Missing the Point of The Shack

I found out about and read The Shack before it was for sale on Amazon and every Christian book store on the face of the planet. I happened to find out about it simply because I subscribed to the God Journey podcast which is hosted by the two guys (Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings) who helped the author William P. Young edit and bring the book into its final form. When I read the Shack, I read it without all the baggage of the controversy that has sprung up around it by those claiming that it is describing a "modalism" view of the trinity and is advocating "Goddess Worship" etc...

It seems that all those who are claiming these theological heresy's are the point of the book are TOTALLY missing the point in my opinion. Many of those who are attacking the book as heresy CLAIM that the point of the book is to help us understand the Trinity.

This is NOT the point of the book as you can hear from the authors own lips. The Shack is an ALLEGORY ABOUT OUR PERCEPTIONS AND GOD'S LOVE FOLKS! It is NOT a definition of the Trinity, it was not meant to be such. Allegories are meant to teach a lesson using a story that is not intended to necessarily be taken literally!

Why are these Bible police not trying to say the same things about the "Heresy" in the C.S. Lewis books the Chronicles of Narnia? No... Jesus is not really a Lion. We know that is not what Lewis was teaching. Neither is Father a older black matron... neither is Holy Spirit a thin Asian woman.

First off, William P. Young wrote the book for his adult children. Not intending it to be a published book originally. It was to talk about how we go though the process of overcoming those places in our lives where we get stuck and refuse to go further with God because of some tragedy or some preconceived box we have put God in.

Young did not cast Father as a black woman to teach modalism or violate the commandment to not make a graven image of God, no more than Lewis made a lion represent Christ. He did it to force us to shake off any preconceived box we had put God in. The main character had preconceptions of what God was like, as stated by the character of Papa... he is not a black woman, but Mac sees Him as such to drastically challenge his preconceptions.

The point of the book is to show that God loves us in our deepest hurts, that He is a real person, and unpredictable in some ways. He loves us beyond our sin. His ways are not the ways we choose to think of Him into our comfortable God-boxes. In many ways, the critics who are trying to claim that Young's book is teaching us to understand the Trinity in a wrong way, are doing exactly what Young is trying to break people of doing... thinking that God can be put into a box and that this is supposed to be a description of how the Trinity works. If that is true, then stop trying to use other analogies like the EGG and other imperfect ways to describe the Triune nature of God. The Trinity is unlike anything we can compare it to. Not analogy can do that without some flaw.

This book will challenge your perception of God, his way of loving you, how you try to put God in little Boxes and how crazy it is to think you can. It will NOT teach you a new model of the Triune God to be followed as a road map it was not intended for that purpose.

Yes, there are things in the book that I don't totally get or buy... and it is quite a pill to see your perceptions of things about salvation and how God perceives us shattered and see more questions come out of those shattered boxes. But keep in mind that the point of the book is NOT to teach you a new model. It is to show you that you need to seek God and follow Him even when He does not seem to go where you think He should go. It is to show you that often you can't grow more with Him because you have built such a nice neat tight theological box that you think God can't break out of it.

If you read The Shack and find yourself focusing on how the story might contain heresy after heresy... then consider it a good thing that you are questioning it. Pray. Got to the Scripture. Seek GOD... not a justification for your position. and then maybe try reading it just to shake up all those concepts you have, and let God challenge you to see His love in a new way. Not necessarily the way the book teaches it, but the way the Spirit teaches you in your heart.

I still think this is a great book to read and challenge yourself, even if you do not in the end agree with everything in it. Young was not trying to convince anyone that THIS IS THE WAY TO UNDERSTAND GOD. He was trying to get us to recognize that God loves us in ways we can't understand and our performance based love requirements do not apply. I challenge you to read this book and listen to the Spirit more than the words of the book. Not to validate that the book is good or bad or right or wrong, but rather to start a new conversation with God yourself.