Saturday, October 17, 2009

Our visit to The Shack

Many of us never planned to read The Shack, by William P. Young, because when a book is hyped as this has been, when non-fiction-readers praise it as "the best novel" they've ever read, we're skeptical. But now I think we were glad club members chose it and gave us the opportunity to join what seems to be the rest of the world. I confess I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed the story, despite it's being poorly (overly) written.

That's quite a feat: being a poor writer and yet telling a good tale. Mixed metaphors and hackneyed dialog are a lot to overcome. Please, get this man an editor! Others have suggested he should rewrite in order to beef up the theology; I say, rewrite and get rid of half the adjectives.

Here's an example of what I mean, from his discovery of the note from Papa: "It was confusing and painful trying to sort out the swirling cacophony of disturbing emotions and dark images clouding his mind -- a million thoughts traveling a million miles an hour." A cacophony is a swirl of confused sounds, not emotions or images. I was confused, too.

Good writing is invisible. It doesn't cause you to stop and wonder, "What did he just say?" Neither is it overdone. I wrote "Please, stop!" on my little sticky note next to this portion:

"Shortly after the summer that Missy vanished, The Great Sadness had draped itself around Mack's shoulders like some invisible but almost tangibly heavy quilt. The weight of its presence dulled his eyes and stooped his shoulders. [Interjection: How does weight dull your eyes?] Even his efforts to shake it off were exhausting, as if his arms were sown into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it. He ate, worked, loved, dreamed and played in this garment of heaviness, weighted down as if he were wearing a leaden bathrobe [What happened to the quilt?] -- trudging daily through the murky despondency that sucked the color out of everything." Whew! Enough already!!

What's good about the story is Young's cleverness at moving the story along. For instance, I worried how he was going to handle the meeting with Papa at the shack. How would God be revealed? Would there be a long debate in Mack's mind whether this really was God or just a crazy person in the woods? What would God do to prove His presence? I thought the way Young devised the denouement was brilliant.

I also worried, nearing the end, how Mack would re-enter daily life and convince his wife his experience was "real." Like him, I wondered how he would even begin to tell her but, again, the author worked it out deftly. Because of the way he crafted the ending, there could only be one explanation for how he had become a fundamentally changed person.

There were other things we liked: his portrayals of God's love (He's with us past, present, and future), his assertions of God's goodness, his emphasis on and insights into relationships (expectancy and response vs. expectations and responsibility). These qualities combine to make this book of great help to the sorrowing, as several have attested. They also serve as an exhortation to those of us who have been in the Faith a while and have sufficient understanding to know a book like this is not to be taken as Gospel Truth. We agreed, however, that The Shack is not recommended reading for unbelievers.

Why? There are several incongruities that make it troubling. I will leave the heavy criticism to others who have been more thorough (and here). I will merely mention a few that occured to me.

1. The author maintains that love is exclusive of authority (hierarchy), but this is simplistic. As you read the Bible, I don't think you can get away from the reality or needfulness of hierarchy -- even pre-Fall. Jude says that dangerous men reject authority; Moses was certainly an authority figure who loved the people he led. So, love and authority are not mutually exclusive, and it's dangerous to speak of God (and the Godhead) as not having authority or instituting hierarchy.

2. Similarly, the author maintains that love means never being disappointed in the object of one's love. This is just silly. (It sounds like the other side of the "Love-means-you-never-have-to-say-you're-sorry" coin.) One club member noted how, as a parent, she can be disappointed in her children without losing her love for them. Another noted how the Bible says our actions can grieve the Holy Spirit. So this is a needless distinction.

3. The book is dangerously disparaging of God's word ("reduced to paper") and His Church. This would appeal to readers who feel alienated from both, and probably accounts for much of the book's popularity, but it doesn't do enough (or anything) to bring them to a proper perspective. How can the psalmist say, "I love your law, O Lord" if God's word is not wonderful?

4. Many other important concepts are only vaguely defined: sin ("is its own punishment"), eternal damnation, and salvation. Readers without the basics can be left to conclude there is no hell and that other ways to God are possible, even if Jesus is "the best way."

For instance, the story of the Indian princess is contrived as a redemption story that Papa approves. But do stories such as this really lead people to Christ, and ultimately to God? Jesus' sacrifice is fundamentally different than the princess' in significant ways. Foremost is Jesus' divinity; his was the perfect sacrifice (he being sinless), while she (although a virgin) died in her own sin. God, satisfied with with Jesus' sacrifice, raised him from the dead. Because of the resurrection, Jesus' sacrifice cared for our deepest problem (death resulting from sin), while the Indians were only temporarily healed and would eventually die.

Many other distinctions could be made, but one other thing occured to me about the princess story: no one (except Will) saw fit to transcribe it, whereas God saw it as necessary to have His story written. He wanted us to know for certain that Jesus is the focal point of history (as The Shack properly avers) and grants eternal life to those with faith in him. The Indians were not required to have faith; her story was handed down as legend, not as Truth. And that's the level on which The Shack exists. It's a good story, but just a legend.

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