The Shack William P Young

This is the kind of book you want to be good because the intentions are so brilliant. To set out complex theological concepts such as the Trinity and seek to make them relevant: to dig away at the issue of God and suffering, especially in our era where people no longer have any concept of the Cross: and to seek to expound Christianity as relationship rather than doctrine or hierarchy; these are noble ambitions. However the aims are let down by the execution.

There’s an absence of awe in the encounters with God which bothers me – there really aren’t many encounters with God in the Scriptures which lack this dimension. That includes encounters during and after the Incarnation, such as the awe at the Transfiguration or in Acts 2. I think William Young would say I have a problem with a distant Father here, but is that all there is to awe? C S Lewis, who one suspects is at least partly a model, does awe very well in the Narnia stories, including those where deeply personal inner stuff is being healed, such as when Eustace is undragonned.

There’s a Disneyfication of God’s stuff. For example when Mack first returns to the shack, then decides to leave again, Spring arrives, flowers burst open, chipmunks scamper across the forest trail, and even Bambi makes an appearance. I laughed out loud! I wish it were the only passage influenced by St Walt. Is there a disease of the North American psyche here? Probably not, it’s just this author. There are a couple of nods to the Matrix as well. I am sure the Afro-American God woman is really the Prophet from the Matrix. This may date!

Some really sad grammatical errors spoil things. For example in God is a verb expectation is treated as a hate word because it is a noun. Expectancy is far better – except, William, that expectancy is a noun as well...

Then there’s the folksiness. Again it’s probably the transatlantic gap at work.  But in spite of the desire to be at home with ordinary people, which I suppose is what the folksiness is trying to achieve, a lot of the dialogue is in fact a bit turgid. Some of it doesn’t make emotional sense either – Mack is poised on a precipice of heartbreak while they discuss the coinherence of the persons of the Trinity? Still, there is a very good pedigree for the dialogue form in the Dialogues of Plato...

One possible outcome if the portrayal of God as folksy psychotherapist really takes hold is a change of ethos. God becomes a secondary figure in the real drama of life, which is my personal inner fulfillment. I think this is a prevalent if unacknowledged view in Christianity today and I don’t know how long God will let us get away with it. Or maybe he isn’t letting us. Perhaps a lot of our spiritual shallowness and lukewarmness comes from the fact that our real God is our own emotions.

But I’m still glad this book was written and glad to have read it, and in spite of my nit-picking ways I was really moved by it in places. I was also challenged that my own walk with God is not nearly intimate enough. God may not drop by to bake me some chocolate brownies or dig my garden for me – but he created the chocolate and the gas and the heat and plants and the soil and the sunlight and I really could do with seeing him and interacting with him and enjoying and worshipping him in every daily thing.