considering The Shack

Recently I read through The Shack, on the encouragement of my mother. She bought me a copy which she gave me for Christmas, after the positive affect it had on her. I will open by saying that I didn’t expect much from my reading of it; popularity has a feature of flocking to things which are simple & easily digestible.

Being true to that, The Shack is both simple and easy to digest. I was able to read through it rather quickly spread over a couple of evenings. Some would praise the writing style for this; I rather am disappointed in the plain, at points bland prose. He author begins with a good idea, describing an encounter of a man with the personification of the holy trinity. Where the author finds his strength in the unusual encounter through description he fails to follow through when it comes to dialogue.

I will end my critique there. I would like to say a few words of praise of surprise. I think using personification to describe the trinity, to describe God, is absolutely wonderful. I think people have gotten hung up on their images of the God head and need a fresh image. This book definitely does that. I see really interesting doors opening for art through this. I would like to see more books of this style, deal with the spiritual in nontraditional ways.

I have read a lot of Dostoevsky. I would say he is much better at doing this. One of the main reasons is that he doesn’t need to call upon God as a character to express the divine. He lets the divine radiate through people, the same as should happen in real life. Most people’s experience of God will happen through people—ordinary people, like your neighbor or co-worker—not through extra-ordinary events of divine revelation.

I fear somewhat that a certain person might expect that experience of God to be normal, and that they should expect a letter from God in their mailbox too. This fear is separate from complaints about the theology which is spread throughout. The author definitely sidesteps the difficult issue about the reason for Christ’s death & resurrection—any talk of a wrathful God who needs to exercise that judgment against sin is pushed aside.

So would I give a no strings attached recommendation of the book? I don’t know. It is a good book about one man’s reconciliation and renewal. It is definitely shaping in how one sees God. I know some would say that his portrait is a wrong and dangerous to others. I would be more agnostic and say I don’t. I’ll leave my asterisk, this is a novel not theology whether or not it can be helpful I’ll leave up to the reader. It is probably helpful to read some articles about where people think the book’s theology goes wayward, just to know where those points of contention lay.