Book Reviews
The Shack, by Paul Young
A good book in general. You will see and understand some things about God better as you read it. What struck me was the joy within God. This was very wonderful and made it more real for me. The book does a pretty good job of getting at why evil happens in our world, which is a tough subject. The author grew up as a child of missionary parents but experienced a ton of pain as a child. This book is in a sense a story of his healing.
I do have a few concerns:
(1) Picturing the Trinity as three embodied persons is OK for a story, I guess, but it isn’t what we get from the Bible…only Jesus has a body. The book helps you to picture part of who God is – I am not sure how much though. He is always more than we think.
(2) The book did a good job bringing out the “three-ness of God” (three persons), but not so much the oneness of God.
(3) The book has a built in bias (stereotype) against traditions, ritual, and the institutional church. OK, some of this is justified, but God is the author of at least some of our traditions (baptism and communion, for example) and somehow, we need a community of faith if we are going to survive and thrive as Christians (according to the Bible). “God and me” religion is a dead end for spiritual growth.
Those are my concerns but I think there is enough good stuff in this book to recommend it.
~ Pastor Mark Meredith