My Shack Attack

The book, The Shack has caught the fascination of a growing number of Evangelical Christians. It is being passed reader to would-be reader with endorsements like the one on the book’s dust jacket. Michael W. Smith says, “The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God.”

I admit that I don’t read a lot of fiction, so-called Christian fiction or otherwise. My approach to such is more analytical and skeptical. When I read something like this I am unwilling to simply go along for the ride. I’m reading it with my eyes trained between the lines as much as on the lines. What is the world view of the author? What is he trying to say? How is he trying to reshape my view of God? Is this a book I should ban (I realize I have no power to do that), lend, lend with caution or heartily endorse?

Before I get to my final conviction, let me give you a quick synopsis of the plot. The main character, Mack, is the adult child of an alcoholic. He has some “issues”, but he is a good man, a struggling Christian, a decent husband, and a loving father. His world is shattered by the unthinkable. His youngest daughter is abducted and murdered by a serial killer.

After a long period of what he dubs “The Great Sadness”, he gets an invitation to meet “Papa” at the shack. The shack is where the police had located the blood-stained dress of his daughter. Mack goes to the shack and finds it miraculously changed, the season itself goes from winter to summer, and in the shack are three people who are a physical representation of the Triune God-- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The second commandment forbids making an image of God. It does so for good reason. In worship, we dare not allow our finite brains to reduce God down to an image that invariably limits the full nature of God’s being. In other words, images are inherently reductionistic, and to reduce God is a dangerous thing.

I would also add that I have never liked the billboards with cute little sayings that read, “Signed God.” Though the thoughts are often reasonably meaningful, they are not scripture and it seems to border on taking the name of God in vain. One ought never attribute man’s words to Him.

Thus, from the very beginning I approach such a book with a jaundiced eye. Even a great theologian or literary genius like C.S. Lewis would fail in an attempt to write an entire book of dialogue between the three members of the Trinity. I will give author, William Young, kudos for having the moxie to try, but I fear that such courage is more presumption than inspiration.

Trying to fully grasp Young’s underlying premise regarding God’s sovereignty over evil is not easy. He seems to give as much as he takes. There are comments that make God appear sovereign and other comments that border on open theism. I think it fair to say that Young leans hard toward a free-will side of the theological spectrum. Many Christians do, and though, I fall hard the opposite way, I respect the difference of opinion.

But that is not the end of where I would critique Young’s view of God. Young seems to have no place whatsoever for God’s wrath against evil. He seems to grasp substitutionary atonement, yet it is as if God the father never had wrath against sin in the first place. One statement indicative of this approach is on page 223 where God says, “I don’t do humiliation, guilt or condemnation.”

It is one thing to say as Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” It is something else for God to say in a blanket fashion that he has never been about condemning sin or sinners. Note the word “now” in Romans 8:1.

Young diminishes the reading of scripture as putting God not in a “box, (but) just in a book…” (p. 66) He diminishes the need for obedience and law keeping in a strong antinomian flurry on pp.201-204. The Holy Spirit explains that he is all about verbs and not nouns. In a long list of verbs he conspicuously leaves out the word “obeying.” The three members of the trinity completely reject even the notion of submission, in an extended treatment in chapter 8. Authority is strictly bad and viewed as a fallen human concept.

One very troubling passage relates to not just the extent of the atonement, but the extent of its application. At the end of chapter 12 Young has Jesus acting repulsed by the word “Christian.” Jesus disavows being a Christian and states, “I have no desire to make them Christian.” The “them” is a list of various cults and world religions. The phrasing is ambiguous enough that one could take the passage and run different directions with it, but it is troubling at best and at worst universalistic.

If Young simply wrote a work of non-fiction and stated his theology, I suspect that many Evangelicals would disagree with him. But when you stick these words in the mouth of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit you sidestep the need to defend your quirky theology. Christians would do well to remember that these are not at all the words of God. They are the machinations of a man concerning God, and I believe a very confused man at that.

I am not troubled that Young pictures God the Father as a large black woman. I am troubled that Young pictures God at all and then proceeds to use that picture like a marionette. God comes across as glib. The members of the Trinity seem to spend most of their time cracking wise, giggling, kissing one another or dispensing retreaded, sixties-style, psycho-babble.

At one point in the text Young chooses to use the word “matrix” to describe the world system. “You are yielding to the matrix, not to us,” finished Jesus. Suddenly it dawned on me. God as a black woman who speaks in riddles? Hmm. Where have I seen that before? Oh, that’s right. It was in the movie The Matrix. So, Young isn’t even very original.

This doesn’t exhaust my critique of Young’s ideas, only my time and space to do so. Would I recommend the book? No. I am letting my fourteen-year-old daughter read the book, but only because she needs to develop a consistently biblical worldview. We will discuss it in depth. As a way of dealing with grief and loss, I give it a thumbs down. There are better materials out there that are not so doctrinally muddled. Don’t seek God in The Shack. Seek Him in prayer and yes, in The Book.