The Shack
by Wm. Paul Young in collaboration with Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings
Windblown Media, 2007 252 pages

When I read The Shack this summer I felt affectionately connected to God—in myself, in creation, in other people, and on high. Not new feelings but renewed feelings. I’d resisted reading it in part because it was all the rage and I’m cynical about the tastes of the masses, and in part because I’d heard it was evangelical propaganda full of biblical literalism and not for sophisticated progressives who take the bible seriously but not literally, like my image of myself. And in part because a one of my favorite parishioners, an African American who grew up in Sierra Leone wasn't sure about it and asked me to read it. The lovely irony of this will become clear when you read the book.

The Shack is a parable, a wisdom tale designed to startle and reveal something new. The story is about a father’s spiritual trip, and I say trip, because it is not a steadfast faith journey that evolves and matures over time with trust and prayer. It’s a crisis trip, an internal psychological and spiritual conversion of soul and mood: from a life of grim plodding, possessed by grief, laden with a habit of gloom larger than Eeyore’s to a life full of joy grounded in wisdom not rapture. Isn't that what everyone who prays desires? The plot isn’t complicated. It’s a reiteration of the story of the biblical Job, the good guy who is struck by more personal tragedy than anyone should have to bear and asks, Why? Job is far more dramatic in his impatient refusal to let go of the besetting question about why bad things happen to good people than is Mackenzie Alan Phillips in The Shack who has sunken into a faith of empty duty and spiritual deadness—until he gets an odd invitation in the mail.

Isn't this essentially the plot of everyone who seeks divine consolation in prayer and come for guidance into spiritual direction?

The ideas in this book aren’t new: God in three persons, God who meets us and loves us at the center of our pain, Jesus in living color. It’s evangelical Christian propaganda as I’d feared. What is new is that the theological ideas are wrapped, often not too tightly, in personal narrative, someone’s experience filled with characters you can fall in love with, identify with, care about. You keep reading even though you think you can guess what might happen. To Christian's the story is the one we hear in Church every Sunday and then some—with a twist. One of the novel’s central characters is God-relating-to-God. Hey, don’t you have inner dialogues? But are yours all filled with mutual respect and love—and good boundaries? The gift of his book is that it gives readers a new image of God, not an abstraction or doctrine but as characters in a novel, drawn with sympathy and color, characters that sustain the narrative, characters you want to know. That’s new and it is charming. Here is a God-image easy to see and to trust in prayer. What makes The Shack not really a good novel is that its plot is weak, the writing not very creative, the dramatic action not suspenseful but forced into the service of an agenda, the solutions contrived, the wisdom un-nuanced. The plot quickly takes second place to the agenda of the author and collaborators with just enough change of scene to keep you going. What starts as a story turns into a sermon, embarrassingly preachy in spots, especially near the end when a clear Christian refrain shows up uninvited. I cringed.

My Jewish blood also curdled in a couple of places that were unnecessarily anti-semitic and insulting to the Hebrew scriptures. The story doesn’t carry its own weight throughout. As I’d feared it is also biblical literalism thinly disguised. Why am I not in a rant? Disgusted? I don’t know. I just got into the scene, the relationships, corny but alluring, often followed up with a tidbit of irresistible wisdom like the Eden myth question: “Rumors of glory are often hidden inside what many consider myths and tales.” Or the human soul as a living fractal—wild, messy always in process, patterns emerging, alive, growing and needing constant tending. Jesus takes Mack on a walk across the water. I giggled with them as they stepped off the dock, carrying their socks and shoes and rolling up their pants just in case. This and other biblical scenarios are simply portrayed without fanfare. They’re just acted out in character. Who cares if they actually happened? It is not fact that inspires faith but warmth. Do we spiritual directors at our best not risk walking on the water with our directees?

The Shack is vulnerable, open to all kinds of scholarly nitpicking, literary scorn, religious defensiveness, much of it justified. But does it work anyway? I think it does for one reason only: the characters are loveable, charming, their voices convincing. You want more. You fall in love. You want this kind of love, this kind of God. I wonder if that is why this book is so popular. It allows us to fall in love, to be as a child, to let go of proofs, to enjoy a story that touches our humanity at its most vulnerable and presents an ancient Christian insight in new garb.

The Shack is also fragile because it is a bridge, a string bridge to be sure, but a bridge nevertheless between wherever evangelical Christianity on the "right" and wherever liberal or progressive Christianity is on the "left". To cross this bridge will take more than reading one book. But The Shack invites us to start. Coming together will take courage and trust in the long slow work of God as we traverse with care, holding hands and watching where we place our feet.

Is this not the ministry of spiritual direction? Is this not the vulnerability that happens in prayer? If this book does nothing else it give us fresh dynamic language and imagery for divinity and goes a long way to balance transcendent and immanent, love and freedom, revelation and psychology. This is evangelical Christianity in its loveliest form.

Reviewer: Lyn G. Brakeman is an Episcopal priest and the author of two books Spiritual Lemons and The God Between Us, and a blog.