The Shack (II)

                Last week, after offering some positive comments about the best-selling book The Shack, I promised to present my concerns as well. I still have avoided reading anyone else’s response so that I can offer my own uninfluenced opinion. I just hope I won’t regret it afterwards when I finally do read someone else’s view and it changes my mind.

                It spite of some truly positive aspects of this book, and even some deep insights, there is much to be concerned about. If the theology is at times insightful, it is at other times more than a bit loose. I already mentioned the contention that God does not punish sin beyond the self-punishment of sin itself (120). This thought is developed further in chapter 11 (“Here Come Da Judge”) where it is suggested that God could never condemn man because we are his own children. After all, who could ever condemn their own children to eternal punishment? Regardless of what one thinks about the nature of eternal punishment, however, the Biblical fact of eternal condemnation is difficult to discount (Mt 25.41 Jn 5.28-29; 2 Thes 1.8-9). To his credit, the author reminds us that God himself took the punishment in the Son, but this doesn’t seem to undo his previous suggestion that God does not punish sin. And if God doesn’t punish sin, then why did Christ have to die?

                Another troubling issue involved male-female roles and authority relationships. While again there was some true insight into how power corrupts relationships (which is what Jesus taught – Lk 22.24-27), the book does seem to reject Biblical male-female roles as simply a necessary evil by which God “works within your systems even while we seek to free you from them” (123). But is male spiritual headship merely a human-devised system, similar, say, to polygamy of the OT or the slavery during the NT times, which God reluctantly accepts even as he seeks to free us from that very system? If so, then why does Paul, in order to establish the basis of male spiritual leadership, appeal to the very order of God creating Adam and then Eve (1 Cor 11 .8-9; 1 Tim 2.12-13)? And how then is the male headship in the home a reflection of Christ and the church (Eph 5.32)? All this, and much more, is conveniently ignored.

                More troublesome yet was the idea of all religions being equal. Speaking of people from various world religions, God “has no desire to make them Christians” though he wants them to be transformed (182). I suppose it depends on how you define the word “Christian,” but Jesus himself (I mean the real one, the one in the Bible) said that he is the only way to the Father (Jn 14.6; cf. Acts 4.12). I did like Jesus’ response that “Most roads don’t lead anywhere” but that Jesus will travel on any road to find you (182). If that means you can find Jesus through any and every religion, I’d have to reject it. But if it simply means that no matter where you are the Lord will enter your life to lead you to him, then “Amen!” God works everywhere to lead the lost back home.

                To me the most troublesome aspect of The Shack, however, was the author’s audacity to present his personal understanding of the nature of God without a single appeal to Scripture. Worse, he presents it from the very mouths of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! That is, he creates the Godhead and proceeds to have them tell us who they are, direct from their lips. Jesus (I mean the real one, the one in the Bible) amazed the people because he taught as one having such authority, as one who made no appeal to the authority of others. It seems that that is the very thing the author does with this book. He tells us, solely on his own authority, who God is. Jesus could get away with that, because he was in fact God. But I had a hard time swallowing it from a human author’s fantasy tale, even if I did like some of the things he said.

© 2009 Randy Hohf