THE SHACK:

Part I: A Preamble

Books become best-sellers when they connect with our deep questions and tragic/meaningful experiences. Some become classics, others may be left behind with the detritus of literary or theological history.

Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack (2007) is a best-seller (it’s knocked Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven books off a few perches) but probably won’t be a classic. He’s nowhere near the brilliance of apologists like Oxbridge don C S Lewis or Soren Kierkegaard.

But when we ask why so many ordinary folks tell their friends ‘You gotta read this’ I think they have two questions in mind which Young is trying to answer:

* ‘Where is God when tragedy crashes in on us, when the innocent suffer, or when a “Great Sadness” overwhelms us?’ (Theodicy) and

* ‘What sense can we make of it all?’ (Theology).

Addressing the second issue first, my ‘conservative self’ wants a coherent theological system where ‘truth’ is clear, and questions are answered to my satisfaction a theory of EverythingImportant, which ‘adds up’. Young tries to do this, but many fundamentalists/ conservatives take issue with some of his ideas.

More of that later.

My ‘moderate/progressive/skeptical self’ can live with some paradox, ambiguity, antinomy, and has real problems with a desire to wallow in ‘simplicity this side of complexity’. I’m prepared to live with stuff happening which I can’t explain, and believe that verifiable ‘miracles’ are very rare. I know humans can’t easily live with cognitive dissonance, but some of my reservations about The Shack’s approach is that too little is left to mystery. The Judeo-Christian God suffers with us, acts for us, speaks to us, but (as in Job, for example) doesn’t always give us nifty answers to our deep and urgent questions.

Without revealing too much of the plot, Young takes us on a journey into another, fantastic (in both senses) world, complete with out-of-body experiences – a journey which, to say the least, stretches credulity. Liberals/progressives are rarely at home in realms-beyond-the-rational.

Many books have been written about evil/suffering: Philip Yancey’s ‘Where is God When it Hurts?’, Harold Kushner’s ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People’, C. S. Lewis’s ‘The Problem of Pain’ come to mind.

The Shack tries to contemporize (and soften) C. S. Lewis’s approach, especially the in-your-face question that Lewis asks if one objects to the notion of human freedom issuing in the possibility of our inflicting evil on others, and God’s allowing rebellious humans to choose hell: ‘Well, what are you asking God to do?’ The Shack is an attempt to put into words God’s response…

The Problem of Pain has these famous lines which might serve as commentary on Young’s approach:

‘ALL YOUR LIFE AN UNATTAINABLE ECSTASY HAS HOVERED JUST BEYOND THE GRASP OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. THE DAY IS COMING WHEN YOU WILL WAKE TO FIND, BEYOND ALL HOPE, THAT YOU HAVE ATTAINED IT, OR ELSE, THAT IT WAS WITHIN YOUR REACH AND YOU HAVE LOST IT FOREVER.’

Except that Young is not as prescriptive about hell as was C S Lewis. There’s much more about the joyful certainty of a loving relationship with God in The Shack than in The Problem of Pain (which C S Lewis wrote before he fell in love, and married, Joy Davidman. You’ll have to read ‘A Grief Observed’ to get in touch with that side of Lewis).

Indeed Young is sometimes accused by fundamentalists of being a universalist. He isn’t, unless you want to read that into this interesting exchange:

[Jesus]: ‘Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans… Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian…’ ‘Does that mean,’ asked Mack, ‘that all roads will lead to you?’ ‘Not at all,’ smiled Jesus… ‘Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you’. [p. 182].

I would urge anyone to read this little page-turner, and suspend your simplistic fundamentalism or sophisticated skepticism, and allow yourself to be bathed in God’s love – an experience beyond creeds or explicable rationalities, whether conservative or liberal. Of course, if you can offer a more coherent apologetic send it to me, and I’ll put a selection on our website, but I for one applaud Young for, as we Australians say, ‘having a go’…

In Part II we’ll look in more detail at some of the facile-to-excellent answers Young offers to life’s Big Questions.

Rowland Croucher http://jmm.org.au/

November 2008

Available from Ridley Bookshop, Melbourne