My friend Annie discusses some of the Google searches that land folks on her blog.
As for me, Google traffic is almost always Shack-related. (In fact, I’m the top 2 results for “the shack theological errors.” Not sure how I feel about that.)
So if you landed here looking for info on The Shack, welcome. Kick off your shoes and stay awhile. And please know that I try to do more than bash popular books.
(If you missed them, read parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, along with a more positive Interlude.)
The biggest problem with The Shack, the one that grieves me the most, is that it offers a sugar pill to treat a cancer. It seeks to reconcile the existence of a good God with a world that is obviously filled with evil, to explain human suffering in the face of divine sovereignty. That is a good aim-many people, believers and nonbelievers, struggle to believe in the goodness of God when faced with suffering like what Mack has seen. But Young seriously fumbles the ball in seeking to answer Mack’s questions.
There are points where it looks like things are going in the right direction: Mack sees that outside God, he has no frame of reference for judging good and evil, and that in questioning God’s rule of the universe, he is accusing God of wrong. But at the crucial moment, when he brings up his daughter’s murder, he is told that that event had nothing to do with God.
“But I still don’t understand why Missy had to die.”
“She didn’t have to, Mackenzie. This was no plan of Papa’s. Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes.” (165, emphasis added)
Of course, no one says that God needs evil to accomplish his purposes. But the Bible is plain that he uses evil to accomplish his purposes-to carry out his plan. This is entirely compatible with humans making real choices with real consequences. That is why Joseph can say to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen 50:20). It’s why Peter can say of the murder of Jesus that he was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” but also “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23).
This does not make God the author of sin– in upholding the universe by the word of his power, he uses sin sinlessly to bring about his own glory and the good of his people. The free agency of man and the divine sovereignty of God are not mutually exclusive. But Young’s assumptions about free will cause him to make human autonomy the one thing with which God will not interfere: “If you could only see how all this ends and what we will achieve without the violation of one human will” (125). Ultimately, free will in The Shack becomes God. It is the thing to which God must submit, the ultimate reality to which even he is subject.
Of course, the biblical teaching of God’s sovereignty over all things, including human suffering, is initially hard to confront. On the face of it, Young’s answer seems so much nicer. But I can testify from personal experience that the knowledge that no suffering I experience comes apart from my Father’s plan is a great comfort. Think about it– if our suffering is not part of God’s plan, where does it ultimately come from? Can’t he see it coming? Couldn’t he stop it? Or must he play defense, reacting and trying to make the best of the devil’s– or our– attempts to foul things up? On the contrary, consider Charles Spurgeon’s response to the suffering in his own life:
It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, not sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.
The Shack tries to tackle some of the most difficult questions of the Christian life. These questions are real; they are legitimate; they are crucial. But the best The Shack has to offer in response is a God who shrugs his shoulders and says, “I didn’t have anything to do with that.” The sometimes-bitter pill of God’s sovereignty is harder to swallow, but it is the answer the Bible gives, and it’s ultimately the only answer that brings real hope to those who suffer.
One of the things that consistently struck me as distasteful in The Shack is the idea that it was presenting all this great new truth about God that no one had heard before. All the characters consistently mock and parody traditional Christianity, as though the church (which is, of course, not perfect) isn’t getting anything right, the poor fools. The book seems to assume that Christianity is (and has always been) joyless, legalistic, un-heart-moving, cold theological fact– but that’s OK, because now William Young and The Shack are here to lead us into the light of day.
This comes out even more fully in “Is The Shack Heresy?“, a response posted on Windblown Media’s website by Wayne Jacobsen, one of the book’s co-publishers. This response isn’t helpful. Jacobsen doesn’t really respond to criticisms of the book, except to say they are unwarranted and come from “self-appointed doctrine police” who are “either threatened by its success, or… want to ride on it to push their own fear-based agenda.” Well, thanks for that. But two comments were especially revealing:
This is not the angry and tyrannical God that religion has been using for 2000 years to beat people into conformity and we are not surprised that this threatens the self-proclaimed doctrine police.
and
We realize this would be a challenging read for those who see no difference between the religious conditioning that underlies Christianity as it is often presented in the 21st Century and the simple, powerful life in Christ that Jesus offered to his followers.
These comments suggest two things:
That kind of arrogance raises a huge red flag with me, as I’ve noted on another subject.
Few things are all good or all bad. The Shack, from all I can tell, was written out of a deep desire to show people a relational aspect of God they might not have seen, to show that God is not cold or callous in the face of human suffering. This is a good thing.
There are also plenty of things The Shack rejects that need to be rejected. God is not white (although I don’t think that’s a very widespread error). People don’t always suffer because they’ve done something wrong– sometimes innocent people (from a human perspective) suffer and evil people prosper. Lifeless, legalistic religiosity is not what Jesus died to bring his people into. I’m right with Young on all these points.
I also underlined several passages I thought were good. Here’s a sampling:
“Mackenzie, the Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust. Everything is about him. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him.” (95)
“Mackenzie, I am what some would say ‘holy, and wholly other than you.’ The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.” (98)
“…created everything that actually exists, including what you consider the bad stuff,” Sarayu completed his sentence. “But when I created it, it was only Good, because that is just the way I am… You humans, so little in your own eyes. You are truly blind to your own place in the Creation. Having chosen the ravaged path of independence, you don’t even comprehend that you are dragging the entire Creation along with you.” She shook her head and the wind sighed through the trees nearby.” “So very sad, but it won’t be this way forever.” (131-32)
“Then it is you who determines good and evil. You become the judge. And to make things more confusing, that which you determine to be good will change over time and circumstance. And then beyond that and even worse, there are billions of you each determining what is good and what is evil. So when your good and evil clashes with your neighbor’s, fights and arguments ensue and even wards break out… And if there is no reality of good that is absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for the word evil.” (134-35)
“I used your choices to work perfectly into my purposes. There are many folk like you, Mackenzie, who end up locking themselves into a very small place with a monster that will ultimately betray them, that will not fill or deliver what they thought it would. Imprisoned with such a terror, they once again have the opportunity to return to me. The very treasure they trusted in will become their undoing.” (189)
“Mack, I am God. I forget nothing. I know everything. So forgetting for me is the choice to limit myself. Son… because of Jesus, there is now no law demanding that I bring your sins back to mind. They are gone when it comes to you and me, and they run no interference in our relationship.” (224)
In this second installment of my review of The Shack I’ll address some key theological errors I believe the book presents. This isn’t an exhaustive list, just a selection of three things I found significant.
That The Shack is a work of fiction raises the question of whether a theological review is appropriate. Of course, ultimately believers must test everything by Scripture, but many have commented that it’s not fair to judge this book as though it were a theological treatise. I’m not sure that objection really works here. The Shack, as I pointed out in yesterday’s post, is a little different than most other fiction works within a Christian framework, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy or Lewis’ Narnia books. It’s different because it actually depicts the persons of the Trinity as characters, and puts words in their mouth that purport to present theological truth. Also, as I’ve pointed out before, the book is being marketed and reviewed as one that teaches things about God, so it’s certainly fair to evaluate it on those terms.
As I continue the review of The Shack, please remember what I said in Part 1:
All I can do is say, with a clear conscience, that I’m going to these lengths because I love God, and I believe this book misrepresents him. I love God’s church, and I believe many of the ideas in this book are dangerous to it.
Specific theological issues
The book has an incorrect view of the Trinity. The scars on Papa’s wrists, showing that she suffered with Jesus on the cross, point to an early Trinitarian heresy called patripassianism-a view that misunderstands the distinction of roles among the persons of the Trinity. Far more problematic, though, is the firm assertion that there is no sense of submission of any kind among the persons of the Godhead-contrary to many statements of Jesus, including John 6:38: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” The Bible presents the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as fully equal, and yet submitting in specific ways, the Son to the Father and the Spirit to the Father and the Son. The Shack sees any such submission or obedience as inherently bad.
What then, the reader may ask, of the relationship of men and women to God? Surely submission and obedience are necessary there? No, says Young:
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. (145, emphasis added)
The radical egalitarianism here extends to humans being made equal with God, joining him in the “circle of relationship.” This is a far cry from the God of the Bible: a God who does indeed enter into relationship with his people, but as a Creator free to give commands to his creation (for example, Gen 2:16-17, Ex 20:1-17, most of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, etc, etc).
The issue of universalism has been one of the more common critiques of The Shack. I’ll just simply point out that the book doesn’t subtly imply universalism, it matter-of-factly states it. Jesus is the “best way any human can relate” to God-a nice thing to say, unless he’s actually the only way, as Jesus says in John 14:6 and John reiterates in 1 John 2:23. God is now “fully reconciled to the world,” not merely those who believe in him (the distinction is made, 192). In Jesus, God has forgiven “all humans” for their sins (225). (Someone might object that Papa says “only some choose relationship”, but according to this very sentence, has not God also forgiven their failure to choose relationship?) This book does not treat sin the way the Bible does. It has no concept of sin as falling short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), and certainly no sense of God’s wrath being poured out on sin (Rom 1:18, 1 Thess 1:10).
The Shack, at this writing, is the top-selling trade paperback in the nation according to the NY Times Bestseller List. It carries endorsements from Eugene Peterson, Michael W. Smith, and Wynonna Judd, and copies are being passed around like candy in Christian circles. Readers say it has changed the way they think about God-indeed, changed their life entirely.
And yet, here I am writing a series of posts about what I believe are serious problems in the book. I’m aware that this might make me look like the stereotypical Reformed guy who can find a heresy under ever bush. All I can do is say, with a clear conscience, that I’m going to these lengths because I love God, and I believe this book misrepresents him. I love God’s church, and I believe many of the ideas in this book are dangerous to it.
So here goes. I’ve divided my comments into three four sections, which I’ll post separately. Today we’ll consider some overarching themes of the book.
General tenor of the book
The overall air of the book was frustrating to me. The Shack is anti-theological– overall I got the impression that the word theological was being used as a synonym for bad, lifeless, or untrue. The main character’s seminary education has given him all sorts of false ideas about God, and he constantly offers incorrect views that the persons of the Trinity mock and correct. Ironically, at the same time God is constantly stating facts about himself-facts that are, by definition, theological. This is the tired false distinction of doctrine vs. relationship-as if you can be in a relationship with someone and not know any facts about them!
I also found The Shack to be anti-Bible-the Bible is never mentioned as a way to know God, and Mack denigrates his previous understanding of Scripture. It is anti-church- the visible church is, after all, an institution, and God says “I don’t create institutions-never have, never will” (179). Mack’s religious background, like his theological education, is always referred to negatively (including his family devotions as a child, 107). It is anti-Christians-although God says he is “especially fond” of individuals and of the whole world, believers as a group are never mentioned positively. Christians, in The Shack, are people who don’t understand God, who use religion to manipulate others-the term itself is even denigrated (182).
The book’s portrayal of God, I believe, borders on the idolatrous. It is one thing to have a story with a lion who serves as a Christ figure; it is quite another to put words into the mouths of the persons of the Trinity. When you’re having God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit say things that originate in your own imagination, the line between fiction and theology has gotten blurry, and it calls for some careful stepping that Young does not deliver. The most obvious example of this is the use of women to depict God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, but I was more troubled by some specifics. For instance, God the Father is a black woman named Papa, and her dialogue in places sounds like a character from Gone with the Wind: “Guess that’s jes’ the way I is… Sho ‘nuff!” (119). Papa engages in bathroom humor (88, 121), and there’s a scene where she and Jesus bump into each other in the kitchen, spill a bowl of sauce, and go through a slapstick routine while cleaning it up (104-05). I’m just stodgy enough to think this is not an appropriate portrayal of the God before whom the angels in heaven hide their face (Isaiah 6:1-3).
