Corey Reynold's Review of The Shack

Review of "The Shack"
“The Shack will change the way you think about God forever.”
– Kathie Lee Gifford

That is one of the most frightening endorsements that I have ever seen for a book. It’s the kind of statement that should only be made about a book like Romans or Deuteronomy or one of the Major Prophets, but certainly not a work of contemporary fiction! But what is it about The Shack that has the dubious quality of changing our conceptions about God?

The Shack seeks to alter the way we think about God in two main ways: by presenting a depiction of the Trinity that greatly differs from orthodox Christianity and by removing the unpopular concepts of wrath and condemnation (and therefore righteousness and holiness) from the character of God. To do this, it must completely ignore the clear biblical revelation of God’s nature. In fact, there is an utter disdain for the authority of the Scriptures throughout this book. What we are left with then, in the end, is a writer who has crafted a god in his own image – a god that thrills him with rainbow magic colors, hugs, and a laugh and a wink for every conceivable situation. This is one man’s record of what he wishes God were like, and therefore the Bible (our only authoritative source of information on what God is really like) must be completely set aside.

Nowhere is this departure from Scripture more clearly seen than in the depiction of the four persons of the Trinity (yes, there are four in The Shack). What ought to be immediately troubling is that two of the persons in the Godhead are visible at all. Jesus himself said very clearly that no one has seen the Father (John 6:46), and the Holy Spirit is never depicted in Scripture as anything other than a wind (John 3:8) or a dove (Mark 1:10). But in The Shack, these two are not only depicted as human beings, but are actually personified as women! Though Jesus retains his maleness (if not his masculinity), God the Father is ridiculously portrayed as an elderly, spunky black woman named ‘Papa’ or Elousia and the Holy Spirit is presented as a shimmery Asian woman named Sarayu. In addition, a fourth person is introduced as Sophia – supposedly the wisdom of God given personhood.

Can such a thing be done, however? Can we just simply imagine God to be whatever we wish Him to be? The answer to these questions must be a resounding ‘no’ for all biblically minded Christians. God has intentionally given us a revelation of his character and his nature and threatens great wrath upon all who would remake his image according to their tastes (Exodus 20:4-6). No member of the Trinity is ever referred to in Scripture by female pronouns, and yet here in The Shack femininity is the most prominent characteristic. This is a part of the great desire on the part of the author to emasculate God and make him/her more palatable to modern sensibilities, removing the sternness and high expectations that we see in the Bible and replacing them with a grandmotherly therapist.

Aside from the gender mismatching and renaming of God, though, there is also deeper damage done to the understanding of God’s nature. For one, early on, the main character, Mack, equates the Father of Jesus with the Great Spirit of Native American pagan religion – a serious heresy that is never corrected throughout the rest of the book (p. 33). In fact, later in the book, the Jesus character disapproves of the term ‘Christian’ and makes it clear that people from all faiths have a connection to him (p. 184).

A second destructive heresy in the book related to the Trinitarian nature of God comes when we see that the woman who is supposed to represent God the Father has crucifixion marks in her hands. She makes it clear that she suffered on the cross as well. She even goes so far as to say that “When we three spoke ourselves into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human.” This false teaching terribly mangles the theology of the cross wherein the Father was pleased to crush the Son in order to propitiate His wrath toward sinners (Isaiah 53:10). The Father and the Holy Spirit did not suffer the wrath of the Father against humanity. The Son, whose person was joined to the nature of humanity, alone suffered the wrath of His Father on behalf of sinful man, receiving that condemnation as a man. Young gets this whole picture wrong because he doesn’t believe that sin deserves condemnation (pp. 166, 225). In his view, the cross is really just a statement of love, not an atonement for sin (p. 194).

And why should there be an atonement for sin? The goddess of The Shack doesn’t really require one, because she doesn’t really think of anything as sinful. Even the serial killer who murdered the six-year-old daughter of the main character (among many others) is just a frightened little child of goddess who is acting out because of all of the pain he has been put through in his life (pp. 226-227). Everyone is a victim, their bad behaviors are just cute wrinkles in their child-like faces, and no one’s sins offend the character of the false god of this book, because – frankly – there isn’t much there to offend. This is not the holy God of the Bible, the merest sight of who causes all who see Him to fall on their faces in deep repentance (Isaiah 6:1-5). This is a goddess who swings her hips while she listens to funk music, who laughs like a clown at sin, and who can’t bring herself to punish any of her precious little ones. This false goddess is a joke – a joke that is pointed at my awesome and Almighty God.

If all of the previous isn’t enough to convince someone that biblical revelation is heavily downplayed in this book, the author wants to make it clear that he despises the Scriptural record. On page 95, ‘Papa’ declares that she is appearing as a woman to overcome Mack’s ‘religious conditioning’ from having read the Bible. On pages 124-125, the Jesus character shows utter contempt for the Law – a very different attitude than the biblical Jesus shows (Matthew 5:17-20). On page 136, Sarayu (the Holy Spirit character) tells Mack that it doesn’t really matter if people disbelieve the Bible’s truthfulness, and on page 199, the same character shows utter disdain for the will of God as laid down in the Scriptures.

It should seem obvious that we are not dealing with a ‘Christian’ book here. The Shack is an assault on the God of the Bible and a deliberate attempt to teach false doctrine. A quick look on the inside cover will show you many ‘Christian celebrities’ that endorse the book, however, and no doubt some of our friends have read and enjoyed the book. How did they get past all of this heretical theology? I, for one, cannot offer much help in answering that question. This book disgusted me to the very core. Someone asked me if I could say that there was anything beneficial about the book. My response is that if I had a friend that lost a child, I would not recommend to him a book about how the Baal of the Old Testament could make him feel better. It’s a false god! And it is no less false of a god than the chuckling quartet of Papa, Jesse, Sarayu, and Sophia.

http://wanderlustintheword.blogspot.com/2009/02/review-of-shack.html

Mack's Bad Dad Is No Excuse For Gender Bending

Now Papa (the large African American woman), explains to Mack why she/he had to be revealed as a woman, “Hasn’t it always been a problem for you to embrace me as your father? And after what you’ve been through, you couldn’t very well handle a father right now, could you?” (p. 93) Mack asks, “why is there such an emphasis on you being a Father? I mean, it seems to be the way you most reveal yourself”(p. 94). Mack had a bad dad, but what Mack really needed was a true understanding of God the Father, not a reimaging of God that distorts his revealed character.


The sermon preached by Eric Schumacher is the antidote that Mack needed for his poor image and understanding of fatherhood.

John 14:7-11 - The Farewell (for Now) Discourse: You Do Know and Have Seen the Father Preached on June 21, 2009, by Eric Schumacher

http://northbrookbc.org/sermons/090621am.html


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Check out "Bad Dad" by Apologetix ( http://www.apologetix.com/ )
( *They didn't produce the video)

Scott Lencke's Review of The Shack ( @ Theologica )

****MUST READ****

Thoughts on 'The Shack' (Part 1 of 3)

Thoughts on 'The Shack' (Part 2 of 3)

Thoughts on 'The Shack' (Part 3 of 3)

Dave Miller's articles on The Shack

Christian Fiction and the Theology of “The Shack”

My Theological Problems with “The Shack”

Excellent Review of The Shack at "Girls Gone Wise"

Mary Kassian has written a great review of The Shack.

Click here to read it: Re-imagining God in the Shack

I couldn't agree more when she said,

I’ve had good friends tell me that I’m missing the point of the Shack. Maybe I am. But maybe, just maybe, they are. Maybe they are getting caught up in the emotion of a heart-wrenching story and are failing to notice the horrendous theology that under girds it. The authors claim that “at its core the book is one long Bible Study.” This isn’t an ordinary story book. It’s a book that seeks to transform people’s ideas about God. The fiction is merely a vehicle for the theology.

In my post Gender Bending in The Shack (The Shack Inspection Part 1) I said,

Mary Kassian has some great articles to check out here:http://www.cbmw.org/component/option,com_metabrowse/browse,keyword/value,Mary%20Kassian/Itemid,116/

Thank you-- Mary! ( http://www.marykassian.com/ )

The Shack Inspection: No Penal Substitutionary Death of Jesus, No Reconciliation to Claim

The Shack: “Honey, you asked me what Jesus did on the cross; so now listen to me carefully: through his death and resurrection, I am now fully reconciled to the world” (192).

How do you get reconciled to God without the death of Jesus propitiating the wrath that should have been ours? This is a question I wish I would have pursued further with Paul Young. Since Paul denies that Christ died as a penalty for our sins, how can he believe in reconciliation? Romans 5:8-10 says,

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

How is it that the blood of Christ saves us from God’s wrath if he was not providing a Substitutionary atonement that bore wrath? We see in the text that we (Christians) were at one time, enemies of God. The universal declaration is that everyone is guilty at God’s court because of sin (Rom. 3:9). We are all sinners in need of forgiveness and a righteousness which we do not have (Romans 1:18-3:20). A person cannot be justified (declared righteous) by good works because no one can do them perfectly (Romans 3:20-21; Gal. 2:16; 3:10-11). When we were in the position of being objects of wrath, God brought about a reconciling work in His Son’s death (Rom 5:10). Because the death of Jesus was a sacrifice for sins (Rom. 3:24-24; 5:10; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:26; 10:12), those who believe in him are justified and reconciled to God (Rom. 3:22-26; 5:1; Gal. 3:24-26).

Because Paul Young denies the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, I don’t see how he can then claim reconciliation. No penal substitutionary atonement, no reconciliation. We (believers) have gone from being enemies to being in a reconciled relationship with God. This all based on the propitiatory death of Jesus the Messiah.

Does the Father Have Scars?

The Shack: Papa didn’t answer, only looked down at their hands. His gaze followed hers and for the first time Mack noticed the scars in her wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his. She allowed him to tenderly touch the scars, outlines of a deep piercing, and he finally looked up again into her. Tears were slowly making their way down her face, little pathways through the flour that dusted her cheeks.“Don’t ever think that what my son chose to do didn’t cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark,” she stated softly and gently. “We were there together” (p95-96).

First, God the Father is invisible and has not been seen by anyone, except Jesus (John 6:46). Speaking hypothetically--If he were to take upon flesh we would not see scars in his wrist. The triune God did not take upon flesh, only the eternal Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, took upon himself a human nature which we call the incarnation (John 1:14). Paul has Papa saying, “When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood” (99). There are many who praise The Shack because they say they learn so much about the Trinity. Yet, this book will only cause more confusion because the book shows Papa having crucifixion scars. Would it be a problem for a pastor to pray Sunday morning in church, “Father, I thank you for being crucified on the cross for my sins”? It would be theologically wrong. The Father was not crucified. We could thank the Father for sending (John 5:23; Gal. 4:4-5) the Son to die on the cross for our sins (Rom. 5:6, 8; 8:34; 1 Cor. 15:3), that would be Biblical.

The Shack Inspection (Introduction)

I plan on writing a series of articles on the controversial book, The Shack. I will be responding to the interview that I had with the author, Paul Young. You can listen to the interview locally (Burlington, Iowa) on KAYP at 89.9 FM airing 3-6-09 (6:00 am, 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm) and it will be archived here http://rock-life.com/KAYP.html .

Before I write a series of articles dealing with The Shack, I thought it would be helpful for you to see that not everyone is fond of the book. My responses will be largely a response to the interview that I had with the author, Paul Young.

My approach is that the book is a top-seller so we might as well be prepared to engage others with the truth of Scripture.

---REVIEWS---

One very insightful review of The Shack comes from a man that personally knows William P. Young. James B. DeYoung, is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Western Seminary. Go to http://theshackreview.com/ click on the right hand side “Back of the Shack” or “Spurgeon Fellowship Journal Review”

Tim Challies is the editor of Discerning Reader (http://www.discerningreader.com/), a site dedicated to discerning reviews of books that are of interest to Christians.
http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/the-shack-by-william-p-young.php
Download the review: http://www.challies.com/media/The_Shack.pdf

Challies also did a follow up piece called, Open Mind, Closed Bible
http://www.challies.com/archives/general-news/email-from-a-concerned-reader.php

Chuck Colson in his Breakpoint Commentary weighed in by calling his article, Diminishing Glory, with a subtitle: “Stay Out of The Shack”
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7830

Breakpoint also posted an article by Travis K. McSherley that critiques The Shack, called, “ Bringing Heaven Down To Earth” (The Small God of ‘The Shack’)
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7831

Norman L. Geisler and Bill Roach ask the question--The Shack: Helpful or Heretical? A Critical Review
http://www.normangeisler.net/theshack.html

Alan Dunn wrote a three part series on The Shack that can be found at Reformed Baptist Fellowship’s website.

The Faulty Foundations of The Shack (Part 1)
http://reformedbaptistfellowship.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/the-faulty-foundations-of-the-shack-part-1/

The Faulty Foundations of The Shack (Part 2)
http://reformedbaptistfellowship.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/the-faulty-foundations-of-the-shack-part-2/

The Faulty Foundations of The Shack (Part 3)
http://reformedbaptistfellowship.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/the-faulty-foundations-of-the-shack-part-3/

Doug Wilson’s review can be found at his Blog and Mablog
http://dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=5989

The Green Baggins blog: Job and John Bunyan Versus The Shack
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/job-and-bunyan-versus-the-shack/


Larry DeBruyn has written three articles on The Shack and Universal Reconciliation

The Shack and Universal Reconciliation (part 1)
http://sheepfodder.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/the-shack-and-universal-reconciliation/

The Shack and Universal Reconciliation (part 2)
http://sheepfodder.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/the-shack-universal-reconciliation-pt-2/

The Shack and Universal Reconciliation (part 3)
http://sheepfodder.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/the-shack-universal-reconciliation-pt-3/

Matt Slick from CARM Ministry interviewed Paul Young
http://carmpodcasting.blogspot.com/2008/07/matt-interviews-author-of-shack.html


Insight For Living (Chuck Swindoll) has posted a review written by Dr. Glenn R. Kreider. Dr. Glenn R. Kreider serves as a professor of theological studies at Dallas Theological Seminary where he received his Ph.D. in 2001.
“But I cannot recommend this book. The reason is simple: the author’s portrayal of God is confusing at best and untrue at worst.” Kreider has two sections about, Confusion about Trinity and Confusion about Christ. He closes his article with, “This is a dangerous book. Its view of the Trinity is inadequate and its view of Christ is unorthodox. That is not good.”
http://www.insight.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shack
for more details http://www.insight.org/site/PageServer?pagename=shack_details#home


Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Seminary has his own radion show (Albert Mohler Show). On 4-11-08 he addressed The Shack starting around 11.20 into the program. He states that, “This book includes undiluted heresy.” He also says, "It is intended, undoubtedly, as a way of trying to bring about some kind of redefinition or new understanding of the Christian faith…The main character says at one point that he now understands that everything he learned at seminary was basically all wrong."
http://www.albertmohler.com/radio_show.php?cdate=2008-04-11

Mark Driscoll's take on The Shack