Received this today, commended by someone I respect highly:

The Shack

One book that was recommended to us was The Shack. (A shack is a small simple wooden house that is in poor condition.) It has created quite a stir among the Christian community in North America, and many non-Christians are reading it as well even though it is very obviously Christian. In a little more than two years it has sold well over 2,000,000 copies and only 300 dollars was spent advertising it. So, what is special about this book? Let me quote parts of an interview the Servant magazine had with the author: a missionary kid, William Paul Young (a distant relative-in-law of Peggy’s).

What does the shack represent?

‘It’s a metaphor, really, for the decrepit house of the soul that we build over time. It’s where we hide our pain, our lostness, our secrets and addictions. Our lies are the fabric that holds the house together and we decorate it with the facade that we want other people to see, changing the colors as people’s expectations change. But the corruption inside the shack is never touched by all the performance on the outside.’

What is the central message of the book?

‘It’s first of all about the character of God. Is He good and is He involved? So often we paint God as demanding perfection and setting the bar so high we can’t reach it and then being disgusted at our inability. The second question is: who am I to God – the issue of our identity. In the story of the prodigal (son) there is never any question whether or not the two boys are his (the father’s) sons. The question really is: when are they finally going to realize the love of the father? His love is constant but the boys don’t understand and one turns to rebellion and one to religion.’

Which one are you?

I’m the religious one. I was a performer and my identity was in being approved and always being right. Then I was involved in adultery and it just about killed me. It took 11 years for Kim (Paul’s wife) and me to get through that. I also grew up on the mission field inside another culture where I never seemed to fit. I was very disconnected from my parents who had no clue about the sexual abuse I was experiencing both in the tribe and at boarding school. Shame was so deep in my life that it was the motivation for everything I did. When I accomplished something or did things that people approved or applauded I always felt like I’d lied my way to it or faked it. That was the reality inside the shack I had spent 38 years building. After it all went tumbling down I spent the next 11 years dealing with all the stuff inside. By the grace of God I came out of that process at the end of 2004 with no more secrets and no reputation to protect. Joy has become my constant companion, my identity is in Christ, Kim and I are good, and I was the same person in every situation. That was just unbelievable to me.’

How would you advise parents involved in ministry or missions?

‘Sometimes we get hold of a goal or vision and we think we’ve finally found something that’s going to give us a sense of worth and identity and we’re going to do great things for God. So we run right at it, right past our kids and our spouses and friends and the people who would intersect our path if we just walked in the presence of God. It’s important to make decisions based on the people in your life, not the value of a goal or a product or end result.’

Do all paths lead to God?

‘I have never believed this. The path narrows to one man, the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In the book Mac (the main character) asks Jesus, “Do all roads lead to Papa (God)?” And he’s told, “No, most roads don’t lead anywhere. But I will go down any road to find you”.’

Your character Mac receives healing for his pain. What about those who long for that healing but haven’t heard God speak?

‘The whole process of the healing of the soul is unique to each person because the damage has been unique. Only God is big enough to take your pile of knotted-up string and untie it one knot at a time in the right order so that the string doesn’t break. That takes time because He won’t abuse you in order to heal you. You are where you are at this time in God’s purposes. It comes down again to the basic questions: is He good and is He involved? If you can stand in the middle of the quagmire of whatever you’re dealing with and plant your left foot on “He’s good” and your right foot on “He’s involved”then you can live inside a day’s worth of grace. We don’t have to scramble to figure out our own healing.’

How has the success of this book changed you?

‘In 2005 I told God, “I’ll never again ask you to bless anything that I do because I’m done with religious performance. But if You’ve got something You’re blessing and it would be okay for me to hang around that, I would be all over it, whether it’s cleaning toilets or shining shoes or holding the door open.” The book doesn’t add anything to my significance. My identity is in Jesus. I know I walk with a limp. I know where I’ve come from. I know every breath is grace.’

How would you like people to remember Paul Young?

‘As an enigma of grace. My life just doesn’t make sense. When you’re dealing with a human being it’s easy to feel like you’ve extended too much grace and you want to give up. But just look at creation. How many shades of green are there? What a wastefulness of green! And in our relationship to God we cannot go deep enough to run out of the wastefulness of His grace. There’s more than enough. He keeps on giving even when it’s unexpected and undeserved. This flood of grace is all around us because that’s just the way His love is.’

Even though there are things in the book that may make you cringe and maybe even upset there is also much that can be very helpful.

*****

And…

From a Review in USA Today (Religion):

PORTLAND, Ore. ‘By rights, William Young, 53, should be a mess.

Emotionally distant from his missionary parents. Sexually abused by the New Guinea tribe they lived among. Grief-stricken for loved ones who died too young, too suddenly. Frantic to earn God’s love, yet cheating on his wife, Kim.

Young functioned by stuffing all the evil done to him and by him into a “shack” –  his metaphor for an ugly, dark place hidden so deeply within him that it seemed beyond God’s healing reach.

His adultery, 15 years ago, finally blew the doors off that shack, forcing him to confront his past. “Kim made it clear,” he says. “I had to face every awful thing.”

Now, his first novel, The Shack – centered on dialogues between a miserable main character, Mack, and three unorthodox characterizations of the Holy Trinity – telescopes Young’s transformation to a man spiritually reborn and aware every moment of God’s love. It slams “legalistic” religions, denominations and doctrines. It barely even mentions the Bible. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Seattle | God | Bible | India | Paul | Jesus Christ | Best-Selling Books | Southern Baptist Convention | Mack | Holy Spirit | Almighty | New Guinea | Papa | Holy Trinity | Missy | Multnomah Falls

THE AUTHOR: From garage-seller to best-seller IDEA CLUB: An unlikely view of the trinity: Do you care about doctrine?

Instead, Mack’s secrets, lies, pain and fears are swept away in a 48-hour encounter in the woods with a sassy black woman who embodies God the creator. Jesus is portrayed as a big-nosed carpenter in a plaid shirt; the Holy Spirit is an Asian sylph called Sarayu.

So why are critics calling it heresy?

They say Young’s surprise hit, which has been in the Top 50 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list for 10 weeks (it’s now No. 17), promotes a wrong-headed view of universal salvation, as free to all as an open bar at a party.

They read Young’s message as saying you can just discover Jesus’ love inside yourself, turn your life over to him, and you’re on your way to heaven. No need to put in time in the pews or know theology.

Albert Mohler, a leading theologian of the Southern Baptist Convention, which takes the Bible literally, trashes The Shack in his weekly radio show, calling it “deeply subversive,” “scripturally incorrect” and downright “dangerous.”

Says Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle: “If you haven’t read The Shack, don’t!”

Driscoll, whose multi-campus non-denominational church is packed with 6,000 people each weekend in the least-churched corner of the nation, says he is “horrified” by Young’s book. He says “it misrepresents God. Young misses the big E on the eye chart.”

To Driscoll, doctrine is essential, like a fence the Almighty erects to safeguard the saved from error.

The Shack has fans, too. Young gets nearly 100 e-mails a day from readers saying they found solace and inspiration in his novel.

They overlook the cliches (“Religious machinery can chew up people,” Jesus says), stereotypes, like the Jewish Jesus’ big nose, and the awkward prose. The black female God, incongruously called Papa, tells Mack, “Don’t just stand there gawkin’ with your mouth open like your pants are full.”

Incredible journey

Minister Steve McVey of Tampa, author of Grace Walk, praises The Shack.

McVey says Young connects with people outside of, or unhappy with, institutional churches that “tell us what we ought to do for God, while grace focuses on what God has already done. A person discovers grace when you come to the end of your own self-sufficiency and realize you have been made acceptable through Jesus Christ and him alone. You can’t score points with God.”

Today, Young, who goes by his middle name, Paul, happily recounts how he finally tapped the wellspring of God’s love he says was always there for him to find.

He exudes quiet calm, disrupted now and then by bursts of enthusiasm, like bear-hugging strangers on first meeting.

Ordinary things delight him. He walks up to Multnomah Falls, his plaid shirt and fleece jacket coated with the mist of the cascading water, his smile irrepressible.

This majestic waterfall plays a role in the novel’s opening pages. Mack tells his little daughter, Missy, the legend of an Indian princess who hurls herself over the falls to save her people from death.

Will I have to die to save others? she asks him. No, he tells her, Jesus has done this for you, and she sleeps soundly, secure in Christ.

The foreshadowing is hardly subtle: the sacrifice of an innocent life for the sake of salvation. Missy is kidnapped by a serial killer and is murdered in a filthy, deserted shack in the wilderness.

Years later, Mack, still devastated, receives a note inviting him back to the shack. It’s signed “Papa,” the name his more resilient and spiritual wife, Nan, uses for God.

Mack’s weekend at the shack is a compressed journey toward belief, forgiveness and acceptance.

But what a trip. Instead of a dump, this shack is a mansion in an Eden-like garden where God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit embrace him. For two days, they talk, eat, walk, garden and share visions of heaven, where little Missy romps happily.

They tell Mack they live in a loving relationship without hierarchy, guilt or shame, all fully human, all divine. They say that through Jesus’ death, God is “fully reconciled” to the whole world, so that all might discover God’s love.

It’s a vision of joy to Young, however far it strays from most evangelical dogma.

Young was born in Canada to missionaries who brought him as an infant to New Guinea to live with the primitive Dani tribe. He says he was subject to the harsh verbal attacks of his unhappy father, and sexual assaults by tribesmen. He went to a missionary boarding school at age 6, he says, and was molested by older students.

He never lost a sense of God, but to Young, God was distant and judgmental. “I learned to survive by becoming a performer/perfectionist,” he says.

Even as he roamed the world and eventually wound up in a Bible seminary for the Christian Missionary Alliance, he knew he wasn’t meant to be a pastor or missionary. He finally graduated from Western Pacific College in Portland and landed at a Four Square Gospel church, working with collegians.

There he met Kim, who poked holes “in my version of being a perfect performer to earn God’s love. You can’t perform for God. You can’t run. You can’t hide. You can adapt, but that won’t heal the stuff you’ve buried deep inside, in your ‘shack.’ “

Soon after they married, waves of tragedy gouged their life. When he was 25, his 18-year-old brother died in a work accident, Kim’s mother died unexpectedly, and his niece, 5 years and one day old, was run over by a cement truck while riding her new birthday bicycle.

Grace seemed nowhere in sight.

Young was 38 and the father of six when his life took a hairpin turn after his adultery. He spent a year in counseling, years more soul-searching, marveling at Kim’s steadfast commitment, before he reached wholeness in faith, he says.

He wrote The Shack in 2005, prompted by Kim. She wanted him to open up his heart and his thinking to their children, now ages 14 to 27. The book was meant to be like the box top on a jigsaw puzzle, the picture that shows where all the pieces fit, Young says.

An open life

Eventually, he sent the manuscript to a writer he admired, Wayne Jacobsen, a former pastor and author of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Any More, under the pen name Jake Colsen. Jacobsen and another former pastor, Brad Cummings, spent 15 months editing the book with Young to clarify the focus and rip out pages of theological jargon, Young says.

“We had great conversations about how people are the church. The church is not just a place you go to quote Scripture and feel guilty,” Young says.

Jacobsen and Cummings published it through their own company, Windblown Media, after established publishers rebuffed it. They promoted it on Christian websites and broadcast outlets, trying to attract a New York publisher.

Now there are 1.1 million copies in print and, two weeks ago, FaithWords, a division of Hachette Book Group, signed on as co-publisher with Windblown. Hatchette agreed to a 500,000-copy press run in June and a national campaign in the secular market in July.

The Shack’s success has changed Young’s life –  a little.

He no longer works three jobs running a manufacturer’s sales office and working on websites. Kim still works at Gresham High School as a baker, but she’s driving a new Honda. They’ve moved from the tiny rental house, where he wrote The Shack in the windowless basement near the washing machine, to a bigger rental nearby.

Holding hands and beaming at one of their grandchildren, the Youngs say they’d be fine if the money vanished tomorrow.

“Mack is me, a guy who has made a mess of everything,” Young says. “The book takes him outside everything familiar, back to the worst experience of his life and lets him recognize God is so much greater.”

Yet, as McVey, the minister from Tampa, says, “This pure grace of God has always divided people.”

Mohler, Driscoll and other evangelicals pick The Shack apart plank by plank.

No, God can’t be a presented as a woman. No, the three parts of the Trinity did not all become fully human. Yes, there is a hierarchy in the Holy Trinity with God the Father in command. Yes, God will punish sin.

Young shrugs them off. Out there in America, where only three in 10 people attend weekly worship services and millions are ignorant of the Bible, his readers struggle to find a good God amid their pain.

As for critics, he shakes his head.

“I don’t want to enter the Ultimate Fighting ring and duke it out in a cage-match with dogmatists. I have no need to knock churches down or pull people out,” he says.

“I have a lot of freedom by knowing that you really experience God in relationships, wherever you are. It’s fluid and dynamic, not cemented into an institution with a concrete foundation.”

“But it’s not about me. I have everything that matters, a free and open life full of love and empty of all secrets.”

*****

And another:

Am certain that there is no other book I’ve been asked to review more times than William P. Young’s The Shack, a book that is currently well within the top-100 best-selling titles at Amazon. The book, it seems, is becoming a hit and especially so among students and among those who are part of the Emergent Church. In the past few weeks many concerned readers have written to ask if I would be willing to read it and to provide a review. Because I am always interested in books that are popular among Christians, I was glad to comply.

The Amazon reader reviews for The Shack are remarkable. With 102 reviews already posted, it is maintaining a five-star rating with fully ninety three of the reviewers awarding five stars. Only two have offered one star. A search of blogs and websites turns up near-unanimous enthusiastic (and almost unbridled) praise for the book. ‘This book is a life-changer, a transformer.’ ‘[The Shack] has become a favorite book OF ALL TIME.’ ‘I am changed. I pray indelibly. My oh my!’ This book, which was released in May but which has already gone into its fourth printing, is making a major impact. It has obviously struck a chord with Christians.

I’ll warn in advance that this review is going to be long. My major focus will be the book’s content though I’ll pause to glance fleetingly at the book’s style as well. Because I’ve received so many questions and because the author covers so much ground in the book (and sometimes in a way that is somewhat unclear) I am going to proceed carefully and with many quotes.

There are two things I would like to note about this type of book- theological fiction. First, because of the limitations of the genre, it is sometimes difficult to really know what an author means by what he says. There is often some question as to what comes from the author and what comes from the characters. The author cannot always adequately explain himself; nor can he provide footnotes or references to Scripture. It can be challenging, then, to turn to the Bible to ensure that what he teaches is true. This makes the task of discernment doubly difficult, for one must first interpret the fiction to understand what is being said and then seek to compare that to the Bible. We will do well to keep this in mind as we proceed.

Second, we must also realize that, because of the emotional impact of reading good fiction, it can be easy to allow it to become manipulative and to allow the emotion of a moment to bypass our ability to discern what is true and what is not. This is another thing the reader must keep in mind. We cannot trust our laughter or our tears but must allow our powers of discernment to be trained to distinguish good from evil (see Hebrews 5:14). Discernment is primarily a Spirit-empowered discipline of the mind rather than an emotional response.

So let’s look at this book together, doing the task God requires of us when he tells us to be men and women of discernment – Christians who heed God’s admonition to “test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” We’ll simply compare what Young teaches to the Bible.

The Book as a Book

First, a word about the book as it is written. William Young shows himself to be a capable writer, though I would not have believed it through the first couple of chapters. The book began with far too many awkward sentences and awkward sentence constructs (e.g. ‘One can almost hear a unified sigh rise from the nearby city and surrounding countryside where Nature has intervened to give respite to the weary humans slogging it out within her purview’). But as it went on and as the story took over the book became easier to read. The story itself is interesting enough, though certainly it lacks originality. The last chapter should have been left on the editing room floor and the final paragraph (before the ‘After Words’) was a ridiculously terse attempt to provide closure to remaining plot lines. But on the whole the book is readable and enjoyable. Never does it become boring, even after long pages of nothing but dialog.

But Young did not write this book for the story. This book is all about the content and about the teaching it contains. The book’s reviews focus not on the quality of the story but on its spiritual or emotional impact. Eugene Peterson grasps this, saying in his glowing endorsement, ‘When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his. It’s that good!’ ‘Could it really be that good? Is it good enough to warrant positive comparison to the English-language book that has been read more widely than any other save the Bible? Let’s turn to the book’s content and find out.

What Is The Shack?

The Shack revolves around Mack (Mackenzie) Philips. Four years before this story begins, Mack’s young daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation. Though her body was never found, the police did find evidence in an abandoned shack to prove that she had been brutally murdered by a notorious serial killer who preyed on young girls. As the story begins, Mack, who has been living in the shadow of his Great Sadness, receives a strange note that is apparently from God. God invites Mack to return to this shack for a get together. Though uncertain, Mack visits the scene of the crime and there has a weekend-long encounter with God, or, more properly, with the godhead.

What should you do when you come to the door of a house, or cabin in this case, where God might be? Should you knock? Presumably God already knew that Mack was there. Maybe he ought to simply walk in and introduce himself, but that seemed equally absurd. And how should he address him? Should he call him Father, or Almighty One, or perhaps Mr. God, and would it be best if he fell down and worshipped, not that he was really in the mood.

As he tried to establish some inner mental balance, the anger that he thought had so recently died inside him began to emerge. No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door. Mack decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman.

This large and oh-so-stereotypical matronly African-American woman is God (or at least an anthropomorphism of God she chose to take on in order to communicate with Mack). Throughout the story she is known as Papa. Near the end, because Mack requires a father figure, she turns into a pony-tailed, grey-haired man, but otherwise God is this woman. Jesus is a young to middle-aged man of Middle-Eastern (i.e. Jewish)

descent with a big nose and rather plain looks while the Holy Spirit is played by Sarayu, a small, delicate and eclectic woman of Asian descent. By this point many people will choose to close the book and be done with it. But for the purposes of this review, let’s just assume you are able to get past seeing God and the Holy Spirit portrayed in this way and let’s press on.

There is very little action in The Shack and the bulk of the book is dialog, mostly as the members of the Trinity communicate with Mack, though occasionally we see glimpses into their relationship with one another. The banter between the members of the Trinity, most of which is geared towards helping us understand the love that exists between them, leads to some rather bizarre dialog. Take this as a typical example:

Mack was shocked at the scene in front of him. It appeared that Jesus had dropped a large bowl of some sort of batter or sauce on the floor, and it was everywhere. It must have landed close to Papa because the lower portion of her skirt and bare feet were covered in the gooey mess. All three were laughing so hard that Mack didn’t think they were breathing. Sarayu said something about humans being clumsy and all three started roaring again. Finally, Jesus brushed past Mack and returned a minute later with a large basin of water and towels. Sarayu had already started wiping the goop from the floor and cupboards, but Jesus went straight to Papa and, kneeling at her feet, began to wipe off the front of her clothes. He worked down to her feet and gently lifted one foot at a time, which he directed into the basin where he cleaned and massaged it.

‘Ooooh, that feels soooo good!’ exclaimed Papa, as she continued her tasks at the counter.

Young covers a wide variety of theological topics in this book, each of which is relevant to the theme of Mack’s suffering and his inability to trust in a God who could let his daughter be treated in such a horrifying way. The author is unafraid to tackle subjects of deep theological import – a courageous thing to do in so difficult a genre as fiction. The reader will find himself diving into deep waters as he reads this book.

Much of what Young writes is good and even helpful (again, assuming that the reader can see past the human personifications of God). He affirms the absolute nature of what is good and teaches that evil exists only in relation to what is good; he challenges the reader to understand that God is inherently good and that we can only truly trust God if we believe Him to be good; he acknowledges the human tendency to create our image of God by looking at human qualities and assuming that God is simply the same but more so; he attempts to portray the loving relationships within the Trinity; and so on. For these areas I am grateful as they provided helpful correctives to many false understandings of God.

But the book also raised several concerns. Young covers many topics and time would fail me to discuss each of them. Instead, I will look at concerns with some of the book’s broader themes and will do so under several theological headings. The Trinity

Young teaches that the Trinity exists entirely without hierarchy and that any kind of hierarchy is the result of sin. The Trinity, he says, ‘are in a circle of relationship, not a chain of command’ or ‘great chain of being’. Hierarchy would make no sense among us.’  Now it’s possible that he is referring to a kind of dominance or grade or command structure that may well be foreign to the godhead. But a reading of the Bible will prove that hierarchy does, indeed, exist even where there is no sin. After all, the angels exist in a hierarchy and have done so since before the Fall. Also, in heaven there will be degrees of reward and there will be some who are appointed to special positions (such as the Apostles). And the Bible makes it clear that there is some kind of hierarchy even within the Trinity. The Spirit and the Son have submitted themselves to the Father. The task of the Spirit is to lead people to the Son who in turn brings glory to the Father. Never do we find the Father submitting to the Spirit or to the Son. Their hierarchy is perfect- without anger or malice or envy, but it is a hierarchy nonetheless.

There are other teachings about the Trinity that concerned me. For example, Papa says ‘I am truly human, in Jesus.’ This simply cannot be true. God [the Father – a term that the author avoids] is not fully human in Jesus. This melds the two persons of God in a way that is simply unbiblical. Some of what Young teaches is novel and even possible, but without Scriptural support. For example, he teaches that the triune nature of God was an absolute necessity since without it God would be incapable of love. His reasoning is not perfectly clear but seems to be that if God did not have such a relationship – within himself – he would be unable to love. But this is not taught in the Bible.

Overall, I had to conclude that Young has an inadequate and often-unbiblical understanding of the Trinity. While granting that the Trinity is a very difficult topic to understand and one that we cannot know fully, there are several indications that he often blurs the distinct persons of the Trinity along with their roles and their unique attributes. Combined with his novel but unsupported conjectures, this is a serious concern. Submission

Young uses the discussion about the Trinity as a bridge to a the subject of submission. Here he teaches that each member of the Trinity submits to the other. Jesus says, ‘That’s the beauty you see in my relationship with Abba and Sarayu. We are indeed submitted to one another and have always been so and will always be. Papa is as much submitted to me as I to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.’ Why would the God of the universe seek to be submitted to mere humans? ‘Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship.’Genuine relationships, according to the author, must be marked by mutual submission. As the crowning glory of Creation, you were made in our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply be in relationship with me and one another. If you had truly learned to regard each other’s concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy.’ Submission, according to this book, must be mutual, so that husbands submit to wives while wives submit to husbands, and parents submit to children while children submit to parents. While the Bible does teach that we are to submit to one another, it also teaches that God has ordained some kinds of hierarchy. While a husband is to submit his desires to his wife, even to the point of sacrificing his life for her, he is never called to submit to her in an authoritative sense. Wives, though, are commanded to submit to their husbands, acknowledging that the husband is the head of the family. Similarly, all people are to submit to the God-given authorities and every person is responsible to submit to God.

This understanding of absolute equality not just in value (which the Bible affirms) but also in role and function (which the Bible does not affirm), leads to a strange idea about why God created Eve out of Adam. He teaches that it was crucial for man be created before woman, but with woman hidden inside man. Had this not happened, there could not have been a proper circle of relationship since otherwise man would always come from woman (through childbirth), allowing her to claim a dominant position. She came out of him and now all men come out of her. This allows total, absolute equality, says Young. I can think of absolutely no biblical proof for this and neither does the author offer any.

And so we see that Young uses The Shack to teach an unbiblical understanding of submission. And he uses this topic to bridge to another. Free Will

Young’s understanding of free will seems to follow from submission. ‘I don’t want slaves to do my will,’ says Jesus. ‘I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.’ Speaking in veiled terms about conversion or something like it, Jesus says, ‘We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But, we will never force that union with you. If you want to do your thing, have at it. Time is on our side.’ God, it seems, has already forgiven all humans for their sin and has willingly submitted himself to them, though only some people will choose relationship. He is fully reconciled to all human beings and simply waits for them to do their part. Never does Young clearly discuss the consequences that will face those who refuse to accept this offer of union.

Overall, Young presents a God who is unable or unwilling to break into history in any consequential way. He is sovereign at times, but certainly not so in conversion (a topic that receives only scant attention) and is limited by the free will choices of human beings. Scant attention is paid to God’s fore-ordination, the understanding that nothing happens without it somehow being part of His decree (even while God cannot be accused of being the author of evil). Papa explains to Mack, ‘There was no way to create freedom without a cost.’ But nowhere in the Bible do we find that God is somehow made captive by human free will and that He has to allow things to proceed in order to maintain His own integrity as Creator. Always God is sovereign, even over the free will choices of men. Our inability to understand how this can be does not preclude us from the responsibility of believing it. Forgiveness

Much of the story focuses on forgiveness. Mack has to learn to forgive first God (or at least to come to an intellectual understanding of why God was unable to intervene to save Missy) and then, at the book’s culmination, to forgive the murderer. I am adamantly opposed to the idea that we would ever need to forgive God for anything. However, because this teaching is seen only vaguely in the novel, I will pass over it for now and turn to another area of forgiveness- that of unconditional forgiveness.

Nowhere in Scripture will we find the idea that we can or should forgive an unrepentant person for this kind of crime. Rather, Scripture makes it clear that repentance must precede forgiveness. Without repentance there can be no forgiveness. This is true of God’s offer of forgiveness to us and, as we are to model this in our human relationships, must be true of how we offer forgiveness to others. So when, at the book’s climax, Mack cries out ‘I forgive you’ to the murderer (who is not present and has not sought forgiveness) he cannot offer true forgiveness. Neither can true forgiveness exist where Mack is unable to pursue reconciliation with this man. Forgiveness makes no sense and means nothing if we require it in this way. It may make a person feel better about himself, but it cannot bring about true forgiveness and true reconciliation. And so Young teaches a therapeutic, inadequate and unbiblical understanding of forgiveness.

More….

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