Author William P. Youngs new book “Return to the Shack” centers on the power of forgiveness, and he praised Erika Kirk for presenting a strong display of it last year.
Youngs novel “The Shack” tells the story of a fathers healing process after his daughter was kidnapped and killed on a camping trip. The grieving dad, Mack, receives a mysterious letter from God asking him to come to a shack, where he meets an unorthodox Holy Trinity. While considered controversial by some religious readers, the story largely resonated with audiences and was turned into a motion picture in 2017.Â
Young’s sequel focuses on forgiveness as Mack comes face-to-face with his daughters killer as he is given a more humanized storyline.
“I think we need to make a distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation,” Young told . “Forgiveness is for the sake of the one who’s been harmed, so that you can continue to live your life without the specter of what’s on your shoulders. And I mean, you can forgive someone and never trust them again. Reconciliation is the slow, arduous, painful process of learning how to trust. Or taking the risk that you might become trustworthy if you’ve done the harm. So, reconciliation is for the sake of the perpetrator, much more than forgiveness is.”
THE SHACK AUTHOR EXPECTS MORE CHRISTIAN CRITICISM WITH SEQUEL, BUT WILL TAKE IT IN STRIDE
Making peace is essential, he said.
“Otherwise, you’re going to live with a corpse of an event or a situation or some human being who may be dead,” he continued. “A lot of abuse was done to us by people who no longer are alive. And if we can’t let them go, which is the idea of forgiveness, is that we move our hands from around their throat so that we may hold something other than their throat, like life. And it becomes essential. Otherwise, we’re poisoning all the relationships around us.”
Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, shocked many Americans when she publicly forgave the man accused of assassinating her husband last year. Kirk was killed while speaking at a Turning Point USA event one year ago at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.Â
“Our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do,'” Erika said at her husband’s memorial service. “That young man ⦠I forgive him. I because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do.”
Young found it a very powerful example of the message hes trying to convey.
“And I think that’s what Erika was doing, saying, I’m not going to let what you have done to own me,'” the author said. “I’m not going to enter the same prison that you are now in, metaphorically, of course.”Â
“And so, in terms of the human journey, we have this â same with every guy on death row â they don’t have, in the deepest places of their heart, a desire to be harmful or to be non-truth tellers or to be unkind,” Young continued. “They’re human beings and that raises a question is why should that be the deepest places of movement towards a wholeness of what it means to be human by saying, I want to do the work, what it takes to not be addicted. To be a truth-teller, to be someone who is kind and caring.”Â
“And part of that is the underlying belief that love is actually more powerful than violence, or love is more powerful than harm,” he added.Â
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