The Shack | William P. Young

The Shack | William P. Young | It's Not the Bible, It's Fiction

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	The Shack William P. Young Windblown Media, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 4366 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

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One to share

This book touched my heart and soul. Not being a Christian, I still found this book delightful and insightful. I shared it with a dear friend, who in turn bought copies and shared it with 5 of her friends. A great read!

It's Not the Bible, It's Fiction

One thing I have learned about God, over 30 years ago, is that He/She can work to use ANYTHING for His purposes, and to speak to us in a myriad of different ways. My life was saved by the words of Jim Morrison, in a Doors' song called Shaman's Blues:
"There will never be, Another one like you
There will never be, Another one who can
Do the things you do, oh
Will you give another chance?, Will you try, little try?
... The whole world's a savior
Who could ever, ever, ever
Ever, ever, ever, Ask for more?
Do you remember?
Will you stop?, Will you stop?, The pain".
It was at a difficult time in my life. I suffered from severe Depression and was suicidal. God, in his amazing grace, spoke to me in a way that I heard clearly.
It was the Doors, for crying out loud, but thank you, Jesus, for that song and those words, and the ears to hear the message!

I am neither under-read nor under-educated. I have a BA in English. I am a life-long reader of a great variety of literature. I taught Sunday School to different age groups, for over 20 years. I worked as a Youth Director in a church for many, many years, and have been involved in in-depth Bible studies.

I agree that this book is not extremelly well written. I was prepared not to like it, after reading many of these reviews, but my adult daughter asked me to read it, and I wanted to try to understand what she had liked so much about it. (By the way, she has a college degree, too, and is a teacher, and has had a library card, since she could print her name, at 4 years of age. She is NOT under-educated or under-read.)

My husband and I are listening to the book on Audio CD. Maybe that makes it easier to bear the writing. The reader is pretty good.
Anyway, I wasn't looking for something to replace the Gospels, and I came to the book with low expectations. Maybe that is what helped, too.
I have heard one message coming out of this book, for me. It is the message of how self-centered we are and how much we need to serve others, in the name of Jesus. It is like God wants to point this particular issue out to me at this time. I take that gift with thanks, and don't sweat the rest.
I do not think anything was so detrimental that it would lead someone away from God. It is fiction. It does not replace the Bible, or reading the Gospels. It may hold a glimmer of a message for one person and perhaps much more for another. There are parts I disagree with, but these do not stand in the way of the message I received.
I know I have gone on for quite awhile. I don't feel compelled to push this book on anyone else, but once again, I am amazed by God's making all things work for good. Just don't let it replace reading the Bible, Bible study, or prayer.

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A Good Read

In "The Shack", we meet a man, Mack, mired in The Great Sadness. Some years before, he lost his young daughter to a murdering kidnapper. He receives an improbable note, an invitation from God to meet with him at the cabin where his daughter met her end. The book then revolves around this human-divine encounter.

I was gripped by this novel, reading it in two sittings. Being the father of a daughter myself, I can imagine few things more painful than Mack's experience. I was moved to tears in the passages where Mack confronts his deepest pain. And I felt good when the story ended in a comforting way.

From a literary perspective, this is not a great work. There's some cheesiness, some cliche. And I was annoyed when the Papa character would lapse in and out of dialect. It seemed at times the author could not decide how to portray this Person. But there is some pleasing imagery: e.g. a garden is described as a fractal.

From a theological perspective, there's enough there to please or offend anyone, depending on their point of view. I was worried by the description of Wallowa Lake, "formed, some say, by glaciers nine million years ago." (p.34). I wondered if I was working my way into a young-earth creationist tract. Later, seeing God described as the "ground of being" (p. 112), and reading the rather existential-sounding description of sin as its own punishment (p. 120) I wondered instead if the author was a Paul Tillich follower.

Double-predestinarians may dislike the hint (p. 224) that God will redeem us all; single-predestinarians will like it. Christian inclusionists will like how Jesus includes Buddhists and Mormons and Muslims and Republicans and Democrats (gasp) all as his followers (p. 182); exclusionists will hate it.

The notion of grace appears in a very Lutheran way (p. 126): one cannot through one's own efforts change their trust, it just happens by accepting the gift of God's love.

The book's theodicy seems to echo Augustine's free will theory; moral sin is a result of man's assertion of his own independence (p. 146). But natural evil is not considered. Too, God is portrayed as suffering with us (p. 96, p. 125) and creating good out of evil (p. 191).

Much of the book is an interesting exploration of the paradox of being fully human and fully divine, and also some thought-provoking ways of looking at the Trinity.

This book was a good read, both as a story, and as an invitation to think about God. Reading this book was time well spent.

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