The Shack

I haven't yet read the novel, The Shack by William Young, and don't know if I will, but I've read two interesting reviews of it, one a while ago by Ben Witherington, and a more recent one in Fr. Ron Rolheiser's column.

Here's a little of what Wikipedia says of the book ....

he Shack is a Christian novel by William P. Young, a former office manager and hotel night clerk, published in 2007. The novel was self-published but became a USA Today bestseller, having sold 1 million copies as of June 8. It has also maintained its status as #1 Paperback trade fiction seller on the New York Times best sellers list since June 2008 ..... The plot is based on a man, Mackenzie Philips, who has lost his youngest daughter to tragic events. The book is a journey of questioning & discovery and revolves around Mackenzie's conversations with God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit and his process of healing ...

Here is a little of what Fr. Rolheiser wrote about the book in his post, Evangelizing the Religious Imagination, and in it he puts forth again an idea that he's mentioned before, that God does not save us from suffering but offers instead a relationship that compensates for that suffering now and redeems it later (why do I so dislike this idea? :) ......

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[...] What Young gives us in The Shack is a very healthy theology of God and an insight into the Trinitarian nature of God. Like Pope Benedict's first Encyclical, this book might too be entitled: God is Love. It is a good corrective to many popular and intellectual images of God that conceive of God as cold, distant, impersonal, and needlessly judgmental. The God that you meet in The Shack is personal, warm-hearted, invitational, loving, understanding, with a sense of humor; and He is closer to the God that Jesus preached, the God who embraces the weakness of the prodigal son and the anger of his older brother, who washes the feet of his servants, and who lets his sun shine on the bad as well as the good, than is the God that is often met in popular theology and ecclesiology. The God you meet in The Shack will walk with you, no matter what your journey, and, like the God of Jesus, wants more than anything else that we forgive each other. Judgment, this God says, is not about punishment or destruction, but about setting things right and ultimately about reconciliation and forgiveness.

How does the God we meet in The Shack answer the question of evil? Pretty much like Jesus at the death of Lazarus, when he is asked: Where is God when bad things happen to good people? God, Jesus tells us there, does not necessarily rescue us from suffering and death. Rather He enters into them with us and ultimately, though not immediately, redeems them.

Asked if he could have prevented Mack's daughter's death, God answers: Yes. First, by not creating at all. ... Or secondly, I could have chosen to actively interfere in her circumstance. The first was never a consideration and the latter was not an option for purposes you cannot possibly understand now.

So what is God's answer to the problem of evil? The God we meet in The Shack replies: At this point all I have to offer you as an answer is my love and goodness, and my relationship with you; essentially what Jesus offers us in the Gospels, not an intellectual answer but a relationship ......

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And here's a bit from Ben Witherington's post, Shacking Up With God - William P Young's "The Shack". His review is pretty long and detailed, so I've just pasted a little from the beginning, and then a part farther along that deals with a point that Fr. Rolheiser raises - God's intervention, or lack of intervention in suffering, due to the need of preserving our free will. I have to say, I like better what Ben writes on this issue .....

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[...] I want to say from the outset that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, as it involves a lot of interesting theologizing about God and the divine-human encounter, and it clearly has struck a nerve with many people who are longing to have a close encounter with God of the first sort. I am happy this novel can provoke thought and stir up people to reconsider the God of the Bible and what having a relationship with God might mean and be like. And because it is a work of fiction, no one should evaluate this work as if it were an exercise in systematic theology as if it were Barth’s Dogmatics for the Emerging Church, as its aims are much more modest. But there is both good theologizing and bad theologizing that can go on in popular fiction (remember the Da Vinci Code), and so it is certainly fair to ask what is going on in this novel and why has it struck a nerve. This novel is not a literary masterpiece. Its value stands or falls on some of the provocative and interesting things it says about our relationship with God, and it is in regard to its theology that I want to comment in this post. I accept that this novel has gone through various revisions, and rewrites, and could be called a work in progress. What I would suggest is that it needs considerable further theological refinement ........

At one point Jesus in the novel says “To force my will on you…is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful and healthy.” (p. 146). The concept is then broached about how God has submitted himself to our human choices in various ways. The problem with this is it eliminates part of the Biblical paradox. The Bible is all about divine intervention. God is always intruding into our affairs, like a good parent should when his children are as wayward as we are. Is it really the case that God never rescues us against our will? Does God stand idly by, when a normal human parent would leap in and grab the child about to step out onto a highway and be smashed by a sixteen wheeler? Or listen to the following passage on p. 188. God says:


“Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.” And then God adds “my love is a lot bigger than your stupidity…I used your choices to work perfectly into my purposes.” (p. 192). Now it is clear enough that Young is not an universalist in the sense that he thinks all will ultimately respond positively to God’s will. But when you once allow that God is busy working all things together for good for those who love Him, whether they realize it or not, then it becomes perfectly clear, as also in cases like when God flattened Paul on the road to Damascus that there are times when God doesn’t wait on our permission to do things on our behalf, and in various cases does things that would have been against our wills at the time. And herein lies the mystery—God, by grace both gives humans limited freedom, but is prepared to intervene and make corrections, redirections etc. for God is free as well, and there is something more important than human beings ‘having it their independent way’ and that is rescuing them. A drowning person can’t save themselves, they require a radical rescue—but how they respond to that rescue thereafter, whether in loving gratitude or with a bad attitude—well that’s another matter and involves human volition.

In other words, the answer to the question of why tragedy happens in the world is not just because God won’t violate our wills, or just because our wills are bent and fallen, and we are the orchestrators of our own tragedies. It’s far more complicated than that ..........

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Can't I have the Jesus/God of relationship who respects my free will while still keeping the Jesus/God who intervenes to defeat suffering?