Revisiting your own Shack

Fergus Ryan

The Shack is the story of Mack and his great sorrow and terrible guilt at the violent loss of his youngest daughter Missy (I won’t expose too much of the fast-moving plot). Mack travels to the place of the terrible events, a remote mountain shack, only to meet there God-in-Trinity, who leads him through the very darkest of his painful places, revealing a radical picture of God and evil that overturns his traditional church-taught views, and bringing healing and forgiveness in the light of this new relationship with the Triune God.

You’ll come away from The Shack with your heart moved, a new experience of the deeply personal love of a very involved God-in-Trinity, and a greater readiness to journey through the paths of forgiveness at the darkest of all places – the ‘shack’ where the great sorrow happened. I strongly recommend you read it. And keep some Kleenex nearby.

CONTROVERSY

So why is the book so controversial, and why does it make some people very angry, citing Young’s theology as ‘heresy’? Young’s own personal experience of church legalism, ‘guilt’-edged Bibles, physical abuse as a child from tribesmen at a foreign mission base where his parents were missionaries, a God who supposedly makes evil happen for good purposes, and his own personal moral failure, all certainly end up in the mix somewhere. His theology is, in fact, very like our own at many places. I think we’d call it ‘relational theology’, certainly by the end Mack would. He has wrestled with God over the great evil that has fallen on his life. And he knows now that God is not the author of evil, but hates it.

Many centuries ago Augustine wrestled with how evil could exist in a world where God was totally ‘Sovereign’, by which he meant in control of everything that happens. He attempted to solve the problem created by this view of ‘sovereignty’ as meticulous total control by saying that “even when God’s will is being opposed his will is thereby being done”! His views have affected everyone. John Calvin, who also placed a premium on this view of God’s sovereignty, believed that “Satan is the servant of the most high God, acting only at his bidding”. The Shack presents an altogether different and more nuanced view, and although we wouldn’t travel just the same road as Young (or Mack) on every detailed point (how God’s foreknowledge fits in, no mention of the role of Satan), his view of God and evil is one we feel is closer to the nature of God’s true relationship with his creation. It’s relational. And of course this isn’t a book about everything that can be said about God and evil.

Much of the criticism of Young, I believe, significantly misrepresents his position, and some is energised by a the very kind of theology against which Papa (and of course Young himself) is arguing in the book. He is charged with universalism – that all roads lead to God, although Papa explicitly denies this, saying thatGod can travel along any road to find lost people. Again Young is charged with teaching the ancient heresy of modalism, that is that God is not really a trinity of persons, but father-son-spirit are simply three modes of the one person of God. But again Papa refutes the very idea, and the three persons of the Trinity clearly interact in the story in a personal and relational way. And Young might have been charged with exactly the opposite heresy, tritheism – that of teaching three gods, except that once again the oneness of God is so often affirmed.

For a critical view of The Shack see Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church here on YouTube. One other YouTube speaker, Bob Botsford, after criticising Young for presenting God theFather as an African American woman (though she is called Papa), moves on further to criticise Young’s presentation of Jesus by saying that then “Jesus is presented in the Shack as… uh… …well, it’s just crazy.” He seems to be about to say that The Shack presents Jesus as a middle-eastern Jewish carpenter! I’m sure I’ve often realised that what I was about to say wasn’t quite fair in some way too! See Botsford’s YouTube criticisms here. I think they’re quite unfair – of course Young does not literally believe that God is an African-American woman called Papa. For a detailed response from one of those who interacted closely with Young during the writing see Wayne Jacobsen‘s blog Is The Shack Heresy?,here. William P Young‘s own story and blog is here.

Finally – if I may be permitted to extend the story – this book is about the ‘Shack’ in all our stories, our ‘Shack’, the place of darkest tragedy and disappointment, or of our own personal failure, the place we fear most and to which we must return in some way, the place where God-in-Trinity is still waiting to meet with us, and walk with us through the process of healing, repentance, and forgiveness. We also meet him at the place of God’s own greatest ‘tragedy’, the Cross. Young himself has asked, as many people have in times of deep sorrow, “Is God good? Is he involved?” The answer we find at the Shack is a definite and wonderful Yes.