Thoughts on "The Shack"

I don't have the time to do a polished full-blown review plus it would make no sense given the single-digit readership of this blog. ;-) But since already a few people have asked for my thoughts on the book, here ya go:

So "let me explain...no that would take too long. Let me sum up." I loved the book. Loved it. It was a very refreshing read, especially since I've been reading a lot of "dry" non-fiction lately. Also I have never been so touched by a book - I actually had to stop reading a few times while on the way to work so I wouldn't cry.

At the same time, there were multiple things in the theology presented by the book that I strongly disagreed with to the point of where I don't think I would recommend the book to "baby Christians" for example. So here are my Evernote notes I jotted down while going through the book.

Stuff I Liked

Free will (p. 95) - I loved the thought of how God is sovereign AND humans have choices. The thought the "freedom is incremental" is just great: we can't choose out past, our DNA, our families, etc., but we CAN decide what to do right now.

Truth is Jesus / Jesus is Truth (p. 95) - truth as ALSO being personal rather than ONLY being abstract facts is a great thought that I really agree with. See
"Proper Confidence" by Lesslie Newbigin for a great explanation of "critical realism".


"I'm not like you" (p.97) - YES. God's "otherness" is so important in today's world of the Buddy Christ.

Trinity necessary for love and relationships (p. 101) - Awesome explanation why the Trinity is such a powerful explanation of reality being so relationship-oriented. Kinlaw's "Let's Start With Jesus" is a great look at this in greater depth.

"is all this pain and suffering worth it?" "YES!!" - reminds me of the quote by Dostoevsky.

"The real underlying flaw is you don't think I am good." "You become the judge. And if there is no reality of good that is absolute, then you ahve lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for the word evil" (p.135) - the fact that it comes down to our trust specifically in the Father's goodness that causes the problem of suffering to be "solved" or not is so key. I also love this poke at the postmodern love-hate relationship with language.

"Evil and darkness exist as the absence of good and light" - classic Christian theology here. The devil is not the opposite of God, he is a created being. Evil is not the opposite of good, it is the absence of good.

Jesus has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything, but rather lives as a human fully dependent on the Father (p. 99) - Mark Driscoll really struck this home with me in his talk on Christ. If we don't believe that Jesus was just as dependent upon God for ANYTHING, be it his miracles or his resistance to temptation, as we are, we are missing out on the beauty of Hebrews 4:15.

Worry is imagining a future with God being absent. - I loved this passage reminding us of how do seldom is God a part of our imaginations of the future.

"I am neither male nor female" (p. 93) - need to be careful here, but yes, this is true. God created man and women "in His image", meaning that maleness and femaleness derive their being from God, so God in his entirety is not solely male. (But....see below)

"Systems cannot provide you security, only I can." - Amen! Are you listening, McCain? Obama?

"You never disappoint me (because I know you fully)." - I love the thought of how since God knows the future there is no possible way we could ever disappoint him.

Stuff that bothered me

God saying "I was there with Jesus on the cross the whole time, he just didn't know it" (p. 96) - this would be a nice thought, but is missing out on God being the Righteous Judge who truly judged and fully punished Jesus who in a sense actually became sin itself for us on the cross so that our sin could be taken away (2 Corinthians 5:21).

"I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment." (p.120) - This goes right along with that. Sorry, but God DOES punish people for their sin. To say that each of these hundreds of verses simply means that sin is its own punishment seems like a bit of a stretch and it also seems like the author is trying to take the opposite of the wrong view of God as ONLY Judge, malevolent sin-list-writer, frowning Grandfather. But the opposite of a wrong view is very often a wrong view itself. God IS the Righteous and Holy and Vengeant Judge who will bring about revenge and justice and punishment. But he will do so without letting go of his love and mercy. How? The Cross.

"Hierarchy is a consequence of the Fall", the Trinity is a non-hierarchical "circle of love", "Papa is as much submitted to me as I to him. We are submitted to you in the same way." (p.145) - this is where I have one of my biggest beefs with the book. This whole part of the book really smells of the postmodern distrust of authority. Biblically it's simply wrong that there is no authority within the Trinity: The Son submits to the Father's authority, the Father holds the authority but here's the thing that postmoderns seem to miss: The Father uses his authority to glorify and exalt the Son. Authority itself is NOT a bad thing but in fact springs from God's very nature. Instead, authority and hierarchy have been corrupted by the Fall. The reason this is not just boring dry theology is it ends up seeping into all kinds of relationships. Marriage? Parenting? Church? Work? If we have such an anti-hierarchical view, it will deeply affect all these relationships and cause us to neglect the many times we are called to submit or humbly lead according to our role. Example: Ephesians 5:33 - note the different verbs.

"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 book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather." (p. 66) - Yes, this description came from before God comes in, but it's never really corrected: the only other times we hear about the Bible is when Mack finds a Gideon Bible next to his bed and falls asleep after reading a line or two, and when the Holy Spirit emphatically says that Scripture is only about a relationship with Jesus, not about rules or expectations. So I'm bothered by Scripture not being the centerpiece of HOW we come to know Jesus. I'm bothered that apparently everyone is encouraged to have their own mini-Shack experience rather than encouraged to crack open their dusty Bibles to experience God in his LIVING and ACTIVE word. (Theological side note here: What postmoderns don't like about texts is they distrust language itself as being a medium which can convey Truth. This in my opinion is a distrust in the very nature of God, "The Word". Truth requires a medium in order to be conveyed, and if we distrust the medium of God's Word, we are distrusting God Himself. See 1 Timothy 3:16 and a host of other verses about our need for trust in the Scriptures)

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Well there ya go, this got pretty long, but it was good for me to process. I'd love to hear your thoughts out there, readers. And I mean all three of you. ;-)