I had to read and review "The Shack" for mt Spiritual Formation class. For a long time I have been interested in what it was all about since a lot of Christians hate it and a lot of Christians love it. Now, I can see why those criticisms have arose and as well as the praise.
Below, I have pasted my review of the book. Now, I must warn you: it's long and it actually sucks as a paper. grammatically it's just a mess I am sure and a big problem is that I had to be concise which was hard for me because so it turns out, I have a lot to say about it. So, incidentally, the ideas and thoughts are all jumbled together, but hopefully, the message still gets across and I hope it can still benefit those interested in Theology and/or the book.
So anyway, without further a due...
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There is no other book among the mainstream Christian movement that has received more recognition, more praise, and more criticism than William P. Young’s Fictional work titled The Shack. The story in which Young tells is one that is far too close to the way most Christians will feel at some point of their born again life. He gives a common man named Mack, who after losing his youngest daughter in a horrible abduction incident which gave evidence to murder, Mack has lost his faith – to some degree. In short, Mack is angry with God and he questions the morality and the reality of God, but in this anger, Mack finds himself eventually meeting with the very one whom he persecutes. The picture, in which Young paints, is seemingly a mystical and fantasy one, although Young would contest that this story could very well be far from a fantasy. After the printing of this written work, Christians all over began to read it and use it as a means of Theology – Christians closely associated with the Emergent Church movement were quick to claim this book as a viable source of Modern Christian Theology.
The Shack reads fantastically; it is undoubtedly an easy and very exciting read for anyone who would love nothing more than to read a good work of fiction that causes them to unceasingly fly through it page by page in excitement and thrill. However, it is my believe that this work is greatly flawed Theologically and can be quite dangerous for new Christians as well as Christians who have not been educated on the basics of Theology. Mark Driscoll – pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA – gave his quite harsh and blatant view of the book: “Regarding the Trinity, it’s actually heretical!” Many others have taken on their more defensive opinion saying “[…] it has blown the door wide open to my soul.” For me, upon reading the book, I find myself oddly uncomfortable with its teachings. For long my classmates have often warned me against the book and would chastise the author in quite rough ways such as “One book I would like to burn: The Shack.” I was always uncomfortable by the criticisms of a work of Fiction and so consequentially I have always been in favor of the work. Since reading it recently however, I find myself seeing where those remarks come from and after reading the work and looking at several reviews from other Christians, I take on opinions not so in favor of The Shack with the exception of a few theological teachings of young that I would consider “ok”. In the following I will give a concise view of my stance with the book theologically.
Firstly, I must discuss the love of the father. Now, basically, Young makes no theological move on this subject that I would consider wrong, but it seems to direct me towards other possible problems which I will explain. In this book, God is drawing near to Mack since Mack has drifted away from God – a wonderful act of grace that we find in the Bible as God sends His son to us. This is the love of the Father, that although we are in abandonment of the good of God and the worship of God, God comes to us and pursues us. Young makes an interesting point on the subject of the love of the Father; he says that (with Young’s concept of the Trinity which I will discuss later) God desires us to join Him in his triune of relationship but is reliant on our choices and thus comes the issue of free will. Young makes very little emphasis on free will, but he dances around the issue and I find that Young is drifting towards the idea of Arminianism. In The Shack, God invites Mack to join Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God himself into their circle of relationship, bu states that “it’s all up to you” and that “time is on our side”. By saying “time is on our side” that gives the idea that God is unwilling and possibly even unable to break into history for personal salvation and that God is not sovereign over our choices, rather He is reliant on our choices for means of joining in spirit with Him. This is an Armenian idea which I tend to disagree with precisely due to the idea of limitation. I find that the idea that God is reliant on our choices is far from Biblical and Young reveals a God of limitation with yet another instance where God says that He has limited Himself for our benefit so that we get the idea that God is surprised and that God can thus feel our emotion similarly. Yet, this idea is not Biblical; it would then mean that God is capable of limitation and if that is so, then God is capable of becoming less than Himself and that would mean that God cannot be sovereign and omniscient. It can simply be understood that God is sovereign over us and that He already knows what we know and feels what we feel and cannot be surprised – no matter what. Young’s idea of limitation is dangerous for any Christian. However, all of this may have not been the intentions of Young so I must remain content with the basic idea of the love of the Father found in this book which is pretty accurate as in God gives grace to meet us who have for long been in rebellion to him.
Next, the problem of evil according to Young will be discussed. I actually really like the way that Young describes Evil through the discussion between Mack and Sarayu (which is the Holy Spirit) in the garden. She answers Mack’s questioning about the issue of having a good God and an evil-filled world that He created and allowed to be corrupted by asking Mack one simple question: “What is good and what is evil?” God is simply beyond us and He is sovereign, even over evil. The way we try to define evil and good is by human terms and God is just not human and so we ultimately just must decide that God is sovereign and that we may never fully know the mystery of evil in the world and a good God that created it, but we can ask one question - one that I wish Young would have better incorporated – that is, that God seeks glory, and how glorious would we know God to be without the presence of Evil in the world? God has displayed himself most glorious by allowing evil into creation so that we may seek the good of God and the redemption of God thus allowing us to understand the grace and liberation of God. This is Good news.
For the issue of judgment, Young allows the reader to really feel what God might feel for humanity by having Mack as the new judge. As Young proceeds to show, there is really only one reason for evil in the world and that is God – which affirms what I had previously analyzed about evil. Young portrays a picture that Mack finds himself conflicted with blame and ultimately Young shows that there really can be no person to blame and judge – it all goes back to God. Thus one must be judged for his own actions; and would it be fair since it might have really just been a previous person’s fault? Therefore there must be something done and what Young wonderfully reveals is that Jesus was sacrificed for mankind instead of individual judgment. I must say that whether Young takes no stance on it in the book, it must be said that this does not omit our own personal judgment from God – as the Bible says we will one day be judged according to our own actions. What I hope Young does not mean to infer is a universalism idea where regardless of people’s belief, all of humanity will eventually be saved since Christ died for all sins. Universalism is not quite what the Bible teaches as Jesus explains that not all who claim Jesus’ name will find their way into heaven. I find it that Young should have incorporated the latter so that Christians may not fall into the ideals of universalism.
Now, for the issue of Young’s portrayal of the Trinity – which I find to have many Theological problems – will be discussed; I will try to be concise yet not avoid any issues regarding the Trinity. In The Shack the Theology of the Holy Trinity is quite honestly just a big mess and I will continue with reasons why.
First, the Bible clearly says “do not make a graven image of God” and in The Shack it seems that is exactly what Young has done by depicting God the father as an African-American woman named “Papa”. I will explain. A graven image of God is the act of twisting the truth that is God and making God into something else that is not God to result in idolatry; and this can very easily be done by bringing God down to us and defining Him by our own human terms. The Bible describes God as a Spirit – a deity beyond us and ultimately indefinable according to our human terms. Yes, God was revealed in Jesus, but Jesus was not the Father (I will elaborate on this later) and yes, the Bible uses terminology like “the hand of God” and “the breath of God” but this does not mean that God in fact has a hand or has breath, rather it is an idea for us humans to understand to some degree the idea of God. This does not mean that God cannot be truthfully described at all by using human terms, rather it means that if we take that which is the invisible God and bring Him down to our level of visible creation we are describing who God is with what God is not. It’s like saying that God could be depicted as an old man with a long beard, but the problem with that is that God is not an old man and sadly enough, He does not have a long beard. God cannot be what He is not, especially when it is sinful creation – God does not sin and God is creator and not creation. If this is done then ultimately we are worshiping ourselves – or at least creation. This is a graven image of God the father.
Second, Young says that within the Trinity, there is no hierarchy and that rather all three – father, son, and Holy Spirit – are equal and neither needs to submit to the other since they are all one in the same. Now this is a big problem. It is a Biblical truth that all three – father, son, and Holy Spirit – are equal to each other in that they are, as the Patristic fathers would say: “Homoousios” or “made of the same stuff” as God himself. However, it is not a Biblical truth that among the three, there is no hierarchy. There is in fact hierarchical submission with Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane and confesses “not my will, but yours” Jesus is submitting to the will of the father then and continues with submission to the point of death on the cross. There is even hierarchy in heaven as the Bible says that there is a hierarchy among angels and there is even still hierarchy between God and Jesus and the spirit in heaven – it didn’t end with Jesus’ resurrection – as Jesus sits on the right hand of God and not the throne of God and the spirit of God carries out the will of the father according to the father and not the will of the spirit itself. Concerning the Trinity and Young’s claim that there is no hierarchy, I must contest that there in fact is.
Lastly, and most probably the biggest problem we find in The Shack concerning the Trinity is modalism. In the story, God the father – or “Papa” – says “I am truly human in Jesus”. This however is a heresy that the patristic fathers distinguished as modalism. Modalism believes that God the father is in fact Jesus and all the human characteristics of Jesus were actually God and that ultimately God died on the cross with Jesus, God became sin with Jesus, and God rose with Jesus. Now yes, God was within the Son and the father and the Son were one, but God did not die on the cross since God cannot die. God sustains Himself and cannot limit Himself to death. God was not born of a virgin either as God cannot be born, He is eternal. Basically [yet, complicatedly] God did not become the Son and the Spirit rather they work together as God sent the Son and sent the Spirit. There is significant deference within the Trinity where each is unique. Still, their uniqueness does not invalidate their equality and thus we have the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
In conclusion, I see The Shack as an interesting and even quite entertaining work of fiction. However, I feel uncomfortable as Christians the world over are flocking to this book and praising this book as a wonderful and understandable work of Theology. The problem is that people are so hungry to understand something as mysterious as the Holy Trinity and when we find something that can pull God down to our level in order to understand God, we run with that when the fact is that we cannot fully understand what is beyond us and what is God. Yet, we can understand it truthfully for what the Bible says. Young created a good book, with good intentions. I tip my hat toward him for taking something so theologically complicated and trying to make better sense out of it by using more understandable terms and incorporating the story of the struggle of faith that most Christians – if not all Christians – go through. But for the book to be determined as ‘Right Theology’, I would disagree. I would recommend this book for those ready to read a fantastically entertaining story, but never for Christians who look to the book for their source of Theology.
