THINKING BIBLICALLY ABOUT THE SHACK

• First, a brief summary of The Shack’s contents.  It is a work of fiction, told by a man named Willie.  Willie’s friend, Mackenzie Phillips (Mack), has had a difficult life in some ways.  He had an alcoholic, brutally abusive father.  This left him bitter and angry.  The experience with his father caused him also to be bitter toward God, toward ministry in general and toward the Bible in particular.  To heighten his personal tragedy, while spending time with his children in the woods of the US northwest, his daughter, Missy, was kidnapped and brutally murdered in a mountain shack.  Mack sinks into despair and a degree of hopelessness.  Although his life does go on and although he has a loving, Christ-centered wife named Nan, Mack is not really interested in spiritual things and certainly not in any kind of personal relationship with the living God.  Then one day he gets a letter in his mailbox from “Papa,” a name Nan had used for God.  At first he ignores the note, but he cannot let go of it.  It is an invitation to come to the shack where Missy was killed.  Reluctantly, yet with insatiable curiosity, Mack goes to the shack.  He sees the blood-stained floor of the cabin where Missy was killed.  And then he meets God.  In the novel, Young paints, with word-pictures, a bizarre picture of God.  It is God as Trinity:  A large African woman (“Papa”=the Father), a Jewish carpenter (=the Son, Jesus Christ) and a small Asian woman called Sarayu (=the Holy Spirit).  [Sarayu is a vital river in the Rig-Veda, an important text of ancient Hinduism.]  In one chapter, Mack also meets and talks with Sophia, not another member of the godhead, but the personification of wisdom, as apparently one finds in the book of Proverbs.  Throughout the rest of the novel, Mack is led by the members of the Trinity (and Sophia) through a mystical and mythical journey.  Mack confronts his anger, his bitterness, his lack of trust, his need to forgive (his father and Missy’s killer), and his own inadequacies—only to discover and understand the true meaning of love, forgiveness, trust, and especially freedom.   Mack seems now to understand and returns to Nan and his other children, even comforting one of his daughters, Katie, who blames herself for Missy being kidnapped and killed.  Mack makes certain she feels no guilt or responsibility.  He goes on with his life now, renewed, refreshed and with great joy.  He has seen God and understands!

• Second, how do we think through such a compelling and engaging book?  Young is a gifted writer.  He draws you into his story and holds you.  He is incredibly imaginative and his word pictures are worthwhile.  I must admit, I was at first aghast at the images he chooses for the Trinity.  Why would you make God the Father a woman, I remember asking myself when Mack first meets “Papa”?  I was shocked at how he has the Trinity laughing, playing practical jokes and roaring with laughter when Jesus drops a plate filled with food.  In conversation after conversation in the book, Mack hears explanations of why things are the way they are on earth.  Yet, some of it is quite believable, especially when one remembers how difficult it is to imagine and understand the infinite, the omnipotent, let alone how God can be three-in-one.  In the novel, there is the clarity of a basic biblical truth—that the members of the Trinity have enjoyed love and communication for eternity.  Yet, the manner in which Young depicts all this in his novel stretches my own personal credulity.  For me, it was not really believable.  As I read the book, I kept wanting to give Young the benefit of the doubt about his word pictures of the godhead.  I kept saying to myself, remember the significant liberties that C.S. Lewis took in the Chronicles of Narnia series when it came to Aslan as a Christ figure.  But, Lewis intentionally created an entire fantasy world in Narnia.  Young’s world is not a fantasy world, for he has God revealing Himself to Mack, a 21st century man, not a person locked in a fantasy world like Narnia.  I did conclude that Young is no C.S. Lewis.  He does not claim to be Lewis, but it was helpful for me to make that distinction, so I share that with you.  I was offended several times at how condescending God, in the novel, seems to be of the local church.  I did not find that believable at all.  Yes, the church is people, the living body of Christ, but the local church is still precious and critical to God’s plan.  Finally, I kept coming back to Scripture where the Godhead is revealed.  I thought of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17, where the preincarnate glory of Jesus is revealed.  I thought of Isaiah 6, where the prophet sees the glorified God on His throne in all His majesty and power.  I thought of Revelation 1:12-18 and Revelation 4 and 5, where we are ushered into the very throne room of the Trinitarian God.  It seems to me that in Young’s attempt to bring God down to Mack in the novel, he has ended up diminishing and demeaning the power, majesty, glory and utter transcendence of God.  The other aspect of each of these parts of Scripture is the response of humanity—each one bows in adoration, awe, worship and utter abandonment.  For that reason, I could not find the book’s portrayal of God authentic, believable or correct.

• Finally, can we draw any theological conclusions about Young and The Shack?  James B. DeYoung is a Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Western Seminary.  His theological analysis of Young has been most helpful to me.  In a review of the book, DeYoung claims that he has known Young for over a dozen years and offers compelling proof that Paul Young has “embraced ‘Christian universalism’ and has defended this view on several occasions.  While he frequently disavows ‘general universalism,’ the idea that many roads lead to God, he has affirmed his hope ‘that all will be reconciled to God either this side of death or after death.’”  Christian universalism (sometimes called universal reconciliation) argues that love is the supreme attribute of God that trumps all others.  Even after the death of the human, God’s love reaches beyond the grave.  Nothing in the universe is outside the ultimate reconciling power of God’s love—even fallen angels.  DeYoung writes that this view “claims many texts that seem to assert that the reconciliation Jesus accomplished on the cross extends to all creatures (Rom. 5:18; 2 Cor. 5:16-20; Col. 1:19-20), that all universally will confess him as Lord (Phil. 2:6-11), and that God’s desire that all be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) will be accomplished.  Nothing can thwart God’s will and love.”  According to the editors of the book, they worked through the book for over a year, making certain that all aspects of universal reconciliation were removed.  However, I believe that remnants of Christian universalism resonate throughout the book.  Following DeYoung, permit to offer several thoughts:

1. The book makes the claim that God “cannot act apart from love” (p. 102) and that He “purposes what He does always as an expression of love” (p. 191).  Is this theologically correct?  Is not God also a God of justice and righteousness?
2. In the novel, Papa denies that he ever “pours out wrath and throws people into hell.”  Papa does not punish sin, it is “his joy to cure it” (p. 120).  God will not condemn “most to an eternity of torment, away from his presence and apart from his love” (p. 162). 
3. When the “godhead" in the novel discusses the “fall,” there is no mention of Satan (see pp. 134-37).  In fact, one searches in vain for any significant recognition of Satan at all in the novel.
4. One also searches in vain for any significant mention of God’s justice.  The Bible resonates with the truth that God is a God of justice.  God is a God of love, but He is also a God of justice!
5. On p. 99, Young writes something that is manifestly heretical:  “When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we become fully human.  We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed.  Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now become flesh and blood.”  It is Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, Who added to His deity humanity.  That is not true of the Spirit nor of the Father.  Further, Young, in the novel, has both Papa and Sarayu bearing the marks of the crucifixion in their hands.  That is blatantly false!  There is absolutely no biblical evidence for such a claim.  It is Jesus who bears the marks, not the Spirit or the Father.  Young’s depiction of the Trinity is also dangerously close to modalism, something the early church condemned as heresy.
6. One searches the novel in vain to find any embracing of the biblical teaching that there is indeed a future judgment.  God reconciles Himself to the physical world through the finished work of Jesus, but He insists that faith on the part of the human is the means by which humans are reconciled to Him.  That is absent in the novel.
7. The novel bears a clear prejudice against the institution of the local church.  In the novel, Jesus argues vehemently that He “never has, never will” create institutions (p. 178). 
8. It is difficult as one reads this novel to see any regard for the Bible.  It is discredited, treated glibly and basically ignored. 

In conclusion, it is important to remember that The Shack is a novel.  But as a novel, it intentionally distorts basic biblical truths.  For that reason, this novel can become a powerful vehicle for heresy and offensive teaching.  I found The Shack an engaging book.  But my disappointment built throughout the reading of the book into a desire to seriously warn people that there is gross error being subtly proclaimed throughout the book.  If you are going to read the book, do so with caution and with your mind engaged.  If you have read the book, be certain that you critically think through its intentional distortions of truth.  In Colossians 2:8, the Apostle Paul warns, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world, rather than Christ.”  That warning aptly applies to The Shack.

See James B. De Young, “At the Back of The Shack: A Torrent of Universalism,” (unpublished paper).

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