Mac and his family are on holiday in the American wilderness when their young daughter is kidnapped. They eventually find evidence that she has been brutally murdered in a run down shack in the woods. Many years pass but Mac and his wife are still very much under the cloud of the “great sadness”. Then Mac receives a letter apparently from God. In the letter, God invites him back to the shack. Mac returns to the The Shack and spends two days with God.
William Paul Young, author of The Shack, and I got off on the wrong foot. In an interview Young said this: “The Institutional church doesn’t work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged. . . . If God is a loving God and there’s grace in this world and it doesn’t work for those of us who didn’t get dealt a very good hand in the deck, then why are we doing this? . . . Legalism within Christian or religious circles doesn’t work very well for people who are good at it. And I wasn’t very good at it.” Young and his two publishing partners (ex pastors) no longer attend church.
I’m sure if I owned the publishing company that printed The Shack I would probably be taking a little holiday as well. Pina colada anyone? But to promote the idea that it is okay to “forsake the meeting of ourselves” (Hebrews 10.25), for Young to proclaim that he has cut himself off from the church completely concerns me more than slightly. It has become a little cliche now but obviously Young needs reminding: The Church is not bricks and mortar! It’s us! It’s you and me and your friends, your pastor and possibly your Mother and Father. I cannot help but take it a little personally when Young says that we do not work for him, or for anyone who is hurt or damaged. I understand that Young had an unpleasant childhood and perhaps he has been hurt by some people in the church but there is no need blame everyone for that. Regardless, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16.18).
The second alarm bell rang when I bought my copy of The Shack. The quote that they had on the front page was from Eugene Peterson “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!“. No it’s not. This is hype at it’s most indulgent. I didn’t really take exception to this statement until I read the book. Then I realised how ludicrous it was. But obviously some people agree according to some Amazon reviews: “The BEST work of Fiction I have read in Years. . . . THE SHACK has changed my life. I don’t want to say it has a power second only to the Bible, but others have said it and I feel that is true. . . . We now buy ‘em by the case, and pass them out, much more fun than tithing . . . Right behind the Bible, this is at the top of my reading list. As soon as I finished, I wanted to read it again. . . .“. I wonder to myself, have these people actually read The Shack? Or have they confused it with some marvelous work of fiction that I haven’t read?
“Fiction” is the key word here. The Shack is a work of fiction. Quite a manipulative one at that. The reader is emotionally softened by the apparent violent murder of little Missy before God is ever encountered. When God is eventually encountered, what a God he is! Or should I say she is. Whoops, I’ve gone and let it slip. The Shack presents the trinity as two parts female. I’m not entirely sure what Young hoped to achieve by presenting the Father God as a rotund, black lady from the deep south. Perhaps he thought that this would be a sort of warm and cosy image of God. I found it contrived and uncomfortable, I never got used to it for the duration of the book especially since Mac insists on calling her/him “Papa”. Not because I have a problem with the term “Papa” per se (Paul uses it in Romans 8.15) I have a problem with the fact that it was used to refer to a woman. It just felt awkward.
The book itself is actually really dull. Imagine the sort of questions you might ask God if you met him: “What really happened to the dinosaurs?“, “How old is the earth?“, “Is Elvis in heaven?” these are just some of the questions Mac does not ask God while spending two days with him I mean her…..I mean….ah. The fact is, the events in this book never happened, they only happened in William P Young’s head. Missy wasn’t brutally murdered, Mac didn’t receive a letter from God, God is not a rotund black woman from the deep south. It takes a bold man to put as many words in God’s mouth as Young has done in the The Shack. But I’ll repeat this, it’s dull reading. Young’s descriptive abilities are lacking somewhat. I struggled to finish the book because it was so boring. I could go on and criticise more but why give it more attention than it deserves?
Every cloud has a silver lining though. I walked past Waterstones the other day and saw two or three copies of The Shack in the window display. For any “christian” book to be promoted that much in a secular book shop is something and if The Shack can move someone a notch or two up the Engel’s Scale then it might not be a complete waste of time.
See Pastor Graham’s review of the book here.
