.
I mean, my journey
started with questions.
In fact, my journey
into the Trinity
came from the issue of women,
because most of the damage
in my life came from men.
And as I looked
around the world,
most of the damage in
the world comes from men.
And as I looked in scripture,
through one man sin entered
the world, all the brokenness.
And so I'm going, if men are so
much more messed up than women,
how come they're in charge--
because of my evangelical,
hierarchical fundamentalism.
That drove me into
the Trinity, going,
if there's hierarchy
in human relationships,
there's got to be a
hierarchy in the Trinity.
And if you've done
any study at all,
you know that any version
of hierarchy in the Trinity
has been declared heresy
by every single Christian
tradition historically,
without exception.
The eternal subordination
of the Son or the Father
is heresy, et cetera.
So if there is no hierarchy
within that circle
of relationship and
we're created in it,
that begins to
change everything.
So not only was it relational
stuff that was happening.
It was also the reading of some
of the early Church fathers,
some of the theologians
through the centuries,
as well as the impact
of art, the impact
of music, the impact
of these things
that penetrated past all my
ways of hiding inside my head.
Then having children
had a huge impact
on moving me out of my head.
So there's all these
incremental little things.
During that 11
years, a lot of it
was just in
conversation, whether it
was dealing with my own
stuff therapeutically
or beginning to realize how
relationships had damaged me
and how it was relationships
that were bringing me back
to wholeness and
then driving that
into my understanding of the
relationship of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is very
central for me,
because I don't
think apart from it
you have a basis anywhere
for love and relationship.
There has to be other-centered
self-givingness to an other,
and that has to be always there.
So that all just began to
expand and trickle out.
AUDIENCE: One thing
is, the subordination
of the Son to the
Father is back again
as a major topic of
discussion right now.
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: I know,
but we tend to do that.
Hard to leave old habits.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, and I actually
had a question for you.
You mentioned "The Shack" did
everything you wanted it to do.
It went out to those
dozen people there.
But now that it has gone out
to millions around the world,
is there anything you
would want to change now
that it is larger?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: No.
There is a really
glaring mistake in it,
but I don't want to change it
because I like talking about it
as a mistake so that people
don't make something out of it
that it isn't.
There is a scene when McKenzie
goes back into the shack.
And it's not in the movie, but
I talked to them about this.
And they did shoot it this
way, but it didn't make it
through the editing process.
When Mackenzie goes
back into the shack that
has been transformed,
which is the presence
of God declaring
the truth of who
he is, even if he
can't recognize it
except for this broken down
place where he's stuck.
He goes in and he looks to where
Missy's blood stain should be,
and it's gone.
I think that's a mistake,
that it should still be there.
Now, just because you work
through the arduous nature
of your own damage doesn't
mean that the evidence of it
just disappears.
There are still nail scars.
And one of the beautiful
things in the movie
is that those nail scars exist.
They're on Papa, which
is like the book,
and same with Sarayu, the
Holy Spirit, and on Jesus.
And that comes from,
where was God the Father?
For God was in Christ
reconciling the world
to himself.
And that's a theme that we
could talk about theologically.
But having the blood stain there
is a declaration of something
that I think is
really significant,
and that is, the
question that is
behind my wrestling with
this mistake is that--
who originates the cross?
The scars are still there.
Who originates the cross?
And I don't think the
cross originates in God,
because God is light and in God
there is no darkness at all.
And there's nothing light
about a torture device
called a cross.
And historically, we
know who invented it
and all this kind of stuff.
But its only existence is
to keep a human being alive
as long as possible and in
as much pain as possible
and then forcibly extract
their breath from them.
That's the purpose of it.
So how does God then dismantle
this iconic statement
of a fist in the face of God?
Because it is the
symbol of iniquity,
that we would do this to even a
human being, while God destroys
its power by submitting to it--
which is just beyond
our comprehension,
that God comes and submits
to us as a baby who grows up
and then climbs on
to our torture device
in order to destroy its power.
He destroys the power of
death that is represented
by this torture device.
But here's the beauty.
He not only destroys
it by submitting to it,
but transforms it into an icon
and a monument of grace that
has become precious
to us, that we'll wear
on our rings and our jewelry.
Because he's changed that.
That tells me that
there is no darkness
that I can bring to the
table that God can't
climb into the middle
of and transform
into an icon and a
monument of grace.
And so I can look
at my life and go,
OK, I'm not alone, because I'm
created in the image of a God
who has never been alone.
And I'm created in the
middle of that relationship.
And this God is with me
in order to co-create
with my participation, because
God won't heal us apart
from our participation,
something that is living.
And He will transform
the mess that
is my life into an icon
and a monument to grace.
So that's one of those things.
There are lots of things
that you could change
that could be said better.
SPEAKER 1: That's well done.
So we have time for
one quick question.
Is there anyone that has
a one-minute request?
AUDIENCE: Can you tell us
about how Papa was inspired?
WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG: Yeah, Papa.
Papa God, large, black
African-American woman.
And just so you know,
a lot of my people
had a problem with
that, like my mom.
My mom tried to read the
book, and the first time she
tried to read it,
she closed the book
when God the Father
came through the door
as a large, black,
African-American woman.
That's why Octavia
Spencer plays Papa.
And she called my
sister and said,
your brother is a heretic.
So it's not like I
haven't heard it.
God is traditionally-- and
this is classic theology--
that God is not more male and
female, that all of maternity
and all of paternity originate
in the Father and in the Son
and in the Holy Spirit.
And the metaphor and
everything else, the imagery,
is littered through scripture,
and it's in the language.
But a lot of times it's
been masked over by the fact
that we haven't allowed that
perspective, because men
have largely translated
the scriptures.
Even when you're introduced to
the Holy Spirit in verse two
in Genesis, it's all feminine.
Ruach is feminine, the
verbs are feminine,
pronouns are feminine.
And the word "mercy" comes from
the same root as the Hebrew
word for "womb," so every time
you read mercy or compassion,
you're dealing with womb love.
When Nicodemus
says, how does a man
climb into his mother's
womb, that word is used--
Luke loves that word, talking
about when John the Baptist
leaped in his mother's womb.
The word is kopon, and
it's used when John 1:18--
it says that no one
has seen God face
to face except the
begotten one who
has been hidden in the kopon of
the Father, the Father's womb.
But it's translated "bosom,"
because God the Father can't
have a womb.
But again, imagery was never
intended to define God.
It was intended to help us
understand the character
and nature of God.
So God is a burning bush
or a rock or a fortress
or a strong tower
or a mother bear
or a woman who loses a coin
or a nursing mother in Isaiah
or an old man in Ezekiel or
on and on and on and on--
imagery.
And imagery is to help
us understand facets
of the character
and nature of God,
not to declare the gender
of God or an isolated,
specific element of the
character and nature of God
and then make that idolatry.
So when I wrote
this for my kids,
I did not want the
revelation of God
to be inside the
white Western box.
So the only white Western guy
in the storyline is Mackenzie.
That's me.
And I want the character
and nature of God
to be much bigger than that.
So the Holy Spirit
is an Asian woman.
Sophia that comes right out
of Proverbs, Chapter 8--
"sophia" is the Greek
word for "wisdom"--
so wisdom personified was played
by Alice Braga from Brazil,
but is Hispanic.
And so you've got African,
you've got Hispanic,
and Jesus, Middle Eastern.
And so it was
like, no, we've got
to get outside this white box.
And all I'm trying to do is
write a story for my kids
to say, let's not
put God in this box.
And let that then
begin to help us
with our understanding of the
character and nature of God.
So it's a violation
for a lot of us
because it violates
our paradigms, not
because it violates scripture.
It's just that we're used
to thinking a certain way.
And you know that
understanding has
to come from changes
of perspective.
That's how it happens.
Whether you're dealing
with math or whether you're
dealing with
psychology or theology,
you've got to change
your perspective.
And that's why-- it's in "Eve"--
I wrote, one good question
is worth a thousand answers,
because we need to
talk about these things
and look at our
perspectives and where
we've got our boxes
that are inside
our heads that keep us divided
one from another, for one
thing.
Good.
Thank you so much.
It's been an honor to be here.
[APPLAUSE]
