The Shack, William P. Young
A review
“The real underlying flaw in your live, Mackenzie, is that you don’t think that I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything – the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives – is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me” (126).
Quotes such as this, where Young tackles the principles behind trusting God in the middle of trials and key aspects of the Christian’s relationship with God, have stimulated Christians who were drawn to read this controversial work, The Shack. Sometimes Young hits the nail on the head with comments like this one. However, what makes this book such a controversy, and are the good points enough to overcome the negative elements within it?
The book is a modern-day allegory of a man whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered while on a family camping trip. Mack struggles for years with anger and bitterness toward the murderer and God and guilt within himself. When he gets a letter from God inviting him to return to the shack where his daughter was found, for the weekend, he accepts the invitation and goes to the shack, where he encounters all three persons of the trinity: Papa, or God the Father, Jesus, and Sarayu, or the Holy Spirit. Through conversations with them and his experiences that weekend, his life is changed and he finds peace with God and himself.
Searching for answers to the problem of pain and evil, The Shack explores what relationship with God truly means for the individual, and includes many excellent principles. Trust is based on relationship, Papa tells Mack. “Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me,” she says to him (126). God is personal – not an angry, spiteful being who is unknowable or vengeful. This is the overall message of the book, and Young does a good job tackling the concept.
In addition, there is a good section in the book that addresses the legalistic approach to salvation. Sarayu tells Mack that rules and principles aren’t the way to know God, and that the law is only a mirror to show man his sin (198, 202). This is a Biblical truth. She addresses the fact that humans turn everything into rules and principles so that they can follow them and hold them up as a standard by which to judge others. People in a relationship have expectancies of each other, but once those are turned into expectations, the relationship deteriorates.
However, blended into the book, with its many conversations between Mack and each person of the Godhead, are many false doctrines and Scriptural errors. Young borrows from many age-old theories and beliefs that have been refuted over and over again by scripturally orthodox Christians.
For example, Papa blatantly contradicts scripture when she says that Jesus was not forsaken on the cross, but that she was there with him all along. Later, she refers to the scars from the cross on herself. This is a heresy known as “patripassionism,” which says that God the Father died with God the Son on the cross. The Bible gives no support for this. On the contrary, it is clear from God’s Word that Jesus was forsaken on the cross as he bore the punishment for man’s sin.
Christ’s death is not seen as atoning, because punishment for sin is overlooked as a necessity: “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment” (96). Christ’s death, rather, is never clearly defined in the book. Young seems to skirt around the issue. At the end of chapter 12, he even comes close to saying, through the character of Jesus, that a person can adhere to any religion and still know God. He does not say that all roads lead to God, but he leaves the reader hanging concerning that issue.
Additionally, Sophia, or an impersonation of wisdom, contradicts the belief that God condemns people to hell. “You believe he will condemn most to an eternity of torment, away from His presence and apart from His love. Is that not true?” (162). This hints at the belief that there is no hell, or punishment for sin. God is too kind and too loving to condemn men to hell.
Another overwhelming theme in the book is God’s sovereignty, which is excessively downplayed, and man’s freedom, which is almost considered sovereign over God’s will. Jesus says that, in essence, God is submitted to man’s will. The Father is submitted to Jesus and the Spirit as much as either of them are to the Father (145, 122). 1 Corinthians 11, as well as passages in the gospels, clearly contradict this when they say that Jesus was submitted to his Father’s will, but never that the Father was submitted to Jesus.
Evil is not portrayed in the book as being part of God’s plan. “Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes” Sophia says (165). Also, Papa says, “Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes” (185). However, God says in his word that he chooses to use evil to accomplish his purposes. In fact, in Isaiah 45:7, God says, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.” This statement of God’s also contradicts the definition of sin that is given in The Shack, which is “the absence of Good, just as we use the word darkness to describe the absence of Light...Both evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence” (136).
“’To force my will on you,’ Jesus replied, ‘is exactly what love does not do’” (145). God’s sovereignty is not held in bondage by his love. God is free to do as he chooses to do, and of course, because he is love, everything is for the good of his children and for his glory. However, our human definition of love is not substantial enough to judge when something God does is acted in love or not. This is a contradiction of Young’s basic premise in the book: that we cannot judge God. Who is man to say that for God to work everything out according to his will is not love? “I don’t want slaves to my will,” Jesus says in the book, making submission to God as sovereign Lord seem like something completely wrong because it takes away man’s freedom and control of his own life. God is sovereign and is not subject to man’s free choices.
Another theme is the egalitarianism that infiltrates the book, in numerous references to man’s stupidity and woman’s superior ability to have relationship with God, along with the lack of a need for role differences or authority structures. Jesus actually says, “The world, in many ways, would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled” (147-48). According to Young, God doesn’t want men and women to have separate roles, but “to be counterparts, face-to-face equals, each unique and different, distinctive in gender but complementary,” without any structure of roles, especially with any trace of hierarchy (148). Feminism traces its way throughout the conversations in the book.
One of the first things that attracts attention in the book is the fact that God the Father, or Papa, and the Holy Spirit, Sarayu, are both portrayed as women. This is, as explained in the book, because Mack had no good father role to remember, so God portrayed himself as a woman to help soften the lessons he was teaching Mack. Many people threw a fit, myself included, when they read or heard about this element in the book. However, while being clearly feministic in this, the bigger problem is not that God is portrayed as a woman, but that he is portrayed as a human at all. God clearly states in the Bible that no one is to make an image of him, and that no one has seen God at any time. Jesus is the manifestation of God to man and it is idolatry to try to portray God the Father or the Spirit as a human being. Men should refrain from imagining what God is like other than how the Bible clearly shows him to us.
The most dangerous lies are those that are mixed with an element of truth. In an age where people are experimenting with everything they believe and how they can best explain away things that are hard to understand, Young does a superb job of making God much more likeable by talking away his sovereignty over man’s freewill, his just judgment on sin, his sacrifice of his son to pay for the sins of man, and the authority structure he has established, among other things.
Knowing God is not just about the “warm fuzzies” of a nice relationship; our relationship with God has a more complex foundation than that. God did have to punish sin, and he did send his Son to die for man. God does condemn men to hell for their sin, and man is responsible for his response to God. God does set up institutions as well as relationships, although he is more interested in relationship with people than in rules and regulations we impose on ourselves. God is personal, indeed, and far more personal than most people today believe, but he is also greater and more complex than we will ever understand, and he should command our fear and reverence as well as our trust and enjoyment.
Christians should read this book with care, conceding the truth, but constantly comparing it all to the word of God and being ready to refute the error in it.
2 comments:
Interesting review - long, as you said, but engagingly written so it didn't feel long. Good job. ;)
A friend and I were just talking about this book because she started to read it but found it not worth all the bones and put it down halfway through. I never read it because I don't generally waste my time reading fiction, so why would I read a fictional book just because it is controversial?? :)
Great story might say. I like the topic, and the niche. Good work!
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