The variety of interviews, commentaries, and criticisms listed here (from both secular and religious perspectives) highlight the degree of interest Young's book, THE SHACK has generated in 2008-2009.
return to the Resources webpage for further PDF commentaries
a secular interview with Leesha McKenny, Sydney Sun-Herald 28/12/08
In the eyes of some, there is a special place in hell reserved for William Paul Young. But the author of The Shack, a self-published novel in which God is an African-American woman and Jesus isn't a Christian, doesn't seem to mind too much. "It's a suspense mystery wrapped in a 'what if?" he says. "You know, what if there's a God that actually has affection for us? What if there's a God who will showup in the middle of our pain?" Young, a 53-year-old former cleaner and salesman from Oregon in the US who grew up among a remote tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, says The Shack is about the potential of a relationship With God beyond the limitations and failings of religion.
The book has sold more than 3 million copies and has been translated into 40 languages. It has been at the top of The New York Times bestseller list for the past 25 weeks and there is talk of a movie. "I am so over my head, but that's part of the beauty and the wonder of it," Young says. "My first run of The Shack was 15 copies at the local print shop and so I sort of start laughing about a dozen times a day going, 'How strange is this?' We went through 1.2 million books out of a garage with less than $300 in marketing and advertising. How is that possible, except that it has touched the hearts of people and those people are having these conversations with people they care about and the book is just spreading like fire, and I love that"
The Shack tells the story of Mack, a white-bread, plain-talking American father of three, who is forced to come to terms with the abduction of his youngest daughter, Missy, while on a camping trip. He does this by revisiting the shack three years later, a rundown place in the woods where search teams had found remnants of his daughter's bloody clothes and nothing else. He is drawn back to the site of his greatest pain, and eventual healing, after receiving a note from God in the post. As you do. The plot is simple - Missy's disappearance is mentioned on the book's blurb amid the gushing recommendations from readers - but it's the characterisation that has drawn the most attention and, it's fair to say, criticism.
Literary critics have described Mack and his family as one-dimensional, while some Christians, taking umbrage at his unorthodox depiction of the Trinity, have denounced Young as a heretic. He has taken it on the chin. "I think a lot of times with this particular story people expose their own thinking more than what they're actually telling you about the book," he says. "And you know what? I didn't ask for this. This is an unbelievable whirlwind and I'm totally at peace in the middle of it because my identity's not linked to this. I'm not more or less significant because I wrote this book. Those things were already answered in my own heart, so I am so aware and convinced and excited and celebrating the fact that I get to be involved in something that God is blessing."
Describing himself as an "accidental author", Young says his initial audience was his six children after he wrote the story on the urging of his wife, Kim, in 2005. She told him a few months ago that she was only thinking four to six pages. "It's fiction but it' s wrapped around my own story," he says. "The kids see me and themselves and Kim, my wife - we're all in it. People say, 'Is it true?', and I say, 'yeah, it's true - it's just not real. It's like a parable.'"
The shack is a metaphor for shame and pain - which in Young's case includes bankruptcy, infidelity and a fractured relationship with his parents. "The weekend Mackenzie spends in the shack represents 11 years of my life and that 11 years dismantled me, "he says. "I'm a preacher's kid and I'm a missionary's kid and that combination will sort of mess you up anyway." Young spent his early youth in the highlands of West Papua among the Dani, a remote tribal people steeped in traditions including ritualistic cannibalism. Growing up as a "white Dani", with access to their culture and community, placed a void between him and his parents. Young says, especially his emotionally remote father - as Mack deals with in the book. "My father is in his mid-20s and he's dragging a lot of baggage with him, and he's in a generation that doesn't even know they have baggage - and so it got dumped in my direction and he was pretty brutal," he says. "Sexual abuse was a part of my childhood in boarding school... disconnect from my parents [and] total identification with the tribal people - all of that goes into The Shack."
The family returned to the US when Young was six. He attended 13 schools before he went to study in seminary school, as did Mack. "Because [I was] a religious kid and wasn't allowed to ask a lot of questions when I was growing up, so there is just a lot of stuff that is involved in just my questioning. That's how I talk to God; those conversations are how I pray," he says. "I was riding the train to one of my jobs and it was 40 minutes each way, and I had yellow legal pads and I just started writing the conversations that ended up in the book - just questions."
Young counts his most ardent supporters and detractors from among the Christian community, yet he does not regard The Shack as a "Christian" book. "People ask me, 'Are you a Christian?' And I say, 'Well, would you please tell me what that is and I'll tell you if l am one of those,'" he says. "It means a thousand different things to a thousand different people." Certainly, Christian publishers were among the 26 who rejected Young's manuscript before he and two friends started their own publishing company and mobilised the power of the internet and word-of-mouth to sell copies from a garage. "The book, without our intending it, has opened up a conversation within publishing because so many publishers missed it, and they're going: 'What happened here?' I mean, this book potentially could be one of the best-selling books in history and they missed it," he says. "That conversation has really opened up pathways for other writers and other creative people and I'm excited about that."
PORTLAND, Ore — by rights, William Young, 53, should be a mess. Emotionally distant from his missionary parents. Sexually abused by the New Guinea tribe they lived among. Grief-stricken for loved ones who died too young, too suddenly. Frantic to earn God's love, yet cheating on his wife, Kim. Young functioned by stuffing all the evil done to him and by him into a "shack" — his metaphor for an ugly, dark place hidden so deeply within him that it seemed beyond God's healing reach. His adultery, 15 years ago, finally blew the doors off that shack, forcing him to confront his past. "Kim made it clear," he says. "I had to face every awful thing."
Now, his first novel, The Shack— centered on dialogues between a miserable main character, Mack, and three unorthodox characterizations of the Holy Trinity — telescopes Young's transformation to a man spiritually reborn and aware every moment of God's love. It slams "legalistic" religions, denominations and doctrines. It barely even mentions the Bible.
THE AUTHOR: From garage-seller to best-seller IDEA CLUB: An unlikely view of the trinity: Do you care about doctrine? Instead, Mack's secrets, lies, pain and fears are swept away in a 48-hour encounter in the woods with a sassy black woman who embodies God the creator. Jesus is portrayed as a big-nosed carpenter in a plaid shirt; the Holy Spirit is an Asian sylph called Sarayu.
So why are critics calling it heresy? They say Young's surprise hit, which has been in the Top 50 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list for 10 weeks (it's now No. 17), promotes a wrong-headed view of universal salvation, as free to all as an open bar at a party. They read Young's message as saying you can just discover Jesus' love inside yourself, turn your life over to him, and you're on your way to heaven. No need to put in time in the pews or know theology.
Albert Mohler, a leading theologian of the Southern Baptist Convention, which takes the Bible literally, trashes The Shack in his weekly radio show, calling it "deeply subversive," "scripturally incorrect" and downright "dangerous."
Says Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle: "If you haven't read The Shack, don't!" Driscoll, whose multi-campus non-denominational church is packed with 6,000 people each weekend in the least-churched corner of the nation, says he is "horrified" by Young's book. He says "it misrepresents God. Young misses the big E on the eye chart." To Driscoll, doctrine is essential, like a fence the Almighty erects to safeguard the saved from error.
The Shack has fans, too. Young gets nearly 100 emails a day from readers saying they found solace and inspiration in his novel. They overlook the clichés ("Religious machinery can chew up people," Jesus says), stereotypes, like the Jewish Jesus' big nose, and the awkward prose. The black female God, incongruously called Papa, tells Mack, "Don't just stand there gawkin' with your mouth open like your pants are full."
Minister Steve McVey of Tampa, author of Grace Walk, praises The Shack. McVey says Young connects with people outside of, or unhappy with, institutional churches that "tell us what we ought to do for God, while grace focuses on what God has already done. A person discovers grace when you come to the end of your own self-sufficiency and realize you have been made acceptable through Jesus Christ and him alone. You can't score points with God."
Today, Young, who goes by his middle name, Paul, happily recounts how he finally tapped the wellspring of God's love he says was always there for him to find. He exudes quiet calm, disrupted now and then by bursts of enthusiasm, like bear-hugging strangers on first meeting. Ordinary things delight him. He walks up to Multnomah Falls, his plaid shirt and fleece jacket coated with the mist of the cascading water, his smile irrepressible.
This majestic waterfall plays a role in the novel's opening pages. Mack tells his little daughter, Missy, the legend of an Indian princess who hurls herself over the falls to save her people from death. Will I have to die to save others? she asks him. No, he tells her, Jesus has done this for you, and she sleeps soundly, secure in Christ. The foreshadowing is hardly subtle: the sacrifice of an innocent life for the sake of salvation. Missy is kidnapped by a serial killer and is murdered in a filthy, deserted shack in the wilderness.
Years later, Mack, still devastated, receives a note inviting him back to the shack. It's signed "Papa," the name his more resilient and spiritual wife, Nan, uses for God. Mack's weekend at the shack is a compressed journey toward belief, forgiveness and acceptance. But what a trip. Instead of a dump, this shack is a mansion in an Eden-like garden where God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit embrace him. For two days, they talk, eat, walk, garden and share visions of heaven, where little Missy romps happily.
They tell Mack they live in a loving relationship without hierarchy, guilt or shame, all fully human, all divine. They say that through Jesus' death, God is "fully reconciled" to the whole world, so that all might discover God's love. It's a vision of joy to Young, however far it strays from most evangelical dogma.
Young was born in Canada to missionaries who brought him as an infant to New Guinea to live with the primitive Dani tribe. He says he was subject to the harsh verbal attacks of his unhappy father, and sexual assaults by tribesmen. He went to a missionary boarding school at age 6, he says, and was molested by older students. He never lost a sense of God, but to Young, God was distant and judgmental. "I learned to survive by becoming a performer/perfectionist," he says.
Even as he roamed the world and eventually wound up in a Bible seminary for the Christian Missionary Alliance, he knew he wasn't meant to be a pastor or missionary. He finally graduated from Western Pacific College in Portland and landed at a Four Square Gospel church, working with collegians. There he met Kim, who poked holes "in my version of being a perfect performer to earn God's love. You can't perform for God. You can't run. You can't hide. You can adapt, but that won't heal the stuff you've buried deep inside, in your 'shack.' "
Soon after they married, waves of tragedy gouged their life. When he was 25, his 18-year-old brother died in a work accident, Kim's mother died unexpectedly, and his niece, 5 years and one day old, was run over by a cement truck while riding her new birthday bicycle. Grace seemed nowhere in sight.
Young was 38 and the father of six when his life took a hairpin turn after his adultery. He spent a year in counselling, years more soul-searching, marvelling at Kim's steadfast commitment, before he reached wholeness in faith, he says. He wrote The Shack in 2005, prompted by Kim. She wanted him to open up his heart and his thinking to their children, now ages 14 to 27. The book was meant to be like the box top on a jigsaw puzzle, the picture that shows where all the pieces fit, Young says.
Eventually, he sent the manuscript to a writer he admired, Wayne Jacobsen, a former pastor and author of So You Don't Want to Go to Church Any More, under the pen name Jake Colsen. Jacobsen and another former pastor, Brad Cummings, spent 15 months editing the book with Young to clarify the focus and rip out pages of theological jargon, Young says, "We had great conversations about how people are the church. The church is not just a place you go to quote Scripture and feel guilty," Jacobsen and Cummings published it through their own company, Windblown Media, after established publishers rebuffed it. They promoted it on Christian websites and broadcast outlets, trying to attract a New York publisher.
Now there are 1.1 million copies in print and, two weeks ago, FaithWords, a division of Hachette Book Group, signed on as co-publisher with Windblown. Hatchette agreed to a 500,000-copy press run in June and a national campaign in the secular market in July.
The Shack's success has changed Young's life — a little. He no longer works three jobs running a manufacturer's sales office and working on websites. Kim still works at Gresham High School as a baker, but she's driving a new Honda. They've moved from the tiny rental house, where he wrote The Shack in the windowless basement near the washing machine, to a bigger rental nearby. Holding hands and beaming at one of their grandchildren, the Youngs say they'd be fine if the money vanished tomorrow. "Mack is me, a guy who has made a mess of everything," Young says, "The book takes him outside everything familiar, back to the worst experience of his life and lets him recognize God is so much greater."
Yet, as McVey, the minister from Tampa, says, "This pure grace of God has always divided people." Mohler, Driscoll and other evangelicals pick The Shack apart plank by plank. No, God can't be a presented as a woman. No, the three parts of the Trinity did not all become fully human. Yes, there is a hierarchy in the Holy Trinity with God the Father in command. Yes, God will punish sin.
Young shrugs them off. Out there in America, where only three in 10 people attend weekly worship services and millions are ignorant of the Bible, his readers struggle to find a good God amid their pain. As for critics, he shakes his head. "I don't want to enter the Ultimate Fighting ring and duke it out in a cage-match with dogmatists. I have no need to knock churches down or pull people out," he says. "I have a lot of freedom by knowing that you really experience God in relationships, wherever you are. It's fluid and dynamic, not cemented into an institution with a concrete foundation. But it's not about me. I have everything that matters, a free and open life full of love and empty of all secrets."
I am certain that there is no other book I’ve been asked to review more times than William Paul Young’s The Shack, a book that is currently well within the top-100 best-selling titles at Amazon. The book, it seems, is becoming a hit and especially so among students and among those who are part of the Emergent Church. In the past few weeks many concerned readers have written to ask if I would be willing to read it and to provide a review. Because I am always interested in books that are popular among Christians, I was glad to comply.
The Amazon reader reviews for The Shack are remarkable. With 102 reviews already posted, it is maintaining a five-star rating with fully ninety three of the reviewers awarding five stars. Only two have offered one star. A search of blogs and websites turns up near-unanimous enthusiastic (and almost unbridled) praise for the book. “This book is a life-changer, a transformer.” “[The Shack] has become a favourite book OF ALL TIME.” “I am changed. I pray indelibly. My oh my!” This book, which was released in May but which has already gone into its fourth printing, is making a major impact. It has obviously struck a chord with Christians.
I’ll warn in advance that this review is going to be long. My major focus will be the book’s content though I’ll pause to glance fleetingly at the book’s style as well. Because I’ve received so many questions and because the author covers so much ground in the book (and sometimes in a way that is somewhat unclear) I am going to proceed carefully and with many quotes.
There are two things I would like to note about this type of book—theological fiction.
1. First, because of the limitations of the genre, it is sometimes difficult to really know what an author means by what he says. There is often some question as to what comes from the author and what comes from the characters. The author cannot always adequately explain himself, nor can he provide footnotes or references to Scripture. It can be challenging, then, to turn to the Bible to ensure that what he teaches is true. This makes the task of discernment doubly difficult, for one must first interpret the fiction to understand what is being said and then seek to compare that to the Bible. We will do well to keep this in mind as we proceed.
2. Second, we must also realize that, because of the emotional impact of reading good fiction, it can be easy to allow it to become manipulative and to allow the emotion of a moment to bypass our ability to discern what is true and what is not. This is another thing the reader must keep in mind. We cannot trust our laughter or our tears but must allow our powers of discernment to be trained to distinguish good from evil (see Hebrews 5:14). Discernment is primarily a Spirit-empowered discipline of the mind rather than an emotional response.
So let’s look at this book together, doing the task God requires of us when he tells us to be men and women of discernment — Christians who heed God’s admonition to “test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” We’ll simply compare what Young teaches to the Bible. The Book as a Book
First, a word about the book as it is written. William Young shows himself to be a capable writer, though I would not have believed it through the first couple of chapters. The book began with far too many awkward sentences and awkward sentence constructs (e.g. “One can almost hear a unified sigh rise from the nearby city and surrounding countryside where Nature has intervened to give respite to the weary humans slogging it out within her purview”). But as it went on and as the story took over the book became easier to read. The story itself is interesting enough, though certainly it lacks originality. The last chapter should have been left on the editing room floor and the final paragraph (before the “After Words”) was a ridiculously terse attempt to provide closure to remaining plot lines. But on the whole the book is readable and enjoyable. Never does it become boring, even after long pages of nothing but dialog.
But Young did not write this book for the story. This book is all about the content and about the teaching it contains. The book’s reviews focus not on the quality of the story but on its spiritual or emotional impact. Eugene Peterson grasps this, saying in his glowing endorsement, “When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of “The Shack.” This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” did for his. It’s that good!” Could it really be that good? Is it good enough to warrant positive comparison to the English-language book that has been read more widely than any other save the Bible? Let’s turn to the book’s content and find out.
What Is The Shack?
The Shack revolves around Mack (Mackenzie) Philips. Four years before this story begins, Mack’s young daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation. Though her body was never found, the police did find evidence in an abandoned shack to prove that she had been brutally murdered by a notorious serial killer who preyed on young girls. As the story begins, Mack, who has been living in the shadow of his Great Sadness, receives a strange note that is apparently from God. God invites Mack to return to this shack for a get together. Though uncertain, Mack visits the scene of the crime and there has a weekend-long encounter with God, or, more properly, with the Godhead.
What should you do when you come to the door of a house, or cabin in this case, where God might be? Should you knock? Presumably God already knew that Mack was there. Maybe he ought to simply walk in and introduce himself, but that seemed equally absurd. And how should he address him? Should he call him Father, or Almighty One, or perhaps Mr God, and would it be best if he fell down and worshipped, not that he was really in the mood.
As he tried to establish some inner mental balance, the anger that he thought had so recently died inside him began to emerge. No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door. Mack decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman.
This large and oh-so-stereotypical matronly African-American woman is God (or at least an anthropomorphism of God she chose to take on in order to communicate with Mack). Throughout the story she is known as Papa. Near the end, because Mack requires a father figure, she turns into a pony-tailed, grey-haired man, but otherwise God is this woman. Jesus is a young to middle-aged man of Middle-Eastern (i.e. Jewish) descent with a big nose and rather plain looks while the Holy Spirit is played by Sarayu, a small, delicate and eclectic woman of Asian descent. By this point many people will choose to close the book and be done with it. But for the purposes of this review, let’s just assume you are able to get past seeing God and the Holy Spirit portrayed in this way and let’s press on.
There is very little action in The Shack and the bulk of the book is dialog, mostly as the members of the Trinity communicate with Mack, though occasionally we see glimpses into their relationship with one another. The banter between the members of the Trinity, most of which is geared towards helping us understand the love that exists between them, leads to some rather bizarre dialog. Take this as a typical example:
Mack was shocked at the scene in front of him. It appeared that Jesus had dropped a large bowl of some sort of batter or sauce on the floor, and it was everywhere. It must have landed close to Papa because the lower portion of her skirt and bare feet were covered in the gooey mess. All three were laughing so hard that Mack didn’t think they were breathing. Sarayu said something about humans being clumsy and all three started roaring again. Finally, Jesus brushed past Mack and returned a minute later with a large basin of water and towels. Sarayu had already started wiping the goop from the floor and cupboards, but Jesus went straight to Papa and, kneeling at her feet, began to wipe off the front of her clothes. He worked down to her feet and gently lifted one foot at a time, which he directed into the basin where he cleaned and massaged it. “Ooooh, that feels soooo good!” exclaimed Papa, as she continued her tasks at the counter.
Young covers a wide variety of theological topics in this book, each of which is relevant to the theme of Mack’s suffering and his inability to trust in a God who could let his daughter be treated in such a horrifying way. The author is unafraid to tackle subjects of deep theological import—a courageous thing to do in so difficult a genre as fiction. The reader will find himself diving into deep waters as he reads this book.
Much of what Young writes is good and even helpful (again, assuming that the reader can see past the human personifications of God). He affirms the absolute nature of what is good and teaches that evil exists only in relation to what is good. he challenges the reader to understand that God is inherently good and that we can only truly trust God if we believe Him to be good; he acknowledges the human tendency to create our image of God by looking at human qualities and assuming that God is simply the same but more so; he attempts to portray the loving relationships within the Trinity, and so on. For these areas I am grateful as they provided helpful correctives to many false understandings of God.
But the book also raised several concerns. Young covers many topics and time would fail me to discuss each of them. Instead, I will look at concerns with some of the book’s broader themes and will do so under several theological headings.
Young teaches that the Trinity exists entirely without hierarchy and that any kind of hierarchy is the result of sin. The Trinity, he says, “are in a circle of relationship, not a chain of command or ‘great chain of being’… Hierarchy would make no sense among us.” Now it’s possible that he is referring to a kind of dominance or grade or command structure that may well be foreign to the godhead. But a reading of the Bible will prove that hierarchy does, indeed, exist even where there is no sin. After all, the angels exist in a hierarchy and have done so since before the Fall. Also, in heaven there will be degrees of reward and there will be some who are appointed to special positions (such as the Apostles). And the Bible makes it clear that there is some kind of hierarchy even within the Trinity. The Spirit and the Son have submitted themselves to the Father. The task of the Spirit is to lead people to the Son who in turn brings glory to the Father. Never do we find the Father submitting to the Spirit or to the Son. Their hierarchy is perfect—without anger or malice or envy, but it is a hierarchy nonetheless.
There are other teachings about the Trinity that concerned me. For example, Papa says “I am truly human, in Jesus.” This simply cannot be true. God [the Father—a term that the author avoids] is not fully human in Jesus. This melds the two persons of God in a way that is simply unbiblical. Some of what Young teaches is novel and even possible, but without Scriptural support. For example, he teaches that the triune nature of God was an absolute necessity since without it God would be incapable of love. His reasoning is not perfectly clear but seems to be that if God did not have such a relationship “within himself” he would be unable to love. But this is not taught in the Bible.
Overall, I had to conclude that Young has an inadequate and often-unbiblical understanding of the Trinity. While granting that the Trinity is a very difficult topic to understand and one that we cannot know fully, there are several indications that he often blurs the distinct persons of the Trinity along with their roles and their unique attributes. Combined with his novel but unsupported conjectures, this is a serious concern.
Young uses the discussion about the Trinity as a bridge to a the subject of submission. Here he teaches that each member of the Trinity submits to the other. Jesus says, “That’s the beauty you see in my relationship with Abba and Sarayu. We are indeed submitted to one another and have always been so and will always be. Papa is as much submitted to me as I to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.” Why would the God of the universe seek to be submitted to mere humans? “Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship.” Genuine relationships, according to the author, must be marked by mutual submission. “As the crowning glory of Creation, you were made in our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply ‘be’ in relationship with me and one another. If you had truly learned to regard each other’s concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy.” Submission, according to this book, must be mutual, so that husbands submit to wives while wives submit to husbands, and parents submit to children while children submit to parents. While the Bible does teach that we are to submit to one another, it also teaches that God has ordained some kinds of hierarchy. While a husband is to submit his desires to his wife, even to the point of sacrificing his life for her, he is never called to submit to her in an authoritative sense. Wives, though, are commanded to submit to their husbands, acknowledging that the husband is the head of the family. Similarly, all people are to submit to the God-given authorities and every person is responsible to submit to God.
This understanding of absolute equality not just in value (which the Bible affirms) but also in role and function (which the Bible does not affirm), leads to a strange idea about why God created Eve out of Adam. He teaches that it was crucial for man be created before woman, but with woman hidden inside man. Had this not happened, there could not have been a proper circle of relationship since otherwise man would always come from woman (through childbirth), allowing her to claim a dominant position. She came out of him and now all men come out of her. This allows total, absolute equality, says Young. I can think of absolutely no biblical proof for this and neither does the author offer any.
And so we see that Young uses The Shack to teach an unbiblical understanding of submission. And he uses this topic to bridge to another.
Young’s understanding of free will seems to follow from submission. “I don’t want slaves to do my will,” says Jesus. “I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.” Speaking in veiled terms about conversion or something like it, Jesus says, “We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But, we will never force that union with you. If you want to do your thing, have at it. Time is on our side.” God, it seems, has already forgiven all humans for their sin and has willingly submitted himself to them, though only some people will choose relationship. He is fully reconciled to all human beings and simply waits for them to do their part. Never does Young clearly discuss the consequences that will face those who refuse to accept this offer of union.
Overall, Young presents a God who is unable or unwilling to break into history in any consequential way. He is sovereign at times, but certainly not so in conversion (a topic that receives only scant attention) and is limited by the free will choices of human beings. Scant attention is paid to God’s fore-ordination, the understanding that nothing happens without it somehow being part of His decree (even while God cannot be accused of being the author of evil). Papa explains to Mack, “There was no way to create freedom without a cost.” But nowhere in the Bible do we find that God is somehow made captive by human free will and that He has to allow things to proceed in order to maintain His own integrity as Creator. Always God is sovereign, even over the freewill choices of men. Our inability to understand how this can be does not preclude us from the responsibility of believing it.
Much of the story focuses on forgiveness. Mack has to learn to forgive first God (or at least to come to an intellectual understanding of why God was unable to intervene to save Missy) and then, at the book’s culmination, to forgive the murderer. I am adamantly opposed to the idea that we would ever need to forgive God for anything. However, because this teaching is seen only vaguely in the novel, I will pass over it for now and turn to another area of forgiveness—that of unconditional forgiveness.
Nowhere in Scripture will we find the idea that we can or should forgive an unrepentant person for this kind of crime. Rather, Scripture makes it clear that repentance must precede forgiveness. Without repentance there can be no forgiveness. This is true of God’s offer of forgiveness to us and, as we are to model this in our human relationships, must be true of how we offer forgiveness to others. So when, at the book’s climax, Mack cries out “I forgive you” to the murderer (who is not present and has not sought forgiveness) he cannot offer true forgiveness. Neither can true forgiveness exist where Mack is unable to pursue reconciliation with this man. Forgiveness makes no sense and means nothing if we require it in this way. It may make a person feel better about himself, but it cannot bring about true forgiveness and true reconciliation. And so Young teaches a therapeutic, inadequate and unbiblical understanding of forgiveness.
There are few doctrines more important to Christian living than this one—understanding how it is that God chooses to communicate with human beings. Though the Bible teaches that Scripture is the “norming norm,” many Christians give precedence to other supposed forms of revelation, and particularly promptings, leadings and “still, small voices.” Sure enough, such an emphasis is seen clearly in The Shack. How will we hear from God in day-to-day life (away from the miraculous shack)? “You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours,” says Sarayu. “Of course you will make mistakes; everybody makes mistakes, but you will begin to better recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship.” And where will we find the Spirit? “You might see me in a piece of art, or music, or silence, or through people, or in Creation, or in your joy and sorrow. My ability to communicate is limitless, living and transforming, and it will always be tuned to Papa’s goodness and love. And you will hear and see me in the Bible in fresh ways. Just don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship—a way of coming to be with us.”
Beyond looking for new revelation, The Shack says little about how God has communicated or will continue to communicate with us in Scripture. There are a couple of times that it mentions the Bible, but never does it point to Scripture as a real authority or as the sufficient Word of God. “In seminary [Mac] had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects… Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?” Here we see Young pointing away from Scripture rather than towards it. Through Mack he scoffs at the idea that God has spoken authoritatively and sufficiently through the Bible. And if he points away from Scripture he points towards subjective promptings and leadings.
Though common, such teaching is dangerous and directly detracts from the sufficiency of Scripture. When we admit that God has not, in the Bible, said all that He needs to say to us, we open the doors for all manner of new revelation, much of which may contradict the Bible. What authority is there if not the Bible? Ultimately the issue of revelation is an issue of authority and too many Christians are willing to trust their own authority over the Bible’s. What authority does Young rely on as he brings teaching here in The Shack? Does he look to a higher authority or does he look mostly to himself? The reader can have no confidence that Young loves and respects God’s Word has He chose to give it to us in Scripture.
The book contains surprisingly little teaching about salvation. When Young does discuss conversion, he places it firmly in the camp of relationship but also uses the stereotypical phrases such as “this is not a religion” and “Jesus isn’t a Christian.” Jesus apparently loves all people in exactly the same way, having judged them worthy of his love. Young also wades dangerously close to universalism saying that Jesus has no interest in making people into Christians. Rather, no matter what faith they come from, he wishes to “join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa.” He denies that all roads lead to him (since most roads lead nowhere) but says instead, “I will travel any road to find you.” Whether Young holds to universalism or not, and whether he believes that all faiths can lead a person to God, the book neither affirms nor refutes.
Many other topics receive less attention but also raise concerns. For example, Jesus comments on religion, politics and economics saying “They are the man-created trinity of errors that ravage the earth and deceives those I care about.” But Young offers no biblical proof that this is something Jesus would teach. In other places God seems to gloss over sin, judging certain sins almost inconsequential. And so it goes.
So where does all of this leave us? It is clear to me that The Shack is a mix of good and bad. Young teaches much that is of value and he teaches it in a slick and effective way. Sadly, though, there is much bad mixed in with the good. As we pursue his major theological thrusts we see that many of them wander away, by varying degrees, from what God tells us in Scripture.
Despite the great amount of poor theology, my greatest concern is probably this one: the book has a quietly subversive quality to it. Young seems set on undermining orthodoxy Christianity. For example, at one point Mack states that, despite years of seminary and years of being a Christian, most of the things taught to him at the shack have never occurred to him before. Later he says, “I understand what you’re saying. I did that for years after seminary. I had the right answers, sometimes, but I didn’t know you. This weekend, sharing life with you has been far more illuminating than any of those answers.”
Throughout the book there is this kind of subversive strain teaching that new and fresh revelation is much more relevant and important than the kind of knowledge we gain in sermons or seminaries or Scripture. Young’s readers seem to be picking up on this. Read this brief Amazon review as an example: “Wish I could take back all the years in seminary! The years the locusts ate???? Systematic theology was never this good. Shack will be read again and again. With relish. Shared with friends, family, and strangers. I can fly! It’s a gift. ‘Discipleship’ will never be lessons again.” Another reviewer warns that many Christians will find the book difficult to read because of their “modern” mindsets. “If one is coming from a strong, propositional and, perhaps, fundamentalist perspective to the Bible, this book certainly will be threatening.” Still another says “This book was so shocking to my “staid” Christianity but it was eye opening to my own thoughts about who I think God is.” At several points I felt as if the author was encouraging the reader to doubt what they know of Christianity—to deconstruct what they know of Christian theology—and to embrace something new. But the faith Young reconstructs is simply not the faith of the Bible.
Eugene Peterson says this book is as good and as important as The Pilgrim’s Progress. Well, it really is not. It is neither as good nor as original a story and it lacks the theological precision of Bunyan’s work. But really, this is a bit of a facile comparison. The Pilgrim’s Progress, after all, is allegory — a story that has a second distinct meaning that is partially hidden behind its literal meaning. The Shack is not meant to be allegory. Nor can The Shack quite be equated with a story like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where C.S. Lewis simply asked (and answered) this kind of question: “What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?” The Shack is in a different category than these more notable Christian works. It seeks to represent the members of the Trinity as they are (or as they could be) and to suggest through them what they might teach were they to appear to us in a similar situation. There is a sense of attempted or perceived reality in this story that is missing in the others. This story is meant to teach theology that Young really believes to be true. The story is a wrapper for the theology. In theory this is well and good; in practice the book is only as good as its theology. And in this case, the theology just is not good enough.
Because of the sheer volume of error and because of the importance of the doctrines reinvented by the author, I would encourage Christians, and especially young Christians, to decline this invitation to meet with God in The Shack. It is not worth reading for the story and certainly not worth reading for the theology.
[http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/21753.htm]
One book that was recommended to us was The Shack. (A shack is a small simple wooden house that is in poor condition.) It has created quite a stir among the Christian community in North America, and many non-Christians are reading it as well even though it is very obviously Christian. In a little more than two years it has sold well over 2,000,000 copies and only 300 dollars was spent advertising it. So, what is special about this book? Let me quote parts of an interview the Servant magazine had with the author: a missionary kid, William Paul Young (a distant relative-in-law of Peggy’s).
What does the shack represent? “It’s a metaphor, really, for the decrepit house of the soul that we build over time. It’s where we hide our pain, our lostness, our secrets and addictions. Our lies are the fabric that holds the house together and we decorate it with the façade that we want other people to see, changing the colours as people’s expectations change. But the corruption inside the shack is never touched by all the performance on the outside.”
What is the central message of the book? “It’s first of all about the character of God. Is He good and is He involved? So often we paint God as demanding perfection and setting the bar so high we can’t reach it and then being disgusted at our inability…. The second question is: who am I to God – the issue of our identity…. In the story of the prodigal (son) there is never any question whether or not the two boys are his (the father’s) sons. The question really is: when are they finally going to realize the love of the father? His love is constant but the boys don’t understand and one turns to rebellion and one to religion.”
Which one are you? I’m the religious one. I was a performer and my identity was in being approved and always being right. Then I was involved in adultery and it just about killed me. It took 11 years for Kim (Paul’s wife) and me to get through that. I also grew up on the mission field inside another culture where I never seemed to fit. I was very disconnected from my parents who had no clue about the sexual abuse I was experiencing both in the tribe and at boarding school. Shame was so deep in my life that it was the motivation for everything I did. When I accomplished something or did things that people approved or applauded I always felt like I’d lied my way to it or faked it. That was the reality inside the shack I had spent 38 years building. After it all went tumbling down I spent the next 11 years dealing with all the stuff inside…. By the grace of God I came out of that process at the end of 2004 with no more secrets and no reputation to protect. Joy has become my constant companion, my identity is in Christ, Kim and I are good, and I was the same person in every situation. That was just unbelievable to me.”
How would you advise parents involved in ministry or missions?“ Sometimes we get hold of a goal or vision and we think we’ve finally found something that’s going to give us a sense of worth and identity and we’re going to do great things for God. So we run right at it, right past our kids and our spouses and friends and the people who would intersect our path if we just walked in the presence of God. It’s important to make decisions based on the people in your life, not the value of a goal or a product or end result….”
Do all paths lead to God? “I have never believed this. The path narrows to one man, the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In the book Mac (the main character) asks Jesus, ‘Do all roads lead to Papa (God)?’ And he’s told, ‘No, most roads don’t lead anywhere. But I will go down any road to find you….’”
Your character Mac receives healing for his pain. What about those who long for that healing but haven’t heard God speak? “…The whole process of the healing of the soul is unique to each person because the damage has been unique. Only God is big enough to take your pile of knotted-up string and untie it one knot at a time in the right order so that the string doesn’t break. That takes time because He won’t abuse you in order to heal you. You are where you are at this time in God’s purposes. It comes down again to the basic questions: is He good and is He involved? If you can stand in the middle of the quagmire of whatever you’re dealing with and plant your left foot on ‘He’s good’ and your right foot on ‘He’s involved’ then you can live inside a day’s worth of grace. We don’t have to scramble to figure out our own healing.”
How has the success of this book changed you? “….In 2005 I told God, ‘I’ll never again ask you to bless anything that I do because I’m done with religious performance. But if You’ve got something You’re blessing and it would be okay for me to hang around that, I would be all over it, whether it’s cleaning toilets or shining shoes or holding the door open.’ The book doesn’t add anything to my significance. My identity is in Jesus. I know I walk with a limp. I know where I’ve come from. I know every breath is grace.”
How would you like people to remember Paul Young? As an enigma of grace. My life just doesn’t make sense. When you’re dealing with a human being it’s easy to feel like you’ve extended too much grace and you want to give up. But just look at creation. How many shades of green are there? What a wastefulness of green! And in our relationship to God we cannot go deep enough to run out of the wastefulness of His grace. There’s more than enough. He keeps on giving even when it’s unexpected and undeserved. This flood of grace is all around us because that’s just the way His love is.”
Even though there are things in the book that may make you cringe and maybe even upset there is also much that can be very helpful.
The two mega-themes of this novel are the love of God and human suffering. Those are about the two biggest topics around. As such, this book is an attempt at theodicy, that is, justifying the ways of God in the face of suffering and evil in the world. It is no small task.
Before I share my assessment of this book, let me begin by laying my cards on the table. I am not a great fan of fiction. Probably 97% of my reading is non-fiction. Thus the literary merits of the book will not here be discussed. Also, I happen to think that theology is quite important, especially today when so much of the church is anti-intellectual, ahistorical and theologically illiterate. Thus I read this book with a careful theological eye as much as with an eye to an intriguing novel.
Finally, as mentioned, this book is in fact an exercise in theodicy[1]. Since my PhD is actually in an area of theodicy, I have read a fair bit on the subject over the years. And with at least several millennia worth of material written on the topic, one can ask whether anything new or substantial can be said about it all. Does this book contribute anything new or of value?
So these three factors obviously colour how I have read this book. And I realize that different books will grab people differently. Some would rather get their theology and biblical understanding through a work of fiction than a large tome of systematic theology. And some people are gripped more by their emotions than by their intellect. God is able, in other words, to speak to us in different ways through different means, and we must appreciate such diversity.
Many people have found this to be a life changing book, a mind-blowing experience, and a spiritual stick of dynamite. So what about me? All in all I think it is a helpful volume that may well speak to many, bring about healing and understanding, and minister in pastoral and spiritual ways. By using the medium of fiction, complete with a gripping and emotive story line, it may be able to convey truths that for some would not be forthcoming in a work of nonfiction.
The plot quite simply is this. Three and a half years after a man – Mack - loses his young daughter to a vicious serial killer, he gets an invitation to meet face to face with God; indeed, with all three members of the Godhead. The weekend encounter takes place at the very same secluded shack where the attack on his daughter took place. The encounter with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will forever change his life as he directly challenges God about the pain, grief, bitterness and anger which he is carrying, along with the millions of unanswered questions he has had to struggle with for so long.
So what does one tell a devastated father who has had about the worst thing that can possibly happen to him? Or more specifically, what can God tell such a person? How can God break into this man’s life, and both comfort him as well as help him to make sense of his nightmare?
That in part is the stuff of theodicy, and is as old – at least – as the book of Job, penned perhaps three millennia ago. And just as Job did not have all of his questions answered, or at least not in the way that he expected, so too here with Mack. In fact, he experiences an encounter with God which in itself is much, if not most, of the answer. Indeed, God’s presence in times of trouble has always been a large part of the answer. Individuals whys and how comes are often not answered, but a bigger understanding and awareness of who God is tends to be the more important outcome. Job could say that before his troubles, he had heard about God, but after his suffering, he had seen God.
So what then is God’s answer to Mack? Or more specifically, what is God’s answer as understood and represented by the author, William Young? As I said, it is hard to come up with anything radically new on such age-old questions. And Young generally reiterates some basic Christian truths that evangelicals for quite some time have tried to present. He just may have done this in a new, more forceful and moving fashion.
The heart of this is that God is overwhelmingly a God of love, and everything he does is done out of supreme love. There is an eternal love relationship between the three members of the Trinity, and that love oozes out toward us, his creatures. Of course love by its nature cannot be coerced or forced upon someone, and it can be rejected. Somehow, as theologians have tried to argue over the centuries, the God of the Bible is a God of love, and yet is also a sovereign God. Thus He is in charge of all that happens, and nothing surprises him or is outside of his knowledge or purposes.
But he is not directly the author of evil. God hates evil and injustice and cruelty far more than we ever will. Yet somehow he is able to work his purposes out of what seem to be the most dark and hideous situations. God can and does bring good out of evil. And as the supreme example of this, consider the worst horror ever to have happened in human history – the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It in fact turned out to be the greatest good ever undertaken by God. It is an unfathomable mystery, yet a clear teaching of Scripture.
Why did Mack’s six-year-old daughter have to go through this hellish abduction and murder? We may not know the specific answers to such questions, but we can know of God and his character, as revealed in Scripture, and as revealed in his Son. The incarnation gives us a God who is close to everyone of us, and who shares our grief and sorrows. Suffering is something which God knows all about. Any questions we might have about the presence of evil and suffering in this world are questions which God himself has dealt with, as the eternal Trinity was somehow temporarily broken up, and in some way, put to death, for our wellbeing.
These are deep truths which none of us mere mortals can begin to understand, but somehow God had been there and done that. Jesus is a man acquainted with grief and familiar with sorrows. Why particular tragedies and horrendous evils occur we cannot know, but we can know that a God of infinite love never leaves us, never forsakes us, and is with us during every moment of our tests and trials.
Indeed, the incredibly, unfathomably, deep, deep love of God for us is a major theme of this book. Again, it is an old Christian truth, but one vividly rendered even more real in the form of this work of fiction. God is absolutely crazy about us. Even if I was the only person on the planet, Jesus would still have died in my place to save me from my sins and to restore me to an intense love relationship with God.
But knowledge and awareness of this love is greatly distorted and clouded by our own selfishness, sin, and sense of independence. We think we can find joy anywhere but with our creator and redeemer. But that is just not possible. Only in Him is life in all its fullest. And often it is the hardships and agonies of life that drive us away from self, and to the source of true joy, peace and happiness.
Thus suffering has a real soul-making function, as many believers have argued over the centuries. It is often in our greatest pains that we draw nearest to God. God of course has not drawn closer to us – he has never left us. But we stray from God by our selfish striving for complete independence. But that only makes things worse. Only by surrendering to his love, and renouncing our own waywardness and spirit of independence, can we experience the love relationship that God so much desires for us. That is unfortunately perhaps the hardest thing we can do: to let go of self and selfish ambitions, and surrender to the one who made us and loves us, and knows what is best for us.
Of course all this is a mere broad-brush theological summary of the traditional Christian understanding. These points are made much more vividly, powerfully and directly in this moving and transforming novel. Thus I am not doing real justice to the book here. One will have to read it for oneself, and see what impact it might have.
But an important part of the book’s value, I suppose, lies in something almost all Christians must have desired upon many occasions: to have a face to face encounter with the living God. Not just a dream, or a vision, or a meditative communion with God, but an actual, in the flesh meeting, just as the early disciples of Jesus had enjoyed. Imagine just what that would be like! Indeed, the hiddenness or seeming absence of God is a very real dilemma for most believers. We follow a God who is spiritual, while we are material. Thus we meet with God in prayer, or reflection, or the sacraments. But it often seems that in our daily walk, we must hold on to his presence by faith. And that faith is sorely tested in times of grief, sorrow and tragedy. Indeed, it often seems that during these dark times God is most absent, or at least appears to be. Thus we may all long to have such an encounter as Mack had. And of course one day, in the next life, we will. But Young seeks to paint a picture of what such an encounter might look like here and now. And thus the value of the fictional approach – to make more real certain spiritual realities which we already know through works of non-fiction.
For many this book will bring them much closer to God, by revealing more carefully what the wonderful triune God we serve is really like. It is hoped that many will benefit from this book, and that it will indeed serve a purpose much as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did over three centuries earlier. This then is my general positive endorsement of the book. But that is not to say that it is without problems, or areas of concern. I thus invite the reader to peruse the second part of my review for some particular critical assessments of this book.
I have offered my general (and positive) assessments of The Shack in part one of this review. Here I wish to address a few areas of concern I had with the book. They should not deter potential readers of this book, and they are not meant to detract from the overall value of the book. But they must be stated.
Obviously no one is perfect, and we are all fallen and finite. Thus we must be careful here, especially when we dare to write about such huge topics as God and the problem of suffering. None of us have all the truth, and our knowledge in partial. We see through a glass darkly, as Paul informs us. So humility and care is needed whenever we seek to talk about such matters. Thus William Young has taken a stab at some of the harder topics to cover, and he deserves credit for trying. Yet we must all acknowledge that he will not get everything right, and there will of course be areas in which fellow believers may wish to disagree with him. These then are some of the concerns I noted as I read through the book.
One might ask whether a work of fiction can even do justice to such topics. But God has often used fiction in the past to help convey biblical, theological and spiritual truths. I already mentioned The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. It has served believers well for centuries, and still blesses many. More recently The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis have also been mightily used of God to teach biblical themes. So without question there is a place for fiction in dealing with such theological and apologetic tasks.
Let me first deal with Young’s depiction of God. Although a work of fiction, Young is seeking here to represent actual biblical and theological truths about God. Much of this book in fact is Young’s attempt to try to portray God aright, and to deal with misunderstandings and distorted views of the Biblical picture of God. I must say I initially found myself thinking that Young’s depiction of God the Father is much like the way he is represented in the two recent films, Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. That is, God is a joke-telling Black American with a great sense of humour. Indeed, the Father is presented in this book as a large, jovial Black American woman. The Spirit is presented as a wispy Asian female, and Jesus is presented as a male of Middle Eastern appearance.
Now this need not necessarily cause problems. True, God in Scripture is primarily represented as male, but of course ultimately God is spirit, and is above sex or gender. Yet he has created us – male and female – in his image. While some feminine images are used of God in the Bible, overwhelmingly God is presented in male terms, imagery and language. Later in the book the Father does appear as a male to Mack. It is because Mack had a horribly abusive father when he was a child, so he needed a maternal presentation of God at first. So no real damage is done here. Again it is a work of fiction. And in reality God can appear to us in any form that he chooses to.
Another possible area of concern is that by so stressing the love of God, there is always the tendency to get the Biblical portrait of God out of kilter. That is, God is love to be sure, but he is also holy, just, righteous, and so on. Often these other attributes get lost or minimised in a strong emphasis on the love of God. And Young at times seems to move in this direction. Fortunately, he will balance things out on most occasions, thus preventing any real concerns about heresy (which already some are expressing about this book). For example, an unbalanced emphasis on the love of God, to the exclusion of his hatred of sin, or judgment on ungodliness, has led some believers into embracing a type of universalism, the idea that in the end everyone will be saved.
It is true that God through Christ has made a way for all of us to be accepted in the beloved. But we still must take the steps to realize that invitation. And that involves repentance and turning from ourselves, and submitting to God. Fortunately Young seems to include this, when it looks like he is just about to go over the theological edge. For example, at one place (p. 182) Jesus is talking of all sorts of people coming to Him, and he says “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa”. To which Mack rightly asks, “Does that mean that all roads will lead to you?” But then Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere”.
Or consider another episode where the Father tells Mack that because of the work of Jesus, “I am now fully reconciled to the whole world”. This could be understood as a case of universalism, but fortunately the statement is then qualified by God saying that “reconciliation is a two way street, and I have done my part”. The inference is that sinners then have to do their part (repentance and faith, eg), which presents the balanced Biblical picture. And on pages 225-226 we finally hear such talk of the need for repentance and trust. So a potentially unbiblical position is here at least brought back into some kind of balance.
A related concern is that this important emphasis on love and relationships as being the heart of what Christianity is all about can lead to antinomianism and an unbalanced view of the workings between law and grace. For example, God tells Mack to not worry about following rules: “The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus… Don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship – a way of coming to be with us” (pp. 197-198).
Of course one wants to take the spirit of this, and see the importance of a love relationship over against legalism and so on. But a fine line needs to be trod here, and it is unhelpful to set law against grace. Both are given by God, and both are used in his purposes. Young’s idea here seems almost to be that we must choose one or the other, that they are polar opposites. But Scripture has a very high view of law. Sure, law cannot save us, but law is from God, and reflects who he is. To argue that we not concern ourselves with any rules means that we not only dismiss the 613 laws and commands given in the Old Testament, but that the many commands given in the New Testament are also to be treated as irrelevant and something to not worry about.
No one is saved by keeping rules, but once saved, and out of gratitude, we do seek to keep the rules that Christ and the apostles have laid down for us. By so emphasising love relationships (which admittedly, many evangelicals need to hear again, and hear in clear and forceful terms), Young seems to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes loving relationships are at the heart of what God wants for us, but it is not at the expense of holy living, and/or seeking to please God in all that he asks of us.
Other potential concerns crop up. Three times in the book Mack tells us of the paucity and general unhelpfulness of his earlier theological training in seminary. Compared with his encounter with the living God, it fades in comparison, which would be expected. But it seems that Young is taking a bit of a dig at seminaries and theological training here. Hopefully he is not, but it seems to come out that way, both here and elsewhere in the book.
But of course there should be no dichotomy between knowledge of God (which is what theology seeks to do) and experiencing the presence of God. The two should reinforce each other. Both are important. Right living (orthopraxy) and right belief (orthodoxy) go together, and the one feeds off the other. Paul warns us to watch our lives and our teaching carefully. It is not one or the other, but both. And while theology seems to be mildly scoffed at in this book, the book in fact is one big exercise in theology, albeit in fictional form. Young is seeking to present a theology of God, with an apologetic spin. That is the same sort of thing all good evangelical seminaries seek to do. So this may have been an unnecessary slight to theological education and seminary learning.
Another area which will bother some (at least those with some theological background) is the way the Trinity is presented in the book. The idea of any sort of hierarchy in the Trinity is slammed here. “Hierarchy would make no sense among us” the Father tells Mack, for example (p. 122). Now that happens to be a position that some good evangelicals hold to. Most however would probably argue that there is some sort of hierarchy in the Trinity – certainly not a hierarchy of essence or nature, but of role or function.
Theologically conservative Christians tend to argue that just as there is a hierarchy of roles or functions in the Godhead, so too God has ordained such a hierarchy in human relationships, for example with the husband being the head of the wife and family, as Scripture suggests. Young would evidently reject both types of hierarchy.
All this is being debated in evangelical circles, as I mentioned. So Young is simply taking one side on this debate here, and not all evangelicals will be happy with his position. Young is insisting that his view is the way it is, but other believers might beg to differ.
Other related issues arise. Since Young is so against hierarchy and power, and sees them as antithetical to love and relationship, he seems to again go too far in one direction. Thus he says all human institutions – be they government, economies, marriage or family – are built on hierarchy and power, and therefore are all counter to his ways and purposes.
But it would seem that God in fact created many of these institutions, so we should not be so quick to dismiss them or rubbish them. God has ordained the institutions of the state, and of the family, for example. Clearly there is hierarchy in the state, and the use of power is God-ordained. So not all cases of human hierarchy and power are wrong. Again, believers can debate whether there should be any hierarchy in the home (as between husband and wife) but surely some hierarchy should exist between parent and child.
Other points of concern could be mentioned. On page 120 we find the Father telling Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment…” Well, yes and no. Sin brings bad consequences on us, and this seems to be Paul’s train of thought in Romans 1 when he speaks of homosexuality as being both sinful, and in a sense, its own punishment. But we also have many clear texts telling us that there is a separate punishment for sin (which Jesus of course took upon himself) and future punishment, which unbelievers will experience eternally in the form of hell. So Young seem to be unnecessarily downplaying some clear biblical truths here, in the interests of stressing the love and relationship side of things.
Defenders of the book – and perhaps Young himself – might argue that sometimes a push to extremes is needed to correct long-held wrong understandings and theologies that evangelicals have held to. Thus the emphasis on love and relationship may tend to go too far, at the expense of other biblical truths, but these defenders might argue that this is necessary, as we need to wake believers out of their slumber, and get them to realise once again the wonder of a deep, intimate love relationship with God.
I agree with the aim, but I am not sure if I am happy with the means. Yes church history tends to be a pendulum swing, of one extreme being matched by another extreme, and so on, in the hopes of finding the biblically balanced middle ground. While sympathetic to what Young is trying to do here, as one who feels we must pay attention to the whole counsel of God (as Paul exhorts us), and as a theologian and one who want to let Scripture speak in all its fullness, I cringe at times at some of the lack of balance presented here.
But having said all that, I think that on the whole this book may achieve a lot of good for the Body of Christ. As I said at the end of Part One, this book may well help many. I hope it does. As with all things, let the reader beware. The reader needs to read with critical eyes, testing everything that is being said according the word of God. We all need to be like the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily to see if what was being told them was true (Acts 17:11).
But get the book if you are interested, and give it a read, being open to what God may seek to achieve in you in the process. I invite readers of this book to share their thoughts here with us in the comments’ section. Let the discussion begin!
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[1] Theodicy refers to arguments seeking to vindicate the justice of God in a world in which evil and suffering exists. All Christians, whatever they believe about origins, have to face up to questions of theodicy