First, visit http://jmm.org.au/articles/21957.htm for my review of The Shack.

Here are some jottings which didn’t make it there:

* ‘Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination? — George Bernard Shaw. A good quote for those ‘Reformed’ rationalistic types who decry God’s gift of imagination – which this book exploits very powerfully.

* There’s ‘soft evangelicalism’ and ‘hard evangelicalism’. The former emphasises love, the latter belief; the first is primarily relational, the second insists on (their brand of) orthodoxy. The Shack is squarely in the former category.

* The brand of Evangelicalism we find in The Shack is reminiscent of the Miller/Larsen ‘Faith at Work’ / ‘Taste of New Wine’ people of the 60s and 70s.

* Here’s a sermon I’ve preached (incorporating the essence of the 20th Century’s three most powerful sermons) on the theme ‘When Life Tumbles In, What Then?’ – http://jmm.org.au/articles/16453.htm . Here are three answers to the ‘Theodicy’ question: not quite Paul Young’s approach, but good supplementary ideas…

* I thought Paul might have made a reference to Herod’s slaughter of the innocents etc. – not just one little girl, but many children…

* And here’s Ron Sider’s excellent comment on The Shack –

Once I started reading William Paul Young’s remarkable book, The Shack (Windblown Media, 2008), I could not put it down. Fortunately I was on vacation in Maine, so everything else could wait until I made it to the last page. This book deserves its place at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. The Shack offers a powerful portrayal of the Trinity, God’s astounding mercy and forgiveness, and God’s persistent wooing that respects human freedom. Again and again, Young gets important things right: God is profoundly personal but neither male nor female; God longs to heal our deepest hurts but does not compel us to repent; at the center of Christian faith is the astounding intimacy of a living personal relationship with the creator of the universe, who delights in our friendship far more than we can imagine.

I am sure that untold thousands of unbelievers will pick up this book with the humble title and be surprised to discover a wonderful portrait of an inviting, loving God.

But there is a problem. One would never guess from reading The Shack that Jesus’ gospel was the good news of the kingdom of God. The picture of the gospel and Christian faith that is presented in The Shack is classic evangelical individualism at its very best.

The gospel is forgiveness of sins, personal healing, transformed personal relationships, and an intimate personal relationship with the creator of the galaxies. All that, of course, is simply splendid, and if that were the whole of the gospel, I would be thrilled with God’s gift to us. But according to Jesus, the gospel is all that—and so much more.

Virtually every New Testament scholar today agrees that the gospel Jesus preached was the good news of the kingdom. And no one explains more clearly and powerfully what that means than N.T. Wright. Jesus claims to be the longexpected messiah ushering in the messianic time when, as the prophets had predicted, God would not only forgive our sins but also begin to transform the entire broken creation, restoring right relationships among God, our neighbors, the earth, and ourselves.

More… http://tinyurl.com/5mb83m

And here’s the Wikipedia article on The Shack – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shack_(novel)

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Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher

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