"The Shack" (plot spoiling)

A friend handed me this book by William Paul Young with the caution that a few things are "out there," but on the whole it's a very good book that will help me understand the Trinity. I read it on the plane trip home from Montana.

From the back of the book: " Mackenzie Allen Philips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandonded shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgement he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever."

***Plot Spoiling Ahead!***

At the shack, Mack finds God in three physical persons. The Holy Ghost is a floaty shimmering lady, Jesus is a non-handsome man, and the Father is a big black lady. I don't question that the Father could reveal himself to someone like that if he chose to, but I found that this was really just the first step of the book's journey to watering God down and making him chummy.

I liked that part of the book's focus was to show the need for an intimate personal relationship with God. I liked that the other part of it's focus was on forgiveness. But my hackles raised over the portrayal of God as being perfectly harmless. A buddy-buddy who wouldn't hurt a fly. Take this phrase used by him in one of Mack's first interviews with "Papa," (that's what Mack is asked to call God), when Mack unleashed some anger about why Missy got murdered. "Mack, I'm so sorry. I know what a great gulf this has put between us..." "Honey, there's no easy answer that will take your pain away. Believe me, if I had one, I'd use it now. I have no magic wand to wave over you and make it all better. Life takes time and a lot of relationships." That was sympathetic and affectionate, but where's GOD? All-powerful, righteous and sovereign? Imagine God going to Job and saying, "I'm sorry about all your problems, but life takes time and a lot of relationships." ?!?!?! It don't work! Another place, Papa states that he doesn't punish sin. Sin is a punishment of itself. Ahem, excuse me?! What exactly happened to Sodom then? There are more theological errors in the book, and another blatant one that made me gasp was that in the book, Jesus wasn't alone on the cross. The Father and the Holy Ghost were there with him, helping him. He cried, "Why have you forsaken me?" but he wasn't really forsaken. He just felt forsaken. What? So now we are taking scripture and saying, it wasn't like that, he just felt that way? No, that's what made the cross so agonizing, and the cost so high; Christ became sin for us, and on the cross HE BORE THE FATHER'S WRATH!! Not the Father's comfort. There is also a very low view of the church in this book. The church is represented as man's institution, and a rote practice in which God takes little pleasure. This directly contrasts with the scriptural image of the church as His bride. The final thing I'll bring up is that throughout, God is such a servant. Yes, Jesus was a servant, he washed the diciples feet, but to show us how we should then live. In the book, The Father takes constant delight in doing everything for Mack, treating Mack like royalty. It rubbed me backwards. It smelled like a ploy to make people feel good. The whole view of God in "The Shack" is shrunken, dragging him down to a mold that tickles peoples fancies (I see God's depiction as a lady a strongly feminist gesture, despite differing excuses in the book), and can fit into our understanding. Well, Elizabeth Elliot once said that if God were small enough to understand, he wouldn't be big enough to worship, and that's exactly what happens in "The Shack." "Papa" is small enough to understand, but not big enough to worship.