Good Review of “The Shack”

I went to school with a guy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt Moye, Jr., who went by the less impressive nickname “Shack” (this was long before Shaquille O’Neal became a household name, btw). I grew up in the era when the B52s’ song “Love Shack” was a classic hit. So it is hard for me to think of the title of the Christian best seller The Shack with a straight face. But that’s just me, and I have an odd (though robust!) sense of humor. It’s hard to laugh, though, when you see this sort of thing flying off the bookshelves at your local Lifeway (as I witnessed yesterday).

I’ve read quite a few reviews of The Shack (none positive). I would point my readers to the following excellent review over at Green Baggins. It does a good job of pointing out how bad The Shack is both theologically (Trinitarian errors and bad theodicy) and biblically (considering the book of Job, for instance). Here are a few quotes:

In his brilliant essay entitled “God in the Dock,” [C.S. Lewis] makes the point that the really important thing for autonomous man is that he is the judge, and that God is in the dock [the place in British courts where the defendant stands]. The man may very well be a kindly judge and acquit God of wrong-doing, if God shows Himself up to the task of defending himself. But the really important thing is that man is the judge, and God is in the dock (on trial). Job shows us that the reverse is true. God is the judge, and man is in the dock.

God allows evil to exist for various reasons, but evil will not continue to last. God has dealt with the problem of evil on the cross and the empty tomb, and will finally eradicate the very presence of evil in this world in the future. No other religion, by the way, or atheism, has an answer to this question. Pantheism believes that evil is naturally part of the world. No hope of eradication there. Atheism cannot define right and wrong, so his faith in his own reason becomes shockingly apparent when he confidently talks about the problem of evil. Deists don’t believe that God has anything to do with the world. These all lack hope and eschatology.

In talking with one of my friends, he made the very interesting point also about faith. What moves Christian? It is the scroll, the evangelist, the Interpreter, the fellow believers he meets on the way, the key of faith in Doubting Castle. It is the means of grace which compels Christian to a life of faith. In The Shack, it is a one-time rationalistic showdown where God pleads and begs with the man (in effect) not only to give Him a hearing, but to acquit Him of wrong-doing. Ultimately, the man’s faith is in himself. My friend also noted the contrast between the way in which God is portrayed in the Bible as opposed to how God is portrayed in The Shack. The God of The Shack is hardly a God with the least little hint of awe and majesty. He is not the God of the whirlwind, which is how God treated Job. He is not the God before whom all bow their faces to the ground. Instead, He is a God whose booty sways to the music. Anyone who cannot see the blasphemy and rank heresy of this portrayal of God is seriously lacking in discernment. God is Spirit, and only the Second Person of the Trinity has a human body which exists only in hypostatic union with the divine nature, and is currently a glorified body. I choose to believe the God of the Bible, who will eradicate evil because He is completely omnipotent and completely free of sin.