The Shack by William Paul Young

The Shack
By William Paul Young
Audio Book
Library (CD/Print)
Rating: 7 of 10

I’m a little behind the curve on this book.  It came out while I was in seminary, and in seminary you don’t read anything that hasn’t been assigned.  While The Shack is a little theologically off at times, I found that overall it was a compelling story.

The basic question of The Shack is the question of theodicy, which has to do with justifying God (theo – God, dike – justice).  Why does a good God let bad things happen?  This is a dangerous path to explore, but I think Young has imagined a better answer to the question through the form of narrative than others have through other forms.

The plot involves a father named Mac whose daughter was abducted and killed while on a camping trip.  Mac finds himself in a “deep sadness” for years following the tragedy.  One day he receives a mysterious letter from “Papa” inviting him to the shack for the weekend.  “Papa” is his wife’s name for God.  He wonders if it is a joke, but he decides to go anyway.  The rest of the story involves Mac’s experience with Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu, the Trinitarian God of The Shack.

I found the first half of this book very moving. I was transported into the story.  Mac’s situation grabbed my heart.  His pain and the questions surrounding it became my pain and my questions.  I, like Mac, wanted answers, and Young did an excellent job of providing powerful dialogue between God and Mac.  In the end, the answers tend not to be so much around ideas as trust in God’s goodness.  Is God good?  Is God trustworthy?  If so, then we can only trust that the pain and suffering in this world will ultimately be redeemed.  As Papa says, “We’re not justifying it [suffering and pain].  We are redeeming it” (127).

Some of the common critiques I have heard of The Shack didn’t really stick with me.  I thought the Trinitarian theology was sufficient.  Perhaps because of the plot device of having three different visible persons representing God there were times where Young missed the theological mark, but these did not bother me very much.  Then there’s Papa, God the Father, as a big black woman.  Personally, I loved this unexpected portrayal of God the Father.

While I found the story overall compelling, I do still have some critiques.  First, Young make the same mistake describing God (Papa, Jesus, Sarayu) that every search-for-the-historical-Jesus book makes: despite casting the Father as a black woman, God ends up looking and sounding a lot like the author, which in this case is a middle-class white American.  God is just a little too close and familiar (immanent) and not quite incomprehensible enough (transcendent).

Second, Young has a very low view of the church.  The church comes across as a dead and dry institution.  A relationship with God seems to be primarily about one’s personal relationship with God and has little to do with community.  The plot structure of the book is inherently flawed in this way.  Mac meets God alone in a shack.  One could imagine a similar story populated by several other human characters wrestling alongside Mac with God.

Third, Young is a little too optimistic for me about the possibility of salvation through other religions.  I don’t discount that there is much about God that we Christians can learn from other religions, but if a basic tenant of our belief is that God became a human in Jesus, I think this is a truth we must share with others and a truth we must claim has some kind of real and even eternal significance for others.

I think this book could be extremely helpful to someone who was struggling with a major loss or tragedy in life.  It is a kind of pastoral book providing comfort in the face of pain.  Young tells a powerful story to answer complex questions, and amidst its flaws herein lays the magic of this book.  In a way that other non-fiction books do not, The Shack engages not just our intellect but also our emotions and imaginations.

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