My beloved mother purchased this book for me after she read it twice. It was her hope and prayer that the story would answer some of my questions about the bible and “draw me back to God.”

While the book didn’t have quite the effect on me that my mother hoped, I did enjoy the easy to read novel. My questions however, were not answered but rather deflected by a view of God that many will argue is different from the “God” of the Old Testament.

In “The Shack”, God comes across as a Universalist in relation to a concept of hell. It is a theology in which all humans (even the worst of us) are “God’s children”, and God, as a father is commited to spending eternity if necessary working to bring the individual back to him/her (God is presented as both male and female in the book.) Jesus, according to Young, paid the price for all mankind’s sins on the cross and there is no longer emnity between God and Man. Repentance, faith in dogma, baptism, etc… don’t seem necessary for reconcilliation, God simply forgives and loves man. I must admit this is a theology (albeit unbiblical) that I can subscribe to at least in part, although it is far from orthodox Christianity.

Another topic the book deals with heavily is the concept of the Trinity. This has produced a veritable backlash in the Christian community as the book seems to subscribe to a form of “Modalism”.

The main theme of the book however is “why God lets bad things happen”. The answer, unsuprisingly, is that this is a result of the “fall of Adam and Eve” in the Garden of Eden. The earth and cosmos, according to this view was created out of nothing (6,000 years ago) as a perfect creation and it was quickly lost because of man’s rebellion against God. Resulting from this is all the ‘evil’ we see, spanning from childhood disease, famine, natural disasters etc…

The painfully obvious problem with this view is that, in order to believe it, you must turn a blind eye to the mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary. We know the earth is not 6,000 years old, we know humans been here in our present form for at least 50,000 years (up to 250,000), the earth is billions of years old and we know from the fossil record that death and suffering has been a way of life for all creatures from the beginning.

Man did not live up to 1,000 years old in the beginning as it teaches in Genesis, rather, man’s lifespan was much shorter in antiquity, the average lifespan being closer to 25 years old. more than 1/4 of humans didn’t make it past their toddler years and up to 1/3 of women dying in painful childbirth.

Life for our early human ancestors was brutal, and as they faced their fear of being consumed by forces they did not understand such as disease, drought, natural disasters, etc… so they created religion. Maybe there is no rain for my crops because I sinned, so I will sacrifice an animal to this deity so it will bless me. This may not be a modern “interpretation” of the reason for animal sacrifice, but was clearly the “interpretation” in the time and cultural context in which it was written.

I digress… I could go on and on about the origins of religion but this is a book review so back to it.

“The Shack” was an entertaining read for me. I did not go in to the book expecting for a deep apologetic dialoge, so I was not dissapointed. This book skims the surface of “deep questions” and provides “pat answers” which make the believer “feel better” but quickly fall apart under nominal scrutiny.

The scholarly orthodox believer will enjoy the expression of God’s love in the book, but will also likely identify “heresey” in it.

The untrained orthodox believer will enjoy it immensly for God’s love expressed, but need be warned that the book’s teachings are largely unbiblical.

Those on the brink of giving their lives to the Christian God will be tipped over the edge and begin the journey.

The ex-Christian who has wrestled with the hard issues presented by belief in “inherent scripture” and found Christandom’s best answers wanting will not be impressed by the depth of the book or the answers it provides, as the book does so by turning much of the bible, and scientific knowledge on it’s head.

Thanks for reading!

- Justin