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Summary: Most incredible book!!!!!
Comment: It is the most incredible book I've ever read it!!! It gives you a true sense and visual image of the true nature of God.
Please do not miss the chance to read a great book!!!
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Summary: Hope Restored
Comment: Before I had even heard of this book, I was told it would change my life. While I have never experienced something as horrific as Mack and his family do, William Young's novel did, in fact, help me reaffirm my own relationship with God.
Both tragic and inspirational, this book aims to teach, to inspire. As the narrator, Willie, explains: we should take from this story what we would like. And I choose to take from this hope, hope that forgiveness can heal us and love can overcome evil.
The death of Missy is devastating; I could hardly read the description of her disappearance and subsequent death. However, like Mack, this story helped me to heal. I felt comfort in God's own sadness; he too lost a son. Likewise, I felt happiness at this incredible, awe-inspiring presence. And, at the end, when Mack has the strength to say goodbye--properly--to his daughter, we, as readers, feel a sense of peace.
Perhaps a dream, perhaps a parable, perhaps a true experience--nonetheless, this novel challenges us to confront powerful issues in our lives. And, when we are asked to forgive--as God asks of Mack--will we, too, rise and kill all hatred with open love?
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Summary: Theology Disguised as Fiction
Comment: If I wanted to brush up on theology there are a lot of great theologians who have done a much better job of explaining theology than Wm Paul Young ever will. In fact, some of his theological points are inaccurate and misleading. I would go so far as to say that Young's book is actually dangerous in that it is leading Christians in to heresy concerning the Trinity, the incarnation, free will, etc. Just a caution, don't check your brain at the door if you are going to read this book. Let Scripture and not Mr. Young inform your view of God. [...]
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Summary: reflecting on the shack
Comment: I had read about the Shack in World magazine awhile back, and had wondered about it. I read it, and have some serious concerns about it. On the other hand it is easy to see the appeal it holds, because it does communicate truths in powerful ways. Much of the book has strong Biblical themes.
A good portion of the book struck me as true, but imbalanced. It seemed to be attempting to correct many false ideas and stereotypes, and went on to toss out the baby with the bathwater. It also bothered me that it went so far out of its way to pander to the other false gods of political correctness, such as the feminist movement. It may be a fine thing to destroy false religious stereotypes, but hardly at the cost of reinforcing others that are as bad or worse. An example of tossing out the baby with the bathwater... in chapter 6 we are introduced to Papa, the black woman. The point is made that both male and female are derived from God, and so appearing to Mack as a woman was to mix things up and release him from a false religious stereotype. While the truth about male and female being jointly made in the image of God is fully Biblical, this `stereotype' that the author is so quickly dismissing happens to be what Christ Himself taught us... He taught us "Our FATHER which art in heaven.." He could have said, if He chose, "Our PARENT which art in heaven.." To view God as "Father" is not a manmade stereotype, it is a picture handed to us by God Himself. In another place (pg 122) issue is taken with authority structure, and it is dismissed as something manmade and irrelevant to the Godhead. That is VERY unbiblical, the Scriptures speak often and soberly about the authority structure of the Spiritual realm, (see 1 Cor. 15:28, Matthew 8:5-13, and Romans 13:1) and that this is a critical truth we need to embrace. It seems to me the author is pretty quick to dismiss any `hard' truth that doesn't fit into his neat little "spirituality and knowing God made easy" puzzle. There ARE many striking paradoxes in the faith, that are no doubt stumbling stones to those who have not met the Lord and received Light from Him... but the answer isn't to take our scissors to the Bible and cut out the uncomfortable parts, which are many.
Probably the most blatant rewriting of Scripture, that I found, was on page 162 where Wisdom is having Mack play Judge. "I am only asking you to do something that you believe God does. He knows every person ever conceived, and he knows them so much deeper and clearer than you will ever know your own children. He loves each one according to his knowledge of the being of that son or daughter. You believe He will condemn most to an eternity of torment, away from His presence and apart from His love. Is that not true?"
Then she goes on to tell him to choose 3 of his children for hell and 2 for heaven.
Then he asks to go to hell for them, and then the idea of Christ dying for our sins is introduced, with the obvious strong inference that the concept of hell as a real place that those in rebellion to God's Kingdom are sent is a false notion contrary to the love of God. Jesus paid the price for all so certainly ultimately all are saved. That is a very pleasant doctrine, but you have to throw away your Bible to accept it. Christ spoke more about hell than He did about heaven, so it seemed He wasn't too worried about scaring us. I'd encourage you to sit down and read every word in red in the gospels in light of this book's teachings. Even just the Sermon on the Mount.
When Christ's disciples asked "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?"
Jesus responded NOTHING like "The Shack" author. He said that wide is the way and broad is the path that leads to destruction, and narrow is the way and hard is the path that leads into life, and few there be that find it. Or how about this:
"Many will say to Me in that day, `Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matt 7:22-23)
As a matter of fact Christ's teachings were quite the opposite of this Christ of the Shack. "The Shack Jesus" was so amazingly inclusive while the Christ of the Bible often seemed more interested in thinning the crowds than drawing them.
(John 6:53-63) I know that the `Shack Jesus' was an effort to show the unfathomable love He is, and gives... but I do not believe to simply edit out many other truths that stand solid and strong in the Scriptures is any real answer to our great need. I believe it will, in the end, lead to deception and further darkness.
AW Tozer spoke much about `the old cross and the new'... and "The Shack" seems to be a shining example of the way of this `new' cross. Consider his thoughts:
"I have long believed that a man who spurns the Christian faith outright is more respected before God and the heavenly powers than the man who pretends to religion but refuses to come under its total domination. The first is an overt enemy, the second a false friend. It is the latter who will be spewed out of the mouth of Christ; and the reason is not hard to understand.
One picture of a Christian is a man carrying a cross. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)
The man with a cross no longer controls his destiny; he lost control when he picked up his cross."
"The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect...
The philosophy back of this kind of thinking may be sincere but its sincerity does not save it from being false. It is false because it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.
The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-bye to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more.
The race of Adam is under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape. God cannot approve any of the fruits of sin, however innocent they may appear or beautiful to the eyes of men. God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life.
That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to the souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the world, it intersects it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher place; we leave it at the cross... God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross... Dare we, the heirs of such a legacy of power, tamper with the truth? Dare we with our stubby pencils erase the lines of the blueprint or alter the pattern shown us in the Mount? May God forbid. Let us preach the old cross and we will know the old power."
All that said, I can certainly see the vacuums in our souls and thinking in this day and age that cause our hearts to leap up to stories like "The Shack". For one thing, in this day of materialism and unbelief, we lived starved for wonder, and The Shack touches that place in us. Also the USA version of Christianity has become so carnal and sterile and empty of substance (ie: Christ!) That much of what we call worship IS mere formality and emptiness. The Shack also touches us in this withering desert within and without. But how can we be restored to the heart of true faith and fellowship with God in any other way than deep humility, repentance, pouring over the Scriptures and willingness to obey? The Godhead will NOT fellowship with proud carnal Adam. He departed them in the Garden of Eden and He hasn't changed in that regard. The Cross of Christ, His death and resurrection bridged the gap... but not as a super highway that all will cross sooner or later. To teach fallen man this is to cry: "Peace! Peace!... when there is no peace."
One more quote of Tozer's from a chapter called: That utilitarian Christ.
"Our Lord forewarned us that false Christs should come. Mostly we think of these as coming from the outside, but we should remember that they may also arise within the sanctuary itself. We must be extremely careful that the Christ we profess to follow is indeed the very Christ of God. There is always danger that we may be following a Christ who is not the true Christ but one conjured up by our imagination and made in our own image."
And this is exactly what has occurred with the Trinity (All) within the pages of "The Shack". This is a spiritually dark day indeed, aren't we warned that the end times will be marked with tremendous and powerful deceptions?
`Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved...'
The fear of God is the beginning... and without the beginning there will neither be a middle nor an ending. We'd better keep hold of it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Your While
Comment: On the strength of the blurb, "The #1 New York Times Bestseller," I purchased "The Shack." What a piece of garbage! This purports to be an encounter with God, complete in the Holy Trinity," at a shack used by a murderer and child molester. Most all of this book is a "conversation with God," as arrogant, presumptuous and ultimately, vacuous piece of claptrap as I have ever laid eyes upon. All of which is in answer to "a great sadness" suffered by the protagonist in his loss of his youngest child; a six year old girl. No true answers are given here. Rather this book with its facile theology and new age platitudes, is an affront to those of us who have really suffered such a loss.
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