I can’t remember the last time a work of Christian fiction was buzzing on everyone’s lips the way The Shack has been these days (or at least since the Left Behind series). As a testimony to its popularity, I met my grandfather for coffee at a McDonald’s yesterday, and I was reading the book while I waited for him. When he showed up he had the book in hand, and it was only moments before a stranger came to us and asked us where he might get a copy for himself, since he had heard so much about it. So I figured it would be a timely undertaking for this weblog to offer its own humble analysis of the theology that the book espouses.
Possible Spoiler Alert: The editors of the book asked that readers not divulge some key elements of the plot to those who have not read it yet. However, it's nearly impossible to talk about the plot without discussing these.
The story takes place in Portland, Oregon (is this the secret recipe for a book guaranteed to fly off the shelves of Christian bookstores?), where family man Mackenzie Phillips is wrestling with a cloud of depression that descended upon him four years prior, when his six-year-old daughter was brutally murdered by a serial killer during a family camping trip. One day he mysteriously receives an unstamped letter in his mailbox, from God, inviting him to spend the weekend with him in a dilapidated shack in the Oregon wilderness—which happens to be where Mackenzie’s daughter was murdered. When he arrives, he is surprised to find the murder site transformed into an idyllic log cabin with a perfectly manicured lawn, and is greeted by an ethnically colorful personification of the Trinity: God the Father is revealed as a large, jovial black woman—who will surely be played by Queen Latifah when the movie adaptation comes out; Jesus is a 21st century version of himself—an Israeli manual laborer in a token blue jumpsuit; and the Holy Spirit is apparently played by a character from the creepy British children’s show Boobah. What ensues is a weekend of theological conversation and moments of revelation between Mackenzie and each of the three members of the Trinity, wherein God gets a chance to explain him/herself to the troubled, doubting protagonist.
The book’s primary concern is the timeless theological dilemma of the problem of evil: how can an all-loving and all-powerful God allow senseless suffering to run so rampant in the world? In today’s scene of hard Calvinism making such a startling comeback in all kinds of church circles, I found Young’s depiction of God refreshing and hopeful. Young portrays God, not as a puppet master who orchestrates tragedy to show us a lesson about his sovereignty or to create situations that will force us to grow, but as a God who suffers alongside his creation and values relationship with his children above micromanagement.
The difference between Calvinism and Young’s argument is the difference between de facto and de jure understandings of God’s sovereignty. In de facto sovereignty, God is directly behind all activity in the universe—no matter how seemingly insignificant or evil—and every event works in accordance with his will. Whereas de facto refers to what actually is the case, de jure refers to what is “by right” or “by law”; God might not be controlling every detail, but all of creation rightfully belongs to its Creator and awaits the day it will be redeemed back to him/her. To affirm God’s sovereignty, then, is to have faith in God’s ability to redeem the most senseless situations. This is the revelation that ultimately brings healing to Mackenzie.
The Shack also features interesting discussion on the nature of the Trinity. Free-church Protestants in the past have made topics like soteriology (doctrine of salvation) and eschatology (doctrine of the end-times) their main points of focus, while being content to leave more esoteric Trinitarian speculation to Catholics and Orthodox. It's nice to see the topic take a central place in a book so popular the free-church crowd. (Interestingly, the book supports the peculiar doctrine of patripassianism: the historically heretical belief that the Father suffered with the Son on the cross and bears the same wounds.)
For those of you who noticed Eugene Peterson’s blurb on the front cover lauding the book as today’s equivalent of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, I wouldn’t go in with such high hopes. While The Shack’s theology can be winning at times, the writing, lamentably, is not. (Will there ever be a return to great Christian fiction, a return to the days when we could claim great writers like Dante and Dostoyevsky? Or is there plenty out there and I just haven’t come across it yet?) The dialogue is quite stilted at times, with characters set up to deliver theological quips seemingly on queue. It’s a bit like watching a 2nd grade Thanksgiving pageant, with students lined up in a row behind the microphone, each taking his turn to uncomfortably say his line and hurry back to his place in the chorus. And the book is more than a little touchy-feely. Everyone refers to God as “Papa”, and Jesus and “Papa” greet each other with a kiss on the lips—and this is after he/she has morphed back from God the Mother into the familiar Father (an old white guy).
As far as the theology goes, the book makes some very important arguments about the nature of God that, I think, are very needed today. Young’s God is pluralistic, relational, non-manipulative, able to experience pain, and at times something of a hippy. We need an injection of this kind of theology in a time when influential people like John Piper are preaching that the 2004 tsunami that claimed a quarter of a million lives was God's way of calling the world to repentance. If what you’re mainly looking for is an inspired work of fiction, however, you might stick with the New York Times Book Review. But then again, my schooling is in theology, not literature, so my expertise is not in this area. Please, let us know what you thought of the book, even if you think I’m totally off.
