In 2008 I was really excited to get to read a book that was fiction again. I had been forced to walk through loads of textbooks for Seminary, and I was really looking forward to a book that was recommended to me. The book that seemed to be all the buzz with 20-somethings was this one, William Young's The Shack.
After reading it, I could see why so many of my friends liked it. This book is an outside the box sort of approach at God, reminded me a little of a C.S. Lewis type attempt. Overall, I think we all love books that make us think things like "Wow, I never really looked at it that way before." Young is a great storyteller, the book was really captivating in a lot of places.
Overall though, I am going to have to give a mostly thumbs down to this book, I just wanted to give you some reasons personally. Here are my thoughts:
The Positives:
1. Young is a great storyteller, and the way he speaks about depression, sadness, and emotion in this book are, for the most part, really well done. As he talks about personal loss, he does a great job of bringing you in, and touching on the kind of grief that accompanies really difficult circumstances.
2. Some of the messages on redemption and deeper faith have a lot of worth. While this book has its problems, it does touch on a deeper spiritual walk that is personal and real, as opposed to religious and distant. That is a really positive message to take away, I just wish that Young could have achieved that same goal while not portraying God as carelessly as he does.
The Problem Areas:
Voltaire once said that "God created mankind in His image, and mankind has been trying to return the favor ever since." In my opinion, that really sums up the root of the problems with this book.
1. Young seems to bring in the Trinity in a way that he thinks will be the most different to popular thinking. No doubt God is not white, No doubt God is not man in the same way that I am, no doubt when we see God someday we will find that he is different than we thought. Having said that though, we have so much given in the Bible about the nature of God. Young doing doesn't just miss the mark of what any preconception about God I would have is, he also misses any mark that I see Scripture setting for the nature of God. This is the same kind of "Bruce Almighty" mindset that "the true nature of God must be something that makes for snappy quotes, and new ways of thinking contrary to any previous ways of thought or precedent."
2. Young seems to try to make the point that anything that anyone would have ever done to try to please God or draw closer to Him was really a waste of time. This comes out in a number of scenes, one is the scene of "God" dancing to the beat of funk music. The problem is not because God is dancing, or because the music is funk music, but because the message underlying that whole conversation (you would have to read it) is something like "why did you ever try to listen to music or do anything that seemed to focus or honor me? If only you would have opened yourself up, and see the good in everything the way that I do no matter what kind of things people are saying, you would know who I am more fully than you do now." I could see a lot of people reading/seeing that and thinking "well I guess God doesn't care what I do." What the Bible seems to say is that God wants people to know him desperately. He rejoices in nothing else. He never seems to take joy in "the heart and emotion of people" in a way that makes that less crucial or important.
3. Young espouses theology, even though he might not claim to do so, and much of it is wrong. Many people defending this book have said "he's not writing theology, it's a story." Actually, any time you write about God, you are writing theology, whether you want to be doing so or not. A few areas where things can be really misleading are:
One of Young's criticisms from the beginning was that his portrayal of God was "modalist." This is a term for the belief that God only exists as one form of the Trinity at a time. For example, in the book, God the Father has scars from the crucifixion. This helps to jog someones thoughts on the closeness of God in and with Himself (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) but it is incorrect and misleading.
During a conversation with "Jesus" Mack is told by Jesus a series of things that describes his (Jesus') humanity, and I believe Young goes too far in trying to rob Jesus of His divine power. This is another historical discussion/argument within some points of church history called the kenosis doctrine (Just how much did Jesus empty Himself of when He came to earth?). The Bible talks about Jesus being emptied of His position, place, and glory (Phil 2) but not of His divinity or divine power. Jesus was fully God and fully man. A woman grabs his cloak and He says "I felt power go out of me." Jesus forgives sins face to face without asking permission of the Father, but by his own authority. So yes, Jesus was and is submissive to God the Father, but we miss the fullness of the gospel if we simply try to say He was powerless and simply human while here on earth.
My biggest frustration was during one of Mack's conversations with Papa (God the Father). On page 120, Papa says "I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment...it's not my purpose to punish it, it's my joy to cure it." That is a major problem, and there's no excuse for that. No doubt sin has consequences which can be punishing, but that is dangerously misleading. In the Bible, Jesus speaks even more about hell than He does heaven. All of us face punishment for sin, and the forgiveness God offers through Jesus is the only solution.
4. Eugene Peterson said something like "this book has the capability to do for this generation what Pilgrim's Progress did for Bunyan's generation." I really like a lot of what Peterson has written, but this book, I think, is not even in the same universe as Pilgrim's Progress. I honestly have no idea why Peterson would say that. The stories are not similar, and even the allegorical style is not similar, so this book is definitely not a modern Pilgrim's Progress. Pilgrim's Progress deals with the nature of man, sin, salvation, trials, Biblical teaching, and amazing allegory. It never seeks to take away the glory and majesty of God to sell more books, or sound smart. It was said of John Bunyan that "if you cut him he would bleed Scripture." I don't think anyone will say that about William Young. If you were curious, I'd encourage you to pick up a modern translation of Pilgrim's Progress and give it a read.
I am not on a campaign against this book/movie, but my hope is that no one would casually take some new understanding of God from this, because there is a very high chance that it would be wrong. Any human work of literature is like a rotisserie chicken - meat and bones. It's important to be able to tell the difference. In my opinion, there's more bones in this work than many other Christian fiction stories. It's really popular now in Christian circles to say "if it promotes diversity and new understanding then it must be true." Instead, can we please have diversity, new understanding, and integrity at the same time? If you want to enjoy the Shack, just make sure you're also enjoying your Bible.
