I’ve learned that the other members of the Viking Age Club find it amusing that I keep referring to the slings and speed bumps of outrageous fortune as “adventures.” I’d think that would be a very Viking attitude. Perhaps they admire me for it. In secret.

In any case, we had a few adventures during our three days at the Sons of Norway District One convention in Mankato, Minnesota. We arrived Thursday morning and set up a small encampment in the auditorium of the Alltel Civic Center, where the vendors also set up. There was plenty of room for us all (and for the two reindeer, which one vendor had brought and kept in a cage next to his booth).

The group members who were delegates were housed in the adjacent hotel, but those of us who were just there for entertainment stayed in dorm rooms at the state college. A lady at the registration desk gave me a city map, and told me how to get there. One of our club members who was in on planning also gave me verbal directions, but I didn’t even try to memorize them. I never remember verbal directions right.

Ron, another member, hitched a ride to the school with me, and I set out up Main Street, following the map. It told me to take a right turn at a particular street which (according to it) had one name to the left of Main and another to the right. After going miles out of our way, we figured out that the right-hand name wasn’t actually marked on the street signs. So we figured out at last where to go. Until the street turned one-way against us.

Eventually we stopped a jogger, who told us to go straight ahead, then up the hill. This meant we’d have to go the wrong way in the one-way section, something that doesn’t deter joggers, but bothers me. I finally figured out how to go around legally and find the street I wanted. Then followed some time taking more wrong turns, until we found the school (the big sign saying “Mankato State University” was a tip-off), and (fortunately) the dorm was right there, or we might never have been heard from again.

When we got in, we found that nobody had arranged for bedding or towels for us. We managed to wangle blankets and pillows from student monitors. Overnight I remembered a face towel I keep in my car, and in the morning I went out to fetch it, and so was able to take a shower. The towel was small, and not entirely clean, but it beat the alternative. Or so I like to believe.

The next day we learned that, in order to save money, the Sons of Norway people had made a deal for rooms without bedding or towels. Only the guy who made the arrangements forgot to tell us to bring our own.

So I hit him a few times with my sword.

Seriously, I did. He’s a member of our group, and we did some live steel combats. I beat him in the end, but it took five bouts to break the tie. This does not redound to my glory, as it was his first try at combat following his training. And he wasn’t even dressed right. He’d forgotten his costume, and wore a white shirt and tie under his mail.

The next night one of our members gave us oral directions to the college, and we drove directly there. Ron’s and my reactions were identical: “This way’s no fun!”

Anyone here read The Shack? Walter Henegar criticizing the book is akin to complaining about your aunt’s macaroni casserole, because everyone seems to love it no matter how bad it is for them. But The Shack may be worse than bad family cooking.

More significant, when Mack mentions biblical events or concepts (often in gross caricature), “God” promptly brushes them off and glibly explains how it really is. Unlike the biblical Jesus, who constantly quoted the Old Testament and spent many post-resurrection hours “opening their minds to understand the scriptures,” The Shack’s Papa [God the Father], Jesus, and Sarayu [Holy Spirit] turn Mack’s attention away from Scripture, coaxing him to trust instead their simplistic lessons set in idyllic, Thomas Kinkade-like scenes and delivered in the familiar therapeutic language of our age.

…

Good fiction has the potential to illuminate biblical truth, but not when it effectively supplants it. We need the Bible, not The Shack. The true Word takes more work to understand, and it won’t always tell us what we want to hear, but we can trust it to reveal a greater, wiser, more loving, and more gloriously Triune God than any novelist could conceive.

I heard tonight Haven Ministries’ radio show on this book. They have a comment blog about it, and announce at the top of the page that they intend not to endorse or bash the book, but to engage it. This they say while offering the book to all donors who request it. Isn’t that an endorsement? Haven links to John Stackhouse’s blog for weightier comments like this: “It seems to me important that authors of fiction defend art as needing no justification on some other grounds. From a Christian point of view, a well-rendered novel—or short story, or poem, or song lyric—needs only to be good in and of itself.”

Also: “The Shack skims briefly over the surface of theology of religions, raising the question particularly of whether God reveals himself to and saves people of other religions. . . . I am strongly inclined myself to a theological conviction that God’s salvation is extended beyond the range of those who have heard the Gospel, understood it, and accepted it as true.”

1. Add Mentos to a two-liter of Diet Coke manually.

2. Add Mentos to a two-liter of Diet Coke automatically.

3. Repeat step 2.

Result: The Domino Effect