I’m currently reading…The Shack

I haven’t had any books personally recommended to me for quite a while. I tend to hear about, or get wind of, authors, and then I’ll read one, two, or even three of their books in quick succession.

Or, I get interested in a particular concept or topic – it could be apologetics, legal dramas, the Nigerian Civil War, or a fictional female detective in Botswana – and I sink my teeth into that for a while, until I get bored and move onto the next thing that catches my fancy.

However, this book was recommended in my church a couple of months ago.

Now, I’m very wary of recommendations made from the pulpit as a whole, as after a while one may unwittingly find oneself more engaged in activities of the buying and selling variety, instead of focusing on listening to and imbibing the tenets of godly living. But I felt this book had a fascinating premise…

…and that’s why I’m currently reading The Shack by William Paul Young.

The book has an interesting plot: the protagonist Mackenzie Philips loses his youngest daughter Missy in the most tragic and horrific way. He blames himself and – ultimately – God, for allowing an innocent girl to meet what can only be described as an undeservedly brutal fate.

He proceeds to drift through life consumed by bitterness and sorrow, until he has an encounter with God one weekend. And I don’t mean any old ‘encounter’; this was a physical face-to-face meeting!

This gives Mack the chance to ask God all the questions he’s always wanted to ask, accuse him, cry, scream, shout and, most importantly, get closure about Missy’s death.

This book deals with the hard question of why a loving God allows His creation to experience suffering. For me, this subject is a deeply fascinating theme which I keep revisiting.

Why does God not intervene to stop evil? Why do we sometimes have to bear indescribable pain, when God is said to be love? Is God really the God we have been taught about in churches, or is he a markedly different Being?

While I enjoyed the book, I cannot deny that I found it tiresome in some places. Maybe because I knew what the central premise was and just wanted the author to get on with it! The descriptions of roads and terrain were tedious, and while the author uses these techniques to stop the book being just about theological debate, I didn’t think they added anything to it, other than a few extra pages.

However, I loved the way it made me think of things that had never occurred to me about God. The following things really struck me:

• Jesus was a Jew. Why then do I expect him to be all delicate-looking and European, with long, perfectly coiffed blond/brown locks? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who thinks it is materially important whether he was white, black or brown. But he was a carpenter’s son…he was bound to have some sort of rough edge to him, surely! He wasn’t a weakling; apart from being divine he must have been physically powerful. Which makes it all the more humbling that he submitted himself to other men, considering he could easily have broken a nose or two!
• I am fixated on the idea of God the Father as a bearded, old man. I hadn’t realised it, but this has made him seem remote, sometime even uninterested in me. So it was interesting to see him portrayed as a black woman! It helped me relate to the concept of a Father who can love, and who grieves when his children are in pain.
• Most importantly, it made me envy the protagonist! I know that’s a strange thing to say since the book is fictional but I really do envy Mack, because once a man has the privilege to see God face-to-face, it is highly improbable that his life will remain the same. This is evident in the lives of the disciples and Paul; one meeting with God would take away my fears, my tears, my overwhelming lack of faith.

I would certainly recommend that you read The Shack. I raced through my copy the first time and will be reading it again, slowly this time. While it’s important to note that it’s not some 21st century Bible update (as some have taken it to be!), it is an intriguing work of fiction which does its best to open our minds to the truth of who God is, while at the same time challenging the religious imagery that has been imbibed in the collective consciousness of followers of Christ and others for centuries.

Available at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shack-William-P-Young/dp/0340979496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226236664&sr=8-1

P.S. Just so you know, there has been a wave of both genuine support and vehement criticism for The Shack, its writer and publisher. Below is a useful link to the publisher’s website, where he both summarises major issues that have been raised about the book and responds to them. Makes interesting reading…

… http://windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html