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Unless you've been vacationing on Mars the past few months,
you've probably had (if not, you probably will have) someone
recommend The Shack by William P Young, Wayne
Jacobsen, and Jake Colsen (a pseudonym for the combined work
of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman) as essential reading. As I
write this (Sept 2008), it is in the Amazon top ten and has a movie deal
in the works. It is extremely popular with students
and members of the Emerging Church. I checked it out
on the recommendation of several people, including a member
of my Sunday School class. Most reviews at Amazon and
elsewhere rate the book at either five or zero stars, with
very few ratings in between. I would have a hard time
assigning a rating because it could go either way depending
on the reader. If the reader is a mature Christian who
can separate fact from fiction and truth from heresy, the
book can teach many valuable lessons. There were,
however many causes for concern. If the reader is not
solidly grounded in the Scriptures, a some portions of this
book can potentially be very dangerous.
General Story
The well written story is about Mackenzie "Mack" Phillips,
whose young daughter was abducted and apparently murdered by
a serial killer during a family vacation trip. Four
years later, with Mack living under the "Great Sadness", he
receives a mysterious note, apparently from God, asking him
to come back to 'The Shack' where his daughter had been
apparently killed. Though skeptical, Mack visits the
scene of the crime (the shack), where he encounters God and
the other two members of the Trinity. During the weekend
visit, Mack has an apparent extended encounter with the
Godhead, who has taken human forms. Each Person of the
Trinity addresses Mack’s issues one by one and he is
permitted to meet with his murdered daughter through what
appears to be a dream by one of his other children. As
the conversations progress, Mack is forced to face some
difficult experiences from his past, beginning with abuse at
the hands of his own father. He is eventually asked to
forgive his daughter’s killer. I’ll stop here in order
to avoid revealing too much of the storyline or the ending
to those who have yet to read it. For the purpose of
these articles, we are much more concerned with the theology
within the story than with the storyline itself.
Why I Chose to Write so many Articles about the Shack
This is the first time that I’ve written about a book that
is categorized as fiction (see the article Is the Shack
Fiction? - coming soon). In fact, I very rarely
read fiction. I chose to read The Shack because
of the folks that recommended it and also due to the various
controversies surrounding it. I even spent several
weeks researching the book’s author, publisher, endorsers,
influences etc, as well as the contents of the book itself.
I then bounced the idea for a series of articles off a few
friends, and received many supporting comments. Along
with the encouragement, I also received a few questionsalong the lines of, "Why
spend so much time writing on one book?" and "Why pick on
The Shack when there’s many other books which contain much
worse heresies?" These were very fair questions.
The first reason I chose The Shack was due to its
popularity, since many of our readers will have read and be
familiar with it, but this alone was not a sufficient
reason. I could have chosen many other best sellers
such as The DaVinci Code, The Secret, any Oprah book
of the month, or many other popular books. We might write a review of some of these, but anyone who
possesses a basic knowledge of the Bible will easily
identify them as anti-Christian literature. Most of
the problems with The Shack however, are much more
subtle, and it also contains some good teaching.
Next, I could have chosen The Shack due to the
controversies. The authors were well aware that
controversies (and even negative reviews) help sell a book,
as Mr Jacobsen has acknowledged on one of his blogs.
Mr Young also stated in a recent interview that they were
aware before publishing that the book would be
controversial, but one of the best things that came out of
writing The Shack was the religious discussions
generated by the book. Despite this statement, the
authors seem less than pleased with those pointing out the
book's many theological and doctrinal errors, accusing these
critics of "pre-conceived religious beliefs" and labeling
them the "doctrine police". On the other hand, I also
found in my investigations that a few of the criticisms
leveled at the book possibly result from a misunderstanding
of the author's intent or from taking a statement out of
context. As we’ll discuss in another article, the
ambiguity of the book leaves many of its statements open to
multiple interpretations.
So, we had several motivations for choosing The Shack
but the two primary reasons were its diversity of doctrines
and its reflection of our modern (and postmodern) society.
The book discusses or alludes to most of the major (and
several minor) doctrines of the Bible. Even though it
is categorized as fiction, the authors clearly intend to
influence its reader’s perception of God and religion.
Yet, while it is apparent that the The Shack is very
effective in persuading many readers, the authors themselves
are clearly influenced by the prevailing philosophies of our
postmodern religious society. Since the book is a
product of this culture and worldview, its viewpoints are
similar to (and often representative of) those appearing in
numerous other modern religious books, including many of the
ones coming out of the Emerging Church. This negates
the objections of our friends regarding spending so much
time exclusively on one book, since while discussing the
Shack’s views on various topics, we’ll also examine how some
of the other religious best sellers deal with these same
issues, and of course, compare each in light of what is
affirmed by the Holy Scriptures.
There are many other reviews available online, so we'll
limit our articles to specific issues that need to be
addressed.
We’ll also attempt to limit our evaluations to facts and
observations, since only God can know and judge the heart.
The Bible however, explicitly commands us to discern (or
judge) between good and evil, truth and error, and right and
wrong. Our goal is not to attack anyone personally,
but to evaluate these issues in the context of God’s Word.
We hope to provide information in these articles that will
allow each of us to make informed deductions about this book
and other similar writings by being discerning about any religious media
short of the Holy Scriptures.
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