The Shack, a novel by William Paul Young, first caught my
attention about a month ago when its cover illustration of a battered
wooden cabin infused with light against a snowy landscape leaped out at
me from a shelf near the front of the bookstore where I work. It was
only a few days later when my mom mentioned that she had bought a copy
of it for a friend and decided to get one for my dad as well. Then we
turned on the radio to tune into the classic rock station playing
nonstop Christmas music, and there was Delilah, endorsing the book on
her nighttime program as the best work of fiction she'd read all year.
It seemed we had stumbled onto a phenomenon.
It's easy to see
why this book would have wide enough appeal to sell upwards of three
million copies, as announced by the cover on Dad's copy. We are in
trying times. People are suffering, and The Shack seeks to offer
comfort in the midst of turmoil. The story concerns Mack, a man who has
effectively shut down since the abduction and presumed murder of his
six-year-old daughter Missy during a family camping trip. Though he
dislikes the way his despair has driven a wedge between him and his
wife, Nan, and his four other children, particularly the moody Kate, he
can't seem to find a way to escape from underneath what he terms The Great Sadness.
Then, one day three years after the incident, Mack receives a note from
"Papa" inviting him to come to the shack deep in the woods where
Missy's bloodstained dress was discovered. Mack, mystified, considers
the possibilities that it could be a prank or perhaps a lure into a trap
set by Missy's killer. But another option nags away at him, refusing to
allow him to dismiss the note entirely. "Papa" is the name Nan uses to
refer to God - a name he can't bring himself to use since his
experiences with his own father were so unpleasant. Could it be that
this is a summons from God Himself? That idea is intriguing enough for
Mack to seize upon, so while the rest of his family goes to visit
relatives, unaware of his plans, he heads up to the site of his greatest
anguish.
What follow are 150 surreal pages in which Mack
finds the shack and its surrounding area transformed, icy winter made
into flowering summer and dilapidation turned into coziness. More
important than the scenery, however, is the company: Papa, God the
Father, in the likeness of a buxom African-American woman; Sarayu, the
Holy Spirit, manifested as a shimmery Asian woman; and Jesus, the Son, a
husky Middle-Eastern carpenter. In long conversations with them,
together and apart, Mack begins to welcome God back into his life while
releasing the pain that has held him captive for so long.
I
closed the book with mixed feelings. My first issue with it is one that
my dad pointed out as he was reading. It reminded us both of the episode
of M*A*S*H in which Radar,
the boyish company clerk, decides to take a correspondence course in
writing. The result? A whole lot of purple prose overloaded with
adjectives, adverbs and other embellishments. The Shack suffers
from excessive floweriness, particularly in its first, less
dialogue-heavy half, in which every other sentence seems to contain some
sort of metaphor. Take this one from the fifth chapter: "And finally
his heart exploded like a flash flood, releasing his pent-up anger and
letting it rush down the rocky canyons of his emotions." Too much of
that becomes exhausting, not to mention cheesy.
On a related
note, the story is bookended with a Foreword and After Words by the
narrator, a man named Willie who refers to himself in the third person
when he shows up in the tale. I found this an odd move and came up with
two reasons Young might have used this device. The first would be to
account for the often overwrought writing, as Willie is a folksy sort of
guy; perhaps he figured readers would be more willing to accept his
writing style if it was packaged as an idiosyncratic aspect of a
particular character. (Willie also claims that only close friends refer
to the main character as Mack, while the rest call him Allen, his middle
name, but I don't think anyone in the entire book calls him Allen. An
oversight?) The second reason is that the narrator's name just happens
to be Willie, so even though this book is labeled a work of fiction, it
seems likely that Young would have considered the possibility that some
would read the narrator as him. Perusing www.theshackbook.com, the
website dedicated to this book, I learned that this novel was originally
written only for his children, and initially the cover read "by
Mackenzie Allen Phillips, with William P. Young." "I thought it was
clever and that the kids would get a laugh out of it," he writes in his
blog. So maybe his intentions were not deceptive. But I can't help but
think that as the book got out to the public, the framing device may
have been what really drew people in. If not for the slight implication
that this was based on a true story, the novel might not have generated
as much interest.
Finally, the book presents some ideas about
God that are pretty unorthodox. Each chapter lays out a number of points
that are worth debating, and certain issues will touch different nerves
depending on your beliefs and religious background. If Young truly
never meant for The Shack to have a wider audience than his
immediate family, perhaps the question of intended audience is
irrelevant, but I can't decide if the book is aimed more at Christians
or non-Christians. It seems to encourage those who don't believe in God
to embrace Him while urging Christians to re-examine some of their
beliefs about His nature. More than anything, the book is a conversation
starter; if it can speak to both ends of the spectrum, then that's
probably a good thing. From a Christian perspective - Lutheran, to be
exact - my biggest theological issues are with the dismissive treatment
of the Bible and of institutional religion. I'm a bit puzzled by one
exchange between Mack and Jesus in which Jesus expresses His deep desire
for all people to be in a relationship with Him - but He doesn't give
two hoots whether a person is a Christian. It seems to me that the sort
of deep-seated belief in Christ that Young is talking about is what
defines Christianity. Why the insistence on stripping away the label?
Also, while I like the book's emphasis on grace, I think it may go too
far in one direction, almost suggesting that since we can't live up to
God's standards, we shouldn't even try. At one point, Papa says, "Honey,
I've never placed an expectation on you or anyone else" and goes on to
say that "because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me." I
can't buy that.
That isn't to say that The Shack does
not have value. It reads like a book that was self-published, so I
wasn't surprised by its publication history, and if you think of it
primarily as one man's way of helping his family work through a terrible
tragedy (the accidental death of his five-year-old niece), it becomes
clear that Young is as much a seeker as one attempting to instruct,
despite the rather pretentious segment in the back on The Missy Project,
which encourages readers to spread the word about the book to others.
Personally, I wasn't particularly bothered by the physical portrayal of
God. I figure He can appear in any form He chooses - and it's worth
noting that over the course of the weekend, Papa also appears as a
Hispanic woman and a Caucasian man. The abundance of feminine personas
is related to Mack's own daddy issues and isn't meant to imply that
God's ultimate essence is a big black woman. It's more like Joan of Arcadia,
in which God appears to the teenage Joan in dozens of different guises,
depending on the purpose of the conversation. I found it effective
there, and I think it works well here too. I also find most of the
quotes that begin each chapter to be appropriate and thought-provoking.
The Shack's
main emphasis is that God is love, and that's an important message to
get across. While some of the things Papa, Sarayu and Jesus say raise
eyebrows, either because of the theological content or the manner in
which they are said, I can find nothing objectionable in the multiple
repetitions of their love for Mack and for so many others in the world. I
like the focus on forgiveness and on a personal relationship with God -
though I echo Mack in struggling to feel that sense of closeness
sometimes, which is why scenes of sitting on the porch with Papa or
receiving a bear hug from Jesus are so appealing.
Ultimately, I think The Shack
falls short of expectations generated by enthusiastic endorsements by
the likes of Delilah, Michael W. Smith and Eugene Peterson, who calls it
the next Pilgrim's Progress. However, it's an engaging read, and
it's the sort of book that gets readers to ask important questions. I
think it would make an excellent subject of a book club or Bible study.
As a theological treatise, The Shack shouldn't stand alone, but it might be just the catalyst for which some hurting souls have been waiting.
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