LayGuy

Ranking very high on Amazon’s best seller list is a book by William P. Young, The Shack. Released in May last year, many of you would probably already know about it.  As of today, it has upward of 350 reviews on Amazon.com.

Additionally Christian personalities such as Michael W Smith and Eugene Peterson (Author of The Message) have endorsed it in a positive way. Here’s what Peterson had to say:

When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!

This has found many people rushing to buy the book and calling their experience in reading it, “a mind blowing experience, a spiritual stick of dynamite and a life changing book.”

So what’s the book about?  Basically it’s this:

The Shack revolves around Mack (Mackenzie) Philips. Four years before this story begins, Mack’s young daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation. Though her body was never found, the police did find evidence in an abandoned shack to prove that she had been brutally murdered by a notorious serial killer who preyed on young girls. As the story begins, Mack, who has been living in the shadow of his Great Sadness, receives a strange note that is apparently from God. God invites Mack to return to this shack for a get together. Though uncertain, Mack visits the scene of the crime and there has a weekend-long encounter with God, or, more properly, with the godhead.

In a nut shell, God asks Mack to meet in the shack for a deep and meaningful about His nature.  The author was interviewed on the 700 Club on CBN and here is what he had to say:

It all sounds nice and fine and dandy until you get to meet the “god” Young introduces to Mack.  You see God the Father is an African American woman called Papa. God the Son (Jesus) is a guy from the Middle East with plain looks apart from his big nose.  And God the Spirit is Sarayu - a small and delicate little Asian girl.

Talking about messing with people’s heads!  And the fact that Christians are out there endorsing this crap and readers are saying that their consciousness is altered as a result of reading this book, blows me away.

It really makes wonder about the state of Oprah Winfrey type, new age mentality spreading across Christianity these days and how Christians are sucking this up into their minds and souls and don’t have any idea of the vomit they are consuming.

To be honest, I haven’t read the book.  But I don’t need to.  There are many people holding onto biblical truth who have exposed this book for what it’s worth. Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and keeper of the popular blog challies.com has an awesome review about the book here.

In his conclusions, Challies says:

Because of the sheer volume of error and because of the importance of the doctrines reinvented by the author, I would encourage Christians, and especially young Christians, to decline this invitation to meet with God in The Shack. It is not worth reading for the story and certainly not worth reading for the theology.

Despite the great amount of poor theology, my greatest concern is probably this one: the book has a quietly subversive quality to it. Young seems set on undermining orthodoxy Christianity.

One of the theological areas The Shack centres on is the nature of the trinity. And Young’s characters of a black female Papa, a plain and big nosed Son and a delicate little female Asian Sarayu spirit, struck a negative vibe in me as soon as I read it.  Undoubtedly, Young’s work is in the genre of Mclaren’s work and you all you where I stand with Mclaren.

And in typical Mark Driscoll style, he nails this issue of the trinity in The Shack in his sermon series on doctrine.  Below is a snippet:

As you can see.  The Shack is a shocker when it comes to many aspects of Christianity.  Many good things are mixed with many bad things resulting in a delightful read where you may be unaware of the realigning of your understanding of crucial doctrines. And isn’t this just what the devil wants?

If the nature of the trinity does confuse you and you want to know more about this important aspect in our understanding of God, I invite you to check out Driscoll’s sermon below.