Taking Apart The Shack

The Shack

• Who is reading it?

Recently I was advised by numerous Christian friends to read The Shack. The first person who recommended the book to me, a mentor, usually has good advice. She said, “Not everyone agrees with the theology in the book but it’s still good.” Next, someone who normally has astute comments in my Sunday school class recommended the book without reservation. Finally, two relatives recommended it. One said, “You have to read it with an open mind, but you can handle it. I go back and re-read it and see more, like I do the Bible. In fact," she said, "my daughter is in a Bible study that is studying The Shack.”

So I checked out the book and read it carefully twice, taking notes. The problem I had with seriously examining it for truth is that it was not written to be examined. It is, however, being considered a book of spiritual insight about God. Endorsements on the book jacket illustrate this: "This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good….the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian”—Eugene Peterson. “I understood Father, Son and Spirit for the first time”; “theologically enlightening and life impacting”; 'The Shack will change the way you think about God forever.”

The Shack asks readers not to worry about the theology in the book because it is fiction (and because, according to The Shack, theology is not important). But reader comments show that the book’s impact is theological. Because The Shack is the #1 N Y Times bestseller, with over one million copies in print, one might want to learn about the book’s theology. One might also want to consider its less obvious but just as potent and related, philosophical impact. My aim is not to be contentious, to prove anyone wrong, or to discredit anyone’s taste in fiction. My intention is simply to ask readers of this essay whether the God who-really-exists is the god in The Shack. I will expose the underlying world view in the book, the implications of this philosophy, and compare this to the Word of God. I ask readers of this essay to keep in mind one question, “What is true?”

• What is The Shack?

Is it a work of fiction, an inspirational book, a book of Christian theology, a work of religious fiction, or a philosophical/ideological book? If it is a work of fiction, one would want good writing. If it is an inspirational book, one would want to feel encouraged. If it is philosophical in nature, one would expect excellent reasoning and perhaps wisdom. Finally, and most importantly, if it is a book of Christian theology, one must insist that it be scripturally accurate. The Shack is a work of fiction. How good, is somewhat subjective. That does not concern me.

The Shack wants to be an inspirational book: It wants readers to feel comfortable with God and with difficult questions like, “Does everyone go to heaven?” Perhaps some people do feel more comfortable with God and such mysteries as the trinity after reading the book. But it is a short-lived, empty comfort. The five human representations of god and wisdom in The Shack do not represent the unchangeable and Almighty God of the Bible, who always delivers on His promises; they only represent various opinionated people who want to fix everything for the character Mack but actually muddle his thinking. In The Shack page 99, Papa-god/African-woman tells Mack, "Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the first to do it to the uttermost…” Is it encouraging that “God” supposedly wants us to be able to do everything Jesus did, like miracles? I would find this completely discouraging. It would be like God having me watch a virtuoso pianist and then asking for me to imitate the magnificent performance, even though I cannot play the piano. For these reasons The Shack is not inspiring, especially considering that a little girl is abducted and murdered in the book.

But the book is religious fiction since god is a main character. This god claims to be the God, authenticating himself with miracles and giving him (or herself) the authority to tell Mack what to believe. There is no way of getting around the fact that the book is religious fiction even though, ironically, the author disparages religion. But does the religion in the book represent Christian theology? The Shack is a work of religious fiction that is being taken seriously as a theological book, according to the book itself. Not only that, it is philosophical and ideological, even political: Shack-god tells Mack how to think about everything from patriotism to gender issues, not just the “big questions.” The fact that The Shack is fiction becomes a loophole for the book: Instantly the truth of its theology becomes irrelevant. First, readers get sucked into the fictional story through its sensational plot, especially through the sympathy they feel for Mack, and, perhaps by their wishful thinking about God. Readers identify with Mack’s doubts about the Bible, God, and the church after reading about Mack’s tragedy and pain. But then, God rewards Mack’s lack of faith by sending him a miraculous letter and granting him private miracles during a magical weekend in a wonderful cabin--things God would not do.

It is possible to have a fictional story with a Christian world view and with a god who behaves in keeping with the God of the Bible. But this would be a monumental task for an excellent writer. Some may defend The Shack with Christian fiction like C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books. This is not a valid defense: Lewis said that he did not write these books to be taken as Christian allegories. Even so, nothing in the parallel universe of his books contradicts a Christian world view. For example, Aslan the King of Beasts is King of Narnia. Aslan is to be feared as well as loved, as God is. The White Witch is consistent with the devil in the Bible. The Narnia books are monumental works by an excellent writer. In contrast to Aslan, Shack-god does not inspire reverential fear or worship. There is no devil and his minions in The Shack or spiritual warfare.

• What is the plot?

When Mack walks through an ice storm to check the mail he finds a typewritten invitation from god to meet at the shack where Mack’s daughter was murdered. Then Mack slips and hits his head. He remembers the events of four years earlier when his youngest daughter was abducted and murdered. Mack decides to believe that God wrote him the letter because he is disillusioned with traditional avenues to God, namely the confining Bible and the church that “does not work.” He drives to the shack, where spring suddenly arrives and the shack turns into a “postcard perfect” cabin. Mack is greeted by Papa - an effusive black woman, and by Sarayu - an elusive Asian, and finally by Jesus, “a Middle Eastern man.” Mack hangs out with the three anthropomorphic gods who tell him about themselves and about life, while doing things with him like walking on water and gardening. He also meets a Hispanic woman, the personification of wisdom, who plays mind games with him to make him stop judging god. After Mack concedes to her, he is allowed to see his long-lost daughter playing with his other children, who also experience the meeting but in their own dreams. His beloved daughter communicates to him through a waterfall. He is then able to leave his depression behind. Mack visits more with the god personifications and “Jesus”, sharing home-cooked meals with them. One morning a new personification of Papa-god wakes Mack. Now Papa-god is a man with a pony tail. The new papa-god locates the body of Mack’s murdered daughter while asking Mack to forgive the murderer. Mack carries the body back to the cabin where they have a funeral, of sorts. Then Mack decides to leave. Driving home, a car runs a red light and hits Mack, landing him in the hospital. Regaining consciousness after a few days, Mack talks to his wife about his experiences, to his older daughter and his friend Willy, the narrator of the novel. After Mack’s release from the hospital he leads police to his daughter’s body. Based on evidence there, they are able to apprehend the perpetrator, a serial killer. The narrator says in the Afterword that Mack is a changed man and that he hopes to visit the murderer in prison.

The plot is sensational, precious, tragic and incredible. Mack’s young daughter disappears when Mack is in the process of saving two of his other children from drowning. But after this heroic moment Mack is horrified to discover that his youngest daughter has inexplicably disappeared from the spot where she was coloring moments earlier. What are the odds of that? This preys on parents' worst fears. Of course, I know it is a bestseller and that bestsellers are often incredible to hook readers. But this tragedy can also hook unsuspecting readers into wanting happier moments in the book to be credible, namely, that God leaves Mack a note in his mailbox, meets him at the shack, and has long face-to-face talks with Mack.

The Underlying Philosophy

• Postmodernism, Liberalism and Deconstructionism

As The Shack begins, Mack finds a mysterious letter in his mailbox and then slips, injuring his head on the ice. In similar fashion, advocates of The Shack have slipped and hit their heads on the ice of Postmodernism, Liberal Christianity, and Deconstructionism. They follow The Shack’s feelings/experience approach, unwittingly agreeing that neither the Bible, nor the church can be relied on for the truth. The following are technical descriptions of philosophical movements which may interest only some readers:

Postmodernism – The Zondervan Handbook of Christian Beliefs page 52, “The idea of divine revelation is seen as inconsistent with postmodernism’s emphasis on the individual’s right to believe as she pleases. Christianity’s traditional emphasis on truth-telling exists in an uneasy relationship with this more amorphous, individualist approach to the meaning of life.”

Liberal Protestantism –Christian Theology by Alister McGrath page 104 “Liberalism [has] an inalienable openness to the views of others (but) carrying with it hostility toward traditional Christian doctrines, often includes denial of the uniqueness of Christ, (and) places considerable weight upon the notion of a universal human religious experience. Yet this vague and ill-defined notion, incapable of being examined, appears to be uncritically driven by a secular agenda. Liberalism is ready to surrender distinctive Christian doctrines in an effort to become acceptable to contemporary culture.

Deconstructionism - Philosophy Made Simple page 313-314 “The search for ultimate meaning that has been the central feature of Western philosophy since its beginnings is no longer viable…What one can do now is “deconstruct” philosophy (and literature, language, psychology) in the skeptical rejection of a philosophical claim…A radical relativism seems to emerge from this process. In this process, does one find a right or true meaning? Right or true for whom?”

As the theologian N. T. Wright has noted in Simply Christian, "the implicit religion of many today is to discover who they really are." Reinventing "God" and deconstructing "traditional" values are part of the discovery process.

The Shack, pages 65-67, describes the disillusionment that leads Mack to be open to new religious experiences. "Mack could not escape the desperate possibility that the note just might be from God after all, even if the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerner's access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God to be in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges? ...Sunday prayers and hymns weren't cutting it anymore, if they ever really had. There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. Cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of the people he knew... that didn't seem to make any real difference or affect any real changes.” Not only are these Mack’s views but also the author’s views, as becomes clear with a careful reading of the book. Young wants us to empathize with Mack's disillusionment in traditionally-accepted ways of approaching God (and comfort) after his horrific loss. Because Mack apparently needs an expanded revelation from God, he is primed to believe that the typewritten note in his mailbox really is from God Himself.

“In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course.” The first glaring flaw in this sentence hinges on the word overt which, according to Miriam Webster’s, means open to view. Although Jesus bodily ascended into heaven after His resurrection, the Trinity is still here, being omnipresent. Jesus has left us with His word, His church and His comforting Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit communicates to Christians constantly by illuminating His word and by changing hearts—talking to believers (in a sense), praying for them, empowering them and comforting them. He could have comforted a character like Mack, during his grieving (John 14: 15). Also, Romans 8:26 reads, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness…the Spirit intercedes for us.” The Holy Spirit’s work is “overt” because we can see its effects (John 3:8). Perhaps the author really wanted to write, “God stopped physically-tangible and physically-audible communication with moderns (as in a type-written letter or physical gods who visit you face-to-face).”

The second flaw is that Mack says he had learned in seminary “God prefers to have people only listen to and follow sacred Scripture.” This leaves Mack with questions to answer: Does God prefer to have people listen to and follow sacred Scripture? After all, he has just said Scripture is “sacred.” And if God does in fact prefer people to listen and obey His word, is Mack choosing instead not to listen and not to obey? The third flaw is that God Himself does not use the word prefer. He is rather known for His commands not suggestions. Fourth, Mack thinks “sacred Scripture (should be?) properly interpreted, of course.” But, ironically, proper interpretation is not a given in The Shack. Does the writer intend for readers to take the whole idea of "properly interpreting sacred scripture" ironically?

Next we read, “Nobody wanted God to be in a box, just in a book.” This is a misunderstanding of books, especially the Bible: The Bible tells us essentially what we need to know about God, leaving God’s mysteries as such. Regarding the incomprehensible God, the prophet Isaiah wrote in verses 55:8-9, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,” declares the Lord. The Bible is not a book, “a box” or a religious system that attempts to explain everything, as Mack supposes. God is The Truth. He is not “contained” in the Bible but revealed in the Bible and in the historical Word, Jesus Christ. The way Mack is thinking, it sounds as if God is trapped in the Good Book like a genie in a bottle! Besides this, the “book” is no ordinary book. “The Word of God is living, powerful and active” Hebrews 4:12b.

Next, Mack thinks, "It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia." Again, the author of The Shack does not make sense: Who are these “Proper Authorities and Intellects” that Mack imagines? This is the classic logical fallacy of building up a straw man to knock it down. The Shack says, “Direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients.” In reality, only Moses and a few prophets communicated directly with God. Most of the so-called “ancients” were terrified of God. They had seen what He could do and were only too happy to have Moses be their mediator. (Read the Book of Numbers.) The good news of the New Testament was that Jesus ushered in the kingdom by becoming the mediator between God and man and then by giving Christians the Spirit to understand God’s word. Young uses the phrase “the ancients and uncivilized” but the ancients were not uncivilized. The philosophical Greeks figured out that the earth circles the sun. And is it really true that “Westerners’ access to God (is) mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia”? Any literate Westerner is free to open a Bible any time and to understand it. Who is this intelligentsia? After all this, Mack expresses that He feels church is useless and that he is “sick of God and God's religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs.” Mack does not question whether he may need to look for a better church. He is in a depressed, angry mood and blames God for what he does not like about his church. He equates any church with a “little religious social club” undermining the Biblical function of church for a believer: Colossians 1:18 “He is the head of the body, the church…” Ephesians 3:10-11b “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be known…according to his eternal purpose.”

• What is religion?

The Shack page198 Shack-god says, “Religion is about having the right answers and some of their answers are right,” Mack says, “This weekend, sharing life with you has been far more illuminating than any of those answers.” The word religion is being used in a meaningless way, since it is all inclusive, as if all religions mean the same thing. Mack then echoes the idea that religious experiences are to be preferred to right answers, which we have seen throughout the book. But religion is much more than having right answers. Let me rephrase that: Christianity is so much more than having the right answers. It is about coming into a personal relationship with a real God and then glorifying him with your life. Shack-god says religion is simply about right answers but that only some of the answers are right. If this is true, then it follows that some answers are not right, i. e., wrong. This is not in keeping with the postmodern view which excludes the idea of an objective right and wrong. So which of the Shack-god answers are wrong?

• What is real?

On page 172 Jesus asks Mack a classic philosophical question, “Would all this be any less ‘real’ if it were inside a dream?” Shack-Jesus asks Mack to doubt the usual meaning of the word real. Are we to think that dreams are as real as waking moments? Thankfully, the historical Jesus would never have asked such a question. The Greek skeptics of Jesus’ time would have been likely to ask this sort of question (skepticism being the view that doubts whether any of our beliefs can be supported by adequate evidence). This idea is simply more deconstructionism. Philosophy Made Simple pages 182 and 314 “the super-radical skepticism about human communication...Within the postmodern view, the importance attached to the inner world of human experience calls into question the need for or possibility of objective truth.”

• How open-minded can a true Christian be?

The Shack page 181 “Jesus” says, “Mack…Institutions, systems, ideologies…You will grow in freedom to be inside or outside and among them. Together you and I can be in and not of them.” This is an allusion to, and misinterpretation of, the historical Jesus’ words. When he said that his followers were to be in and not of the world as He is (John 17:6-19), Jesus was referring to the world’s system, controlled by Satan. He was not referring to “systems” as in “institutions” or “ideologies”, which are not systems anyway. This advice to be capriciously inclusive toward all systems is consistent with the syncretism (the combination of different forms of belief or practice) that permeates the book.

• Do emotions help one see clearly?

The Shack, page 197 Sarayu says, “The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly,” This is a non sequitur: The second statement does not follow from the first. Truth and emotions are combined. A true statement would be, “The more you live in the truth, the more the truth will help you see clearly.” But even this is not quite right. It is better to say, “The more you allow the truth to help you see clearly, the more you can live in the truth.”

From The Quotable Lewis page 208 “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” I have quoted heavily from C. S. Lewis in this essay to contrast his appeals to reason and to the authority of the Bible with The Shack’s emotional appeal. The Shack is certainly an emotive book and Mack is a different kind of guy. He and his men friends hug each other and say they love each other. God, two women and one man, kiss each other on the lips and sometimes give foot massages. Maybe this is part of the book’s appeal, who knows? Even though at one point the Shack-god opposes “touchy-feely,” the book is, ironically, just that. Instead of the truth about God, we see a revision of “truth” altogether: The narrator in the epilogue says, “Mack’s story…touched (me) deeply…Do I think that it’s true? I want all of it to be true. Perhaps if some of it is not actually true in one sense, it is still true nonetheless—if you know what I mean.” And from page 67, "There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational." (In this statement "absolutely irrational" is a contradiction of terms because absolutes and irrationality do not mix.)

• Who is selling out and has an agenda?

On page 181 Mack muses about his friends: “He knew they loved Jesus, but were also sold out to religious activity and patriotism.” This is a loaded statement, biased by the words sold out. The implication is that a loving Jesus excludes being religiously active or patriotic. If the author simply meant “A person needs to love Jesus so much that his or her religious activities and patriotic fervor pale in comparison,” then I would have to agree with the point, but this is not comparison by degrees. I also do not see why loving Jesus, being religiously active, and being patriotic cannot, under the right circumstances, go together. I think this is a not-so-subtle attempt to be politically correct, fashionably unpatriotic. On pages 181-2 Jesus tells Mack, “The people who know me are the ones who are free to live and love without any agenda,” and Mack asks, “Is that what it means to be a Christian?”

Here Middle Eastern man-"Jesus" says that what characterizes those who know him is a lack of agenda. The word agenda is a vague word, not found in the Bible. What the Bible does say characterizes believers' knowledge is obedience: I John 2:4 "Whoever says 'I know Him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him."

Jesus then says, “Who said anything about being a Christian? Those who love me come from every system that exists…I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.” The author stops just short of admitting he is a universalist by using the past tense, "were": I have followers who were murderers and many who were self righteous.” He is not exactly saying that everyone is going to heaven but he isn’t exactly not saying that either. Of course anyone can leave a pagan religion and become a Christian but that entails first leaving the pagan religion. I think the author of The Shack is too open-minded for that. Did Christ want people to “be Christians”? Again we have The Shack deconstructing the language of Christianity by revising what it means to be a Christian. Although, technically, the word Christian was not used in the New Testament, it is interchangeable with followers of Christ, as opposed to, say, followers of Joseph Smith. Here is another example of obscuring what it means to “be Christian”: When Missy asks her father, Mack, “Is the Great Spirit another name for God—you know, Jesus?” on page 31, Mack answers her: “I would suppose so. It’s a good name for God because he is a Spirit and he is Great.” If Mack were a true believer, he would not have missed a golden opportunity to explain, in simple terms, how Christian faith differs from this Native American belief system. But instead the author uses the opportunity for the kind of tolerance that blurs what it means to believe in Christ. This is a perfect example of world view confusion. In Scripture Twisting, page 26, James Sire says, “World view confusion occurs whenever a reader of Scripture fails to interpret the Bible within the intellectual and broadly cultural framework of the Bible itself and uses instead a foreign frame of reference…In other words, the interpreter views it from a different standpoint…sometimes reversing the meaning.”

Who is Jesus in The Shack?

On page 99 of The Shack Papa-god/African-woman tells Mack, "Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the first to do it to the uttermost--the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence.” Then Mack asks the woman/Papa-God, “So, when he healed the blind?” And Papa-Woman-God answers, “He did so as a dependent, limited human being, trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.” Then we are told, “This came as a shock to Mack's religious system.”

I am going to turn to The Handbook of Christian Belief pages 83 and 144, because I am not as easy as Mack to be shocked out of my "religious" system by a vivid imagination: “However hard it may be to imagine it, each person of the Godhead is fully divine in and by himself, and it is in the fullness of that divinity that they each contribute to that eternal fellowship which Christians call the Trinity of persons. Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…” Philippians 2.6; God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is...the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things Hebrews. 1:2-3; He is the image of the invisible God...All things were created by him and for him...For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him Colossians 1:15-19.

The statement “Jesus as a human being had no power within himself to heal” is nonsense. Jesus was never simply “Jesus as a human being”. He was always fully God and fully man at the same time. Also, Jesus was never “Jesus…within himself.” He was always one of the Trinity. Young removes the paradoxes of the Trinity and of the Incarnation to dumb down Christian theology into something unbiblical. He deconstructs Jesus into someone less than fully God, not part of the Trinity as revealed in the Bible. Jesus always acted in concert with his Father and with the Spirit, as they do with him, but He did not call on His Father for the power He already had. Jesus restrained His omnipotence to act only in accordance with His Father’s will, which was an act of the greatest submission. He did experience being human but with all of the divine attributes.

Who is God in The Shack?

• Does gender matter?

God the Father appears to Mack as (primarily) an African woman and God the Spirit, an Asian woman. (Why God would not appear in the form of his chosen people, but as African-American and Asian stereotypes is a different, less important, question.) The Quotable Lewis page 248, “God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable, or if tolerable, it is an argument not in favor of Christian priestesses but against Christianity.”

We find a comparison of God’s compassionate nature with its closest human equivalent, a mother’s love and protection, in Jesus’ words, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…” Matthew 23:37. But this passage and others like it are merely illustrations. They do not change the necessity or logic of being faithful to God’s revelations of Himself. The Shack absurdly called the African woman “Papa”, as if Papa has no masculine meaning.

• Does it matter that Father and Spirit take physical forms?

The personalities of the Shack-gods are revealed through their corporeal forms and through their words and actions. The Shack portrays this trinity as a hip African woman Papa-god who briefly morphs into a guy with a pony tail; Sarayu, an elusive Asian woman; and Jesus, a Middle-eastern man. Contrast this trinity with the Bible, in which Christ has revealed the Father." Also, John 4:23 "God (the Father) is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Regarding the third person of the Trinity, Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father,” John 15:26. Nowhere in the Bible does God or the Spirit appear in bodily form. Certain angel messengers in the Old Testament could have been the pre-incarnate Christ, but even this is not clear.

Deuteronomy 4:24 says “You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman…for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” The positive meaning of the second commandment is that mental images of God, as well as physical, are forbidden. In Deut. 4 Moses expounds the prohibition of images. The Hebrews saw no visible representation of God, but God spoke to them. They knew God through His words which they were to obey. All man-made images, molten or mental are against God’s Holy Word. Jesus the Son of God can be known in His resurrected bodily form but not God the Father or God the Spirit (paraphrased from Knowing God by J. I. Packer).

• Would God leave a letter in mailbox?

It is impossible to prove a negative. I do not think God would now leave a letter in a mailbox, but I can't prove this. If The Shack claimed to be nonfiction, one could not prove that God did not leave the letter in the mailbox unless one could prove that a person left it. But the burden of proof is on whoever makes a claim. The author, in other words, would have to prove that God did, in fact, leave the letter there without human means. This would be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The God I know doesn't leave letters in mailboxes. It does not sound like something he would do. He does need to type and if He did, since He is all-wise, would use a word processor. The writing is not His style. Seriously, God has already left all the books and letters He wanted to give us.

• Is God Wrathful?

Does He punish sin? In The Shack page 119, Mack asks Papa-god why he doesn’t see “God’s wrath” in her. She says, “I’m not asking you to believe anything, but I will tell you that you’re going to find this day a lot easier if you simply accept what is instead of trying to fit it into your preconceived notions.” Is it surprising that Mack doesn’t see righteous-indignation in this African woman-god who is like a hip grandmother cooking and swaying to cool music? Plus, there has been no mention of sin. The Quotable Lewis page 249 “When we merely say that we are bad, the “wrath” of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness.”

The Shack page 120 Mack asks, “Don’t you enjoy punishing those who disappoint you?” This is a loaded question because it links punishment with sadistic enjoyment, and uses the word disappoint. A fair question would be, “Don’t you punish those who deserve it?” Papa-god says, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment.” But Romans 1:18 reads, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” The Problem of Pain by Lewis page 91 “Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in the deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself. They do not see that by so doing they render all punishment unjust.” The Quotable Lewis page 426 “If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned.” God does punish sin because His just nature requires it. The first Biblical example is in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, from which the first couple was banished. The last example is in the book of the Revelation. There are countless examples in between. God is always more than we can imagine Him. He is furious at evil, but just in His retribution, while at the same time always unfathomably loving and merciful. This is a paradox, or mystery.

Does God Hate Hierarchy and Who Needs It?

The Shack pages 122-124 Shack-god says she (or he) is against hierarchy. "Hierarchy would make no sense among us…Once you have a hierarchy...you end up with a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it….Authority...is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want...You think that God must relate inside a hierarchy like you do, but we do not." It is interesting to me that the author now appeals to reason, or "sense" when he discredits reason elsewhere. Shack-god claims that hierarchical systems destroy relationship; that authority equals abuse of power; and that the Trinity is not a hierarchy.

• Does hierarchy destroy relationship and equal abuse of power?

Citing one of many examples, many parents discipline their children in love. Are these parents destroying their relationship with their children? On the contrary, parents who never discipline their children probably do not care about doing what is best for them. Likewise God disciplines His children (Hebrews 12:6).

Does hierarchy equal abuse? Without the hierarchy of governmental authority, the world would be a place of anarchy. Even a bad government is better than no government at all. In reality, governmental authority often prevents the abuse of power, in this regard: Without the governmental hierarchy, the wealthy and powerful could easily abuse the poor and powerless. God uses governments to maintain justice and order. Peter 2.13-14 "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king or to governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right." Christ advocates servant relationships and the law of love but these do not negate hierarchy. Hierarchy remains within the context that we are all God’s subjects and answer to Him for how we treat each other. Ephesians 5:24, 25 “As the church submits to Christ, so also wives submit to their husbands…Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

• Is the Trinity a hierarchy?

From The Handbook of Christian Beliefs pages 88-9 "Consider the Son as he stands in relation to the Father. Nowadays, any suggestion of hierarchy or subordination is liable to elicit a strong reaction...from those who fear that any compromise on the principle of divine equality among the persons of the Godhead may lead to a denial of equality in human relationships, which they see as being modeled on the inner life of God. In answer to this, we can say that Father and Son imply each other's existence, since the names would otherwise be meaningless...We must also say that there is an inner logic in the Father-Son relationship which makes it appropriate for the latter to do the will of the former, rather than the other way round. Why it should be like this is a mystery, but one thing we do know is that the submission of the Son is voluntary, which is why the word 'submission' must be preferred to subordination or subjection, both of which imply some form of coercion. This is made clear in Philippians 2:5-11, where the apostle Paul tells us that the Son humbled himself and took on the role of a servant, in order to accomplish the work of our salvation. Only someone secure in his relationship of equality with the Father would do this voluntarily, and so by what may appear to some as a paradox, it is precisely in the Son's abasement that his true glory as the Father's equal is revealed."

• Does God submit to mankind?

On page 145, when Jesus and Mack go out walking on water together, Jesus deconstructs submission for Mack: “We (god) are submitted to you in the same way you are submitted to us.” Jesus, as we know Him from the Bible, did not do miracles gratuitously. More glaring, even common sense will tell you that God cannot submit to people in the same way people submit to God, considering the divine attributes which make Him the Supreme Being, including his omniscience and omnipotence. This de-elevates the transcendent God, and elevates man to a divine position. The Shack page 224 and 227 Papa-god says, “Mack, for you to forgive this man is for you to release him to me and allow me to redeem him...give him over to me so that my love will burn from his life every vestige of corruption.” I hope by this point that an alarm is going off in the minds of readers of this essay when they see another revision of biblical orthodoxy: To forgive in the Bible does not mean to allow God to redeem someone, as Papa-god says. The word that jumped off the page for me was allow. I am sure I have never allowed God to do anything. We don’t have that kind of relationship since I am merely human.

• Is God Sovereign?

On page 164, Sophia (Wisdom), says, “Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be”—Nothing? Is there really not one thing within God’s desire or will? The use of the word desire suggests that the author is talking about more than the final redemption of creation. Philippians 2:13 states that “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Christ triumphed over sin and death through the cross. Now the Holy Spirit is sanctifying believers. These are just two examples of things as they should be.

• Does God adopt everyone as sons and reconcile the whole world?

Papa-god says about the murderer, “He too is my son. I want to redeem him.” God the Father in the Bible does not call people his sons simply because He created them but only if and after He redeems them. The unredeemed He calls “the world.” 1 John 3:1 “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.” Jesus called some people sons of their father the devil (John 8:42-47). Serial killers of children would fit into this category. The Bible also talks about people who have hardened themselves by sin. They become less and less likely to be redeemed. Their consciences and hearts become dulled and hard. (Ephesians 4:18). Hardened criminals fall into this category as well. God wants to redeem the whole world, but he doesn’t. In The Problem of Pain, pages 119-130, Lewis says, “The Divine labor to redeem the world cannot be certain of succeeding as regards every individual soul. Some will not be redeemed. (This) has the full support of Scripture. Christianity, true, as always, to the complexity of the real, presents us with a God so full of mercy that he dies…yet seems unwilling or even unable to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power. Forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness. The damned enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded. In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven.”

• Does God reconcile the whole world?

In The Shack, pages 183-192, Papa-god declares, “Through his (Jesus’) death and resurrection I am now fully reconciled to the world,” Then Mack asks, “You mean those who believe in you, right?” But God emphasizes, “The whole world, Mack. All I am telling you is that reconciliation is a two-way street.” Perhaps in keeping with including Buddhists in those who come to Christ, is this supposed to be a koan (a Buddhist paradox used to abandon reason to gain enlightenment)? What is the sound of one hand clapping? The world is fully reconciled to God but it is a two-way street. Obviously these two statements are contradictory. While the Bible tells us that God through Christ initiates reconciliation, it also tells us that some people will not be reconciled to God. Man, after all, has a free will. How this works is debated within various Protestant denominations and remains a mystery. The Quotable Lewis page 49 “I think we must attack wherever we meet it the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.”

What is missing from the Shack?

• The Truth about God

God inspires reverential fear and worship.

In stark contrast, The Shack-gods are chums who would put you up in a cabin, cook for you, do your laundry, and help you discover a body if you need that. The Quotable Lewis page 55 about Aslan: “Is he quite safe,” Susan asks Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. “I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” “Then he isn’t safe?” asked Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “’Course he isn’t safe but he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.” In Soul Survivor, page 214, Philip Yancey says “How can we approach a God we fear? Matthew’s story of the women who discover the empty tomb after Jesus’ resurrection tells they hurried away from the scene with ‘fear and great joy.’” We can approach God, whose name we hallow, through Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit, according to His word, but always as Lord. God’s majesty and greatness is also missing. The Bible emphasizes these. In the Wizard of Oz, the seekers find the little man behind the curtain to be all that's really behind "the great and powerful wizard of Oz." In the Shack we find some eccentric pals to be all that's behind the curtain of the great and powerful God as portrayed in the Bible. While it's true that Jesus Christ made God accessible to man, He, Jesus, also made extravagant claims about himself and proved them to be true through signs and miracles. And while Christ inspired love in his disciples, they also knew him as Lord.

The true God calls diligent seekers (Proverbs 8:17).

In Matthew 7:8 Jesus says to "ask..seek...knock..." that He may reward our diligence. Shack-god, on the other hand, pampers Mack by trying to explain everything to him and give him everything he thinks he needs right then. God does not give us what we want but what we need; and He gives more to those who ask(James 4:2-3).

God is beyond imaginings and hidden from some.

Because the world does not accept God's Word in the Person of Christ, God keeps his mysteries from those who scorn them (Matthew 7:6). God being God cannot be comprehended: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord?” Romans 11:33. God is hidden from the world: "Your sins have hidden his face from you," Isaiah 59:2. The gospel of Christ is a mystery long-hidden but revealed in Christ (Romans 16:25).

Christ Himself spoke in riddles as parables. The Handbook of Christian Beliefs page 111: "Jesus indicates that parables are capable of concealing truth, as much as revealing it" (Luke 8:10). Another example of when Jesus could be difficult to understand was his saying they would drink his blood and eat his flesh. It takes spiritual understanding, enlightenment by the Holy Spirit, to understand spiritual things. So one could ask, “Based on what we know about how God operates in history/in the Bible, is it probable that this God would be like Shack-god?

In Soul Survivor, page 214 and 252, Yancey quotes Frederick Buechner: “God gives us only momentary glimpses into a mystery of such depth, power, and beauty that if we were to see it head on, in any other way, other than in glimpses, I suspect we would be annihilated. Page 258, God asks us to “Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10.

God is both perfectly just and merciful.

That God is perfectly just and merciful is a paradoxical truth that helps answer the problem of pain, an especially difficult question for which the Bible gives no easy answers. This problem is especially relevant to a book about a father grieving for his murdered child but it is not properly addressed in the Shack. In Soul Survivor, page 72, Yancey says “When Job cried to God about out of his anguish, God gave him a moving speech about nature. God gave no direct answer, only this challenge: If I, as Creator, have produced such a marvelous world as this can you trust me with those areas you cannot comprehend?” God is completely just, yet completely merciful.

The Shack divides the God's justice from God's mercy because this is a challenging paradox, and because the notion of punishing sin is unpopular. All people have an innate sense of justice, being made in God’s image. At the same time, we see evil around us and sin not yet punished. The Bible gives no easy answers. God does promise that He will punish sin that is not atoned for by Christ, that He will reward righteousness, that He will walk with us through our pain and He always keeps His promises.

The problem of pain is especially relevant to a book about a father grieving for his murdered child but it is not properly addressed in The Shack. God asks us to have faith, to believe that He is always both just and merciful. Yet Sophia in The Shack says, “Jesus chose the way of the cross…Would you instead prefer he’d chosen justice for everyone?” Sophia undermines the meaning of the cross, which is God’s supreme demonstration of both His mercy and His justice.

Compare this theology with Romans 3:23-26 “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forebearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.”

• The Truth about the Devil, Sin and Guilt, and Evil

The Devil

In the Biblical worldview, the devil (who really exists) is the prince of the world (John 12:31), the spirit of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2), the father of lies (John 8:44) and the deceiver (Revelation 12:9). Satan plays a vital role in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. Mentioning the devil would have been especially appropriate in a book about the murder of a child.

Sin

Shack-god talks much about free will, a biblical concept, but not about sin and its enslavement. Romans 6:16 “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone…you are slaves…whether you are slaves to sin which leads to death, or to obedience which leads to righteousness?” Zondervan Handbook of Christian Beliefs pages 170-171 says, “Although the word ‘sin’ is often regarded as equivalent to ‘evil’, it has a quite distinct meaning. It refers to the broken relationship between humanity and God, which affects every aspect of human relationships…Sin is about guilt—moral disorder in the face of a holy and righteous God. It needs to be forgiven and purged, in order that our relationship with God might be renewed. In the second place, it is about being infected with a disease that we are unable to cure…Christ alone is able to heal humanity from sin.”

Evil

The Shack page 136 Sarayu, the holy-spirit type says, “Evil is a word we use to describe the absence of good.” No, evil is a word we use to describe evil. Evil is not simply the absence of good, just as good is not the absence of evil. A real Mack would know this better than anyone, in light of his daughter’s murder. In Zondervan Handbook of Christian Beliefs page 328 "(Evil is) harm which comes to human beings, turning us away from God and from goodness."

Conclusion

The Bible is the Christian source of Truth. The Holy Spirit inspired the text and uses it to transform true believers. I hope that Christians will return to the Bible and, secondarily, to books which reflect a Christian worldview for their understanding of God. I also hope that if The Shack is used in connection with a Bible study that it will be used with some kind of guide, like this essay, to help clarify what is true and what is not, based on the authority of the Bible, and not mere human opinion. We cannot imagine our way to God. We have God’s own revelation of Himself and His world. God wants us to know Him but not to go beyond what he has told us about himself (1 Corinthians 1:21) like the world does in its wisdom. "There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death" (Proverbs 16:25).

Many people recommended The Shack to me, so I read it. In this essay I have tried not only to dissuade others from reading the book but also to persuade them to re-affirm the Bible. There are some Biblical-sounding concepts mixed in with the rest of Shack-god’s dialogue but this only makes the book insidious: We first read that the Bible cannot be counted on as our authority; but then we see Biblical ideas being mixed in at random with new ideas, as if the Biblical words still mean something. But The Shack-god’s words sink into a soup of psychology, value judgments and re-definitions. This strange soup, like something Papa-African-god might literally cook up, reflects the popular postmodern attitude. It mixes in some Biblical truths to make it palatable and easy for some people to swallow. This is the Last Supper for open-minded relativists; but this communion—“what is true or right for you may not be true or right for me”—brings a fog. In the book Mack sometimes wonders what new food he has just eaten. The book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ comes with a warning of plagues, chapter 22:18 and 19 "to anyone who adds to or takes away from any words of this prophecy."

Having said all this, I will try to remember in any discussion about The Shack, that many who have been sucked into the book are sincerely mistaken about it. Perhaps sympathy for a man whose daughter is murdered over-rides these people’s thought processes and better judgment. But in the end, truth matters and The Shack is not truth.

2 Corinthians 10:4-7 “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ…You are looking only on the surface of things.”