Considering the Shack

When you live in a place like Winter Haven you can easily lose track of what happens in the wider world.  When you are a conservative Presbyterian, this does not help either.  A book may be very popular in broader “evangelical” circles and not come to your attention for quite some time.

There has been one that has sold over 1 million copies but whose existence eluded me until recently.  A newsletter mentioned The Shack by William Young.  The person mentioning it really liked it, but noted some issues might be problematic.  “Oh, interesting,” I thought.  I did not yet know how popular this book was or how entralled some people are with it (479 Amazon reviews have an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars).

It is the story of a man whose child was killed by a serial killer some time earlier.  He has been unable to move on.  His seminary training is failing him.  God invites him to the shack where his daughter was murdered.  There he encounters the Godhead and his entire theology and experience are deconstructed and reconstructed.  The Father actually appears through much of the story as a tender woman (this is what my acquaintance mentioned as being problematic).

Fiction can be a helpful device to communicate truth.  Witness Pilgrim’s Progress.  It is a great book that seeks to help us understand our pilgrimage as Christians.  Often when I am in a mall I’ll think “Vanity Fair” to remind myself of consumerism’s seductive distraction.  C.S. Lewis’ and J.R.R. Tolkien’s allegorical literature are also very helpful.  Christian fiction of this kind is most helpful when it corresponds to biblical truth.  It is most destructive when it does not.  Caught up in the story we can find ourselves buying into lies.  Our emotions are engaged in such a way that our defenses are down.  Some would argue that The Shack is just such a book.

The Shack is a polarizing book.  You either love it or hate it.  Having not read it, I can’t say either.  Tim Challies produced a review of the book some time ago.  He got lots of polarized feedback on it.  He put together a longer (17 pages) review to be able to express some of the concerns he has with The Shack.  He looks at how The Shack treats revelation, salvation and the Trinity.

It is clear from many reviews by other people that The Shack has had a profound influence on them.  I suspect that there are some good motives, trying to move people from religion to relationship with God.  That is a noble thing.  The question then becomes whether the book do this in a way that undermines Christianity. 

Tim Challies, for one, argues that The Shack subverts our understanding of revelation by creating the expectation that the Spirit works apart from the Word so that we can have immediate revelations from God.  This would undermine the authority of the Word and open the pandora’s box for all kinds of private revelation that can’t be evaluated.  We see some of this in some circles, and I’ve talked to people who said “God told me…”.  What they claimed was contrary to Scripture and they refused to listen to biblical instruction.

The understanding of salvation is also one that departs from my understanding of biblical salvation.  According to Challies, the cross is only mentioned peripherally in the book.  He quotes a section exalting our freedom as if God were a gentleman rather than a Lord to whom obedience is due.  God’s sovereignty in salvation is sacrificed for what is at best a semi-pelagian or at worst pelagian view of man and therefore salvation.  We find a hypothetical salvation & redemption that waits for you to complete the transaction, and you may not need Jesus to do that.

In The Shack, all 3 persons of the Trinity are manifested visually.  The Father and Spirit are manifested as women.  One of the main points of the Incarnation of the Son is that he “exegetes” God.  Jesus is God’s explanation of Himself.  Where good Christian allegory (Bunyan, Lewis) only show an Incarnate Christ-figure, this ‘incarnates’ all 3 moving in dangerous waters.

In the Bible we see that all 3 persons of the Godhead are equal, but the Son submits to the Father and the Spirit submits to both Father and Son.  There is authority and submission as they work together to accomplish the plan they have devised.  Scripture, 1 Peter 1 for instance, mentions their different roles in our salvation.  In The Shack, this is denied.  It stresses the unity and equality of the Trinity’s members that it sacrifices other truths.  Hierarchy is seen as sinful.  Does that mean God sins by asserting authority over us?  Yikes, just the thought scares me.  Even “better” the distinctions between them are lost.  The Father bears scars like Jesus.  He has all 3 becoming Incarnate in Jesus instead of the Son who is then indwelt by the Spirit living in obedience to the Father.

Should this book be banned should these things Tim Challies points out be true?  No.  I’m not a book burner.  Unfortunately the people this book may appeal to most are those least able to read it in a discerning fashion.  I guess I’d go with Paul, “all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.”  This book may be very influential in people’s lives, but that influence may not be beneficial as God evaluates it.

I suspect I won’t read this book.  I understand that Christianity is about a personal relationship with the Triune God through faith in His Son the Sacrifice.  I get grace (though not as well as I should).  I also understand the Creator-creature distinction which means that there is an essential place for reverance on my part even though God has adopted me as His son.  William Young and I have very different understandings of Christianity.  I think mine is more in line with the Bible, but he probably doesn’t care what I think.

Update: ByFaith Magazine has a review by Walter Henger which is interesting.  Here are some quotes:

Any critic risks stumbling directly into the book’s own well-worn stereotype: a strident religious nitpick. God the Father, as portrayed in The Shack, oughta cluck her tongue and give you a talkin’ to.

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, Jesus, and Sarayu 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.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. Positively, The Shack’s God-figures emphasize the full divinity of each person of the Trinity, the superiority of divine wisdom over human understanding, and the absolute necessity of grace over the illusion of human merit. Those are great points to emphasize, and there are a few pithy insights on lesser matters as well.

In the end, The Shack is spiritual comfort food loaded with theological trans fat. Though not without some nutritional value, its effect on the body of Christ is more harmful than healthy. Even if you love it, and even if it makes you cry. Junk food and bad movies can do the same.