**This is a "rough-final" draft of my critical review of The Shack, due March 1. Sorry for the formatting issues; I simply copied-and-pasted.** - C. J.
Cute, Fluffy God: How The Shack Appeals to Secular Culture But Not to Scripture
Have you ever known anyone who claimed faith in Jesus Christ, yet never consults Scripture, only ever searching for Christly matters in every other place imaginable? This strategy seems to be William Paul Young’s perspective in his work The Shack. The book is always grazing the hem of Scripture, but never quite making the Holy Word of God its home.
Introduction: Plot and Intentions
The Shack is a story about a man, Mackenzie Philips (Mack), who loses his youngest daughter during a family camping trip in the Oregon wilderness. Her disappearance quickly turns into a murder case, as evidence at the scene of her vanishing points toward a serial killer whose victims’ remains are never discovered. The only evidence of Missy’s fate lay in an abandoned shack where large amounts of blood are found. Mack has always considered himself a “Christian” in a very generic sense, but never really felt the depth of God’s plan as does his wife, Nan. She has a name for God: Papa (23-24). Some four years after Missy’s apparent death (a stretch of time known to Mack as the “Great Sadness”), Mack receives an unstamped, unaddressed note in the mail, inviting him for a visit at the shack the following weekend. The letter is only signed “Papa” (18). Whether or not it is just some sick joke by menacing teens, Mack decides to face the shack. When he arrives at the shack in the winter, things begin to go somewhat awry. Everything in front of his eyes begins to change: the shack, old and dilapidated, becomes a livable, cozy log cabin; the weather itself also transforms, from thick ice and snow to lush and fertile spring. This is where Mack will come face-to-face with the God of the universe!
Instead of going through The Shack in a linear fashion, this review will assess a few major categories on which the author builds the premise of his work. Three main topics will be covered in the critical section of the paper: 1) the nature, attributes, and reality of God; 2) the foundational view of the Trinity; and 3) sin and its consequences. In addition to these three segments, the author of this paper will discuss the implications of a few recurring themes in The Shack, including the theses of relationship, the quest for independence, God’s wrathless love, and the contrast of human purposes with those of God.
Who are you and what have you done with God?
The Shack repeatedly chases lop-sided theology. In this first instance, Young wants to emphasize God’s immanence over against His transcendence. Indeed, this has been a problem for many theologians. If God is within us and active in the world and universe (immanence), can He also be wholly other—above and beyond complete human discernment (transcendence)? Though the tension is undeniable, Young outright neglects transcendence in favor of immanence. This is evident in Young’s physical personification of God the Father (or, Mother!). We know, of course, from Scripture that “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24), and that “no one has seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:15-16) the Father.
When it comes to the transcendence of God, Young covers his tracks on gender matters (95); however, God is thus seen as one who shapes His theophanic appearances according to the needs of the individual (95-96). But since when does the Almighty God and Lord over all creation care about “religious stereotypes” (95)? Is not God concerned only with His glorification (Ex. 34:14; Is. 6:3 & 42:8; Eph. 1:11)? This change-at-the-drop-of-a-hat mentality of God is further seen at the climax of the story, where Mack must forgive his daughter’s killer. In this scene, God (who has, up to this point, been personified as a womanly, motherly figure) becomes a father, because, “This morning you’re going to need a father” (221). Young’s point is well-taken that God transcends gender; let us not forget, however, that God is prominently depicted as a father (Jer. 3:4; Mt. 5:45) and as a husband (Jer. 31:32) in the Bible. The God of Scripture is one “who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). Moreover, the LORD is said to contain “everlasting” characteristics (Jer. 31:3).
So, how does Young reconcile the immanence with the transcendence of God? While the potential was there for the author to help with the friction, he fails. He continually talks about the need to be in relationship with Him, but neglects to show that God’s transcendence and immanence are harmonized in “reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:18-19). Furthermore, in Isaiah 57:15, God synchronizes His exalted state with His desire “to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
“Down at our rendezvous, three’s company too!”[1]
The heresy of Sabellianism (or Modalism) is rife in The Shack. Sabellianism is a third-century heresy that claims that the Bible only ever attributes one number to God: One. Therefore, when the Bible speaks of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, it is not talking about three persons in one God; it is speaking of one God who wears three different masks (Greek, prosopon; Latin, persona) during different points in time. One sign of modalism in The Shack occurs in the denial of any unique attributes between the members of the Godhead, when Papa says that “most folks believe the qualities he [Jesus] portrayed were unique to him” (188). However, we know from Scripture that the persons of the Triune God contain inimitable tasks: the Father, “from whom all things came and for whom we live” (1 Cor. 8:6); the Son, “through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Cor. 8:6b); and the Spirit, who “will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:13-14). Clearly, each is addressed as containing distinct tasks as members of the Trinity. It is true that “the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4); yet it is also true that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit contain one “name” in the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19). The logical end to Sabellianism, then, is Patripassianism, the view that the Father Himself suffered on the cross (and, indeed, continues to suffer the wounds of the crucifixion). This is a view to which Young unabashedly adheres (see esp. pp. 97ff; 101-02). What of the Scriptures? Hebrews 5:7 tells us that “he [Jesus] offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death” (emphasis added). Also, God, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3b). The Bible plainly teaches the sending of the Son by the Father to take on a fleshly form. The visible scars on Papa’s physical body in The Shack would be an impossibility for the non-physical, invisible Father of the Bible.
This leads us to a discussion of the lack of any type of hierarchy within the Trinity, according to The Shack. When Mack asks God if one of Them is more of a “boss” over the Others, Young describes God as being utterly stumped, not understanding what Mack was implying (123-24). God goes on to tell Mack that there is “no concept of final authority among us [the Godhead],” and that “only unity” exists in them (124). Certainly, the Bible expresses the unity of the Triune God, when Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30); however, to suggest that there is no subordination or even distinction between the persons of God is to ignore the submission found of the Son to the Father, and the submission of the Holy Spirit to both the Father and the Son (see Jn. 14:28b; Jn. 14:16-18; and Acts 2:32-33). This is not an ontological subordination but a functional one. The argument of the reviewer is this: the Trinity, as properly understood, provides a model for healthy human infrastructure. Young’s God, though, denies that any human institution is modeled properly after the relationship within the Trinity (his version of it, that is). The Shack rejects submission so much so that marriage is taken out of its biblical context: there is, for Young’s God, no proper order in marriage! Has he read Ephesians 5:25-33? The message in this Ephesians passage, if read in its context (and not just as the human power struggle, as Young purports), is the attempt of Paul to enhance the unity of the church! Functional submission, therefore, is not only biblical within the Trinity; it is also biblical and foundational within human relational structures. This rejection to acknowledge the need for any form of subordination is, yet again, another example of The Shack’s unbalanced theology.
“Sin is its own punishment”[2]
God’s kingdom is administered in a two-fold system: judgment and redemption. The asymmetrical theology of Young is exposed once more. When Papa is speaking to Mack at one point, she says, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it” (119). Shall we consult the Bible again? Paul accounts for “the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18) against sinners, who will “receive due penalty for their error” (1:27), and who also “deserve to die” (1:32). Jesus, who possesses the authority to judge, will raise up “those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn. 5:29b). Also, the one who rejects “my [Jesus’] words has a judge” (Jn. 12:48). Furthermore, “the wrath of God lies on him” (Jn. 3:36b) who does not obey the Son (i.e., sins against the Lord). The God of The Shack is a wrathless God: “…mercy triumphs over justice because of love” (166).
Now that the biblical case for judgment has been established, the student of the Bible must ponder God’s contempt for sin. Habakkuk describes God as the One who “cannot look at wrong” (Hab. 1:13). The Lord declares, “I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Because God is holy, because vengeance belongs to Him (Rom. 12:19), sin must be punished. More so, sin must be atoned. Justice, in The Shack, is eclipsed by a very superficial love. Because of God’s holiness sin needed to be propitiated; and it was, in Christ (1 Jn. 2:1), who was made “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). So although Young is somewhat justified in saying that God “cures” the sin problem, it does not negate the fact that the penalty was paid—that sin was punished, that God demands justice when man falls short. If God is not just to punish sin, then Christ’s death was meaningless (see Gal. 2:21).
Recurring Themes, Redeeming Qualities
There are two major, positive features in Young’s work. The quest for independence and the rebelliousness of man’s heart is the first valued, recurring theme in The Shack. The pervasiveness of sin is a classy property of the book (but, as mentioned above, Young’s version of sin is said to be a judgment in and of itself). Tying in closely with mankind’s pursuit of autonomy, is how The Shack contrasts beautifully between the will of the human and the purposes of the divine (see esp. pp. 127-29). Though sinful man may “mean it for evil,” God “means it for good” (Gen. 50:20). The word “purposes” is repeated frequently in The Shack (127; 135; 137; 167; 191; 193; 198). There is a pivotal passage in the Pentateuch that sheds some light on this important theme of Young’s: in the account of the Fall (Gen. 3), Adam and Eve used the fruit of the tree for evil (in that the Serpent led the first parents to believe that God was keeping the tree from them), but the author of the Pentateuch seems to imply that God was saving the tree for good (i.e., He was preserving it for Adam and Eve).
1 comment:
For Daniel: I am indebted to you--and many others-- for the inspiration of the paper's title. I will be footnoting such appreciation in the paper. Sorry it was not done in this draft! - Ceeje
Post a Comment