The Shack

As I mentioned yesterday, I read a new book called The Shack during our vacation this past weekend. My friend Jason (who doesn't have a blog but should) gave it to me to read so we could discuss it. The book is quickly becoming very popular - especially among people who have experienced some kind of tragedy in their life.

The Shack is a novel about a man whose daughter is killed in a heinous way. During the grieving process, the man receives a letter telling him to meet "Papa" at the shack where the only evidence of his daughter's brutal murder is found. He shows up to meet God (a large black woman named Papa), Jesus (who is described like a middle-eastern lumberjack and gets to keep His name), and the Holy Spirit (personified as a beautiful Asian woman named Saraya). That will make (and probably should make) you pretty nervous at the outset, though the personifications serve a purpose in the story, and don't come across as blasphemously as they may seem.

The book is a fiction book, though it is very clear throughout that the author intended to use it to teach Truth about God, the problem of evil, and heaven. Unfortunately, because the book is a novel, the author doesn't make it clear exactly which pieces of the story are artistic license, which are biblically founded Truths about God, and which are speculation on the author's part. That in and of itself makes this a very difficult book to recommend to anyone - especially those seeking comfort in the character of God.

The book goes from modalism (an ancient heresy that pictures God showing up in 3 different "modes" or "forms") to decent Trinitarian theology in a page and a half, which was extremely confusing as a reader. It also presented a view of a God who limits Himself with regard to the way He relates to the world to the point that He is presented as not having a plan that includes the existence of evil at all.

The Shack also presented the idea of judgment as something that is not carried out by God, but by Wisdom (a character presented as separate from God). In fact, when the main character returns to God having been judged, God is excited that Wisdom "got through" to the main character. This portrayal of God as "good cop" and Wisdom as "bad cop" may have been the most troubling portion of the book to me.

The picture of heaven is a mix between biblical heaven, Buddhism, and New Age Mysticism. The author describes characters in heaven as having auras that translate colors between each other based on the intimacy of their relationship. Sound weird? I thought so too.

There are some good moments in the book. The gospel is absolutely clear in one section (though muddied up later), and a section in which the author demonstrates the need for humanity to draw near to God while dealing with the problem of evil. There's a very compelling and helpful illustration using poison ivy in a garden, which is only poisonous when the character is separate from God.

I can certainly see how The Shack would be comforting to a person dealing with the loss of a loved one, or significant pain in their life. However, in my opinion it contains an extremely dangerous mixture of Truth and fiction in such a way that the two aren't distinguished. The reader with little Biblical literacy will find much in the story that they recognize from the Bible. What they may not recognize are the things that are artistic license, speculation, and even some outright heresy.

If you choose to read The Shack, please be extremely careful. To steal and tweak one of the author's own illustrations, there are some gorgeous flowers in the book... but there's also some poison ivy. Make sure you know which is which.