Book Review: The Shack by William Paul Young

Title: The Shack

Author: William Paul Young

Publisher: Windblown Media

ISBN: 0-9647292-3-7

Pages: 248

Reviewer: Dan Olinger

The Shack has been #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and currently has more than 10 million copies in print. As I write this, the book has motivated 3,808 customer reviews on Amazon, averaging four out of five stars. It’s made quite an impact.

There are good reasons that it has. It’s a gripping read, something that’s not easy for a novel that is mostly conversation about theology. It’s emotionally intense in several places, and it deals the Biggest Question of All: the problem of evil.

As I read it, I found other reasons as well. It’s a fresh look at God and His relationship with man, and it often re-energized my thinking about God and my passion to know Him better. It encourages the reader to think of God as a “real person”–or rather, three “real persons” perfectly united–with actual personalities in the common sense of the word, rather than as a distant overseer. It’s a powerful book, particularly, I suppose, for people who already want to know God.

In the two years since its publication, it has also engendered a lot of controversy. Three negative reviews have been particularly influential. Tim Challies has posted a good summary of the book’s distinguishing features, including the storyline, on his way to a careful theological analysis of a few key issues; Dallas Seminary’s Glenn Kreider has shared a few observations as well; and Al Mohler devoted most of one of his radio programs to discussing it. (The last half of that program is where most of the discussion occurs.) Since I’ve linked to all of those here, I won’t spend much time on things they’ve already said. Challies and Kreider are worth reading, and Mohler is worth listening to.

The publisher has responded to several of the most commonly expressed concerns here. I suspect that some of the concerns expressed have been overblown, and this response should be read as well.

I’ll start by observing that the author’s stated intent is to begin–to be a “catalyst” for–a discussion. We would expect, then, that at least some issues would be raised without being resolved. Further, the fact that the book is fiction means that the author intends to show rather than to tell, a fact that adds another level of ambiguity to the work. Thus I suspect that accusations of “lack of clarity” are misplaced, or at least overwrought. This is not in the genre of theology text.

Having said that, I do agree with the linked reviewers that the work’s presentation of the Trinity is flawed; it’s hard to miss that. I would suggest, though, that the problem is rooted in another flaw, to which most reviewers have given relatively little space. (Challies does address it briefly under the heading “Portraying God.”)

The Bible (to which the book does allude constantly, though it rarely cites it with chapter and verse) is quite clear in laying out certain of God’s character traits and His consequent likes and dislikes. One of those traits–indeed, the one that seems to define and direct all the others–is holiness (e.g., Ex 15:11; Isa 6:3). God is unusual; in fact, He is unique, unlike anyone or anything else. For that reason God very much dislikes being compared to (as opposed to being contrasted with) anyone or anything else. His second commandment to the covenant nation of Israel was that they should never represent Him in physical form (Ex 20:4-6). Almost immediately they broke this commandment by rendering Him as a golden bull, a symbol of both great value and great strength. Yet though they were worshipping the true God–“This is your Elohim, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Ex 32:4)–and though they were intending to compliment Him in at least two ways, He rejected their worship immediately and intensely–even violently.

So. He doesn’t like to be represented by something; all the metaphors are defective. Just once He chose a representation of Himself; His Second Person became incarnate as a Jewish male, who said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). But in that case we must note that this was not so much a representation, a metaphor, as a revelation, a communication.

What should we expect, then, when we choose to represent God, particularly the other persons of the Godhead, as someone else–say, a large African-American woman named Papa, or an old man with a gray ponytail, or a female Asian sylph named Sarayu? At a minimum, we should expect that such a representation would cause all sorts of problems, misunderstandings, and alleged distortions of the biblical record of the Godhead. And so it has.

But isn’t this more serious than botched communication? Isn’t it a violation of the Second Commandment? Young would apparently not be bothered by that; his Sarayu explains that the sole function of the Ten Commandments was to reveal man’s unrighteousness and thus dismisses the need to obey them, at least since the Cross (202); but we’re not talking about the sacrificial code here, or the feast days, or the leprosy cleansing rituals. We’re talking about God’s personal disgust with inaccurate representations of Himself–and all of our representations of Him are inaccurate. Is it right to seek to know God better by doing something that He finds disgusting? Res ipsa loquitur.

Like most problems, this one causes another one. Since Young has chosen to portray the three persons of the Godhead as human characters, they need to say something, or it wouldn’t be much of a novel. But if these characters are God, then Young is quite literally putting words into God’s mouth(s). And it appears that God doesn’t much care for that either. In both Testaments He condemns–in fact, anathematizes–those who speak in His name when he has not in fact spoken (e.g., Dt 4:2; Rev 22:18). Yet Young seems to state that the conversations described in the book are conversations he has actually had with God–presumably including God’s answers to his questions:

Is the story ‘real’? The story is fiction. I made it up. Now, having said that, I will add that the emotional pain with all its intensity and the process that tears into Mack’s heart and soul are very real. I have my ‘shack,’ the place I had to go through to find healing. I have my Great Sadness . . . that is all real. And the conversations are very real and true. . . .  So is the story true? The pain, the loss, the grief, the process, the conversations, the questions, the anger, the longing, the secrets, the lies, the forgiveness . . . all real, all true. The story in particular . . . fiction.

So what to do with the book? I’ll confess that I’m not a big fan of book-burning, for several reasons. First, the Bible doesn’t seem to endorse the concept. (Yes, I’m aware of Acts 19:19, but I’m inclined to think that it is not intended to be normative for modern Christians.) The Bible is aware of competing ideologies in written form, and it never calls for their destruction; in fact, it occasionally quotes them (e.g., Acts 17:28). Second, given the image of God in even unregenerate man, there is much we can learn about God from bad books, and in even the worst case it’s good stewardship to be aware of the opponent’s devices. And finally, book-burning has never been successful, certainly in the long run.

So, to read or not to read? For believers with well-founded theologies, and whose consciences will allow them to, reading the book has a couple of benefits. Most obviously, it gives us a point of connection with a significant part of our larger culture, a point about which they are passionate. But beyond that, some will find the book a useful impediment to an encrusted faith, a stagnant relationship with the God of Heaven. Discerning readers will find it thought-provoking in a useful sort of way–even when the thoughts it provokes are in opposition to major premises of the work itself.

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Dan Olinger is an elder of Heritage Bible Church and serves as Chairman of the Division of Bible at Bob Jones University.