My mother purchased The Shack for me over the winter break and told me that I absolutely had to read it. Two of the secretaries at the law firm where I’ve worked off-and-on for the past two years raved about it. And yet… I was decidedly with Sarah McMillon in turning my nose up to it. However, as the clamor within Christian society about this book (not to mention the opportunity to speak to the secretaries here about spiritual things) rose to a roar, I took my mom’s offer and read it. It took three days.

The Shack is a fictional tale, yet it is clearly intended to communicate theological truths. The book was written not merely to share a story, but to communicate a theology and impact the way the reader (of which there have been a million-plus) thinks about God, suffering, the church, and a variety of other issues about faith. Christianity’s history is filled with examples of fiction meant to instruct us about the Christian life- think C.S. Lewis or Pilgrim’s Progress- but comparatively few books of this nature have created such a stir… and had such divided opinions. Eugene Peterson and Michael W. Smith laud it unabashedly. Conversely, Al Mohler commented that “this book includes undiluted heresy,” and Mark Driscoll wrote similarly. All of American Christianity seems presently affected to some degree by this simple book written by an office manager in Oregon. How should we respond? Should we throw the book out for its modalism (presenting the trinity as three different aspects of God, rather than as three different persons of God Himself), for its portrayal of God the Father as a woman (or, as Driscoll claims, for portraying God the Father at all), for denying the intrinsic hierarchy within the Trinity (John 14:28-31), or for failing to steer completely clear of universalism (p.182)? Whatever our response should be, the fact remains that, due to the present scope of its influence, we simply cannot ignore it.

Personally, I think that The Shack has a lot of great things to say, but they must be taken with a grain of salt and with a healthy study of the Scriptures to balance and weigh the statements written by William P. Young. I do not agree with Eugene Peterson in declaring it our generation’s Pilgrim’s Progress; conversely, I do not agree with Al Mohler’s disgust. Over the course of a few (likely interrupted) blogs, I will attempt to discuss some passages in The Shack that were especially pivotal. Most of them will be passages that I found particularly helpful or interesting, since I, in the paragraph above, have already outlined some of the major problems I had with the novel.

Enjoy, detest, discuss, or ignore. I leave it to you.

Papa: “The Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust. Everything is about him. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him…” (p. 95)