I read this review of 'The Shack', in CT, and thought it was very revealing of the heresy within this book. I know a lot of Christians like this book, and some friends of mine in fact, but can I say that I have a big problem with all this making God into a nice guy, and who can't really condemn anyone. Not that I'm for condemnation, I'm not. I am for the truth however, and it seems to me this Paul Young has twisted the truth of who God is. Very subtle in his words.
I just don't understand what people see in a God like this God. I just don't get it.
Any how, if you want to read another review, here tis an excerpt for you. If you liked the Shack, then maybe you should read it. If you didn't like the Shack, you don't need to read it.
And if you disagree with the reviewer, then let me know where she is wrong, if you don't mind. Thanks.
"The central themes of theodicy are explicitly reconceived in The Shack: sin, Satan, guilt, punishment, authority, hierarchy, substitutionary atonement have no place in Papa's world. Everything is absorbed into an all-encompassing, markedly feminine, love. Thus, Mack's murder of his father—we know from Willie that he poisoned his father's booze before leaving home at 13—is never mentioned by the all-knowing Trinity. Mack's disingenuous admission to friends that his father "drank himself to death" is not improved upon when he is in the presence of God. Guilt is a negative emotion, and negative emotions are swept away in the joyous free-for-all in The Shack. Papa tells Mack, "I've never placed an expectation on you or anyone else … . And because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me." Mack is taken aback: "What? You've never been disappointed in me?" "Never!" Papa retorts emphatically. One might have thought that patricide would "disappoint" God. Apparently not. And when Mack encounters his deceased father in a mystical "festival of friends" and is able at last to say, "Daddy, I'm so sorry! Daddy, I love you!" a potent emotional reconciliation is achieved, though it is strikingly unlike classical biblical repentance (Ps. 51; Lk. 15:21).
Another set-piece of theodicy, the Judgment scene, is also turned inside-out in The Shack. ....in The Shack, Mack is summoned to judgment before Papa's understudy, Sophia, it turns out that he is "not here to repent," or to be judged but rather to play the Judge himself. When, with coaxing, he screams that Missy's murderer should be "damned to hell," Sophia walks him through a careful explanation of why God could never condemn anyone. Jesus, with Papa and Sarayu, has taken on judgment (all three bear the marks of the crucifixion). The idea of punishment is unworthy of Papa: "I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment." "Judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right."
The Shack has a thesis, conveniently summed up in Papa's twice-repeated statement, "I am not who you think I am." Papa is "amazing, but she's not anything like the God I've known," Mack confesses to Sophia, who replies, "Maybe your understanding of God is wrong."
The point of The Shack is to prompt Christian readers, among others, to question, with Mack, their understanding of God—indeed, to "change the way we think about God forever." Young himself, in his actual rather than fictional voice, ends his acknowledgments with a benediction "that the abiding presence of Papa, Jesus and Sarayu will fill up your inside emptiness with joy unspeakable and full of glory." This, along with the promotional machine one encounters in the book's "Missy Project," should, I think, make any Christian uncomfortable. It should, in fact, convince us that The Shack is anything but "just a novel."
But The Shack's "I am not who you think I am" also revises the theophanic declaration itself: "I am that I am." As such, it problematizes the self-revelation of God at the heart of the Old Testament and of Jesus, the incarnate "I Am," at the heart of the New. We are left, then—however diverting we find Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu—with a question memorably posed by that first and subtlest of inquisitors (Gen. 3): "Is God who you think He is?" To which, in Christian terms, we have only ever been able to turn to one source for the answer."
[Katherine Jeffrey is a freelance writer and book editor in Whitney, Texas, where she lives with her husband, David, and sons Gideon and Josh.]
2 comments:
I enjoyed the read. but must be read with open eyes, sadly many have taken it a gospel. I took it as a book, not scripture.
Thanks for sharing sister. I appreciate it.
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