The Shack

Product Description
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

A maudlin, manipulative, meandering manifesto
This book was mentioned to me by various unrelated people, a few claiming that it had "changed their lives." I had never heard of it and was shocked to discover that it was a huge bestseller. Therefore, when a copy of it was put into my hands, I was eager to read it.

Well, now that I've read it, let me just say that my time could have been put to better use watching dust bunnies roll across the floor. The Shack is a maudlin, manipulative, meandering manifesto.

Any time an author tries to put words in the mouth of God--even a few words--readers' caution flags should go up. This book puts entire chapters into the mouth of "god"--and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and a personification of "Wisdom" for that matter. It would be one thing if these words were completely in line with Scripture and Christian tradition. Of course, they are not--far from it! The author mixes New Age junk in with Scripture to create a stew of half-truths which often sound good on the surface. But the author tips his hand in several places as to what his true agenda might be.

In short, we learn:

Our view of God as "Father" is a product of religious conditioning.

Jesus's life was not meant to be an example to follow.

Jesus did not come to build an institution called the Church

The real church is about "relationships and sharing life".

Jesus is "not too big on religion."

Jesus isn't a "Christian" and has no desire that others become "Christians."

God doesn't expect us to obey the Law. In fact, "all things are lawful."

Of all these lies propagated in The Shack, the last one is arguably the worst. It is also the most easily refuted, using the actual words of Christ as opposed to what the bogus "Jesus" of The Shack says:

"Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled. He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-19)

There's lots more airy-fairy nonsense packed into this book, but a wise reader should have figured out by this point that The Shack will not lead you to a true spiritual epiphany in any Christian sense.

In my opinion, this book was meant to help rich Americans reconcile a depraved lifestyle with an external embrace of Christianity. Interestingly, the supernatural being known as "Lucifer" never appears in The Shack. If you ask me, the reason for that omission is fairly obvious. On that note, I would recommend that anyone who is tempted to read The Shack check out The Screwtape Letters instead.

Malarky
If my wife's book club hadn't selected this book, we'd have never heard of it. And that would have been great. Her uncomplimentary remarks led me to scan it just to see if it was that bad - it was. The library should have filed it under fantasy.
I suggest that all who thought (and that might be an exaggeration) it good should read "God is not Great" and "Paul and the Invention of Christianity" to awake them from their stupor.

An ancient Greek once said "Religion is considered true by the masses, false by the wise, and useful by the rulers." Nothing has changed.

Christian beliefs or not...
...this book was so poorly written as to be painful. I actually purchased this book because I, myself, have lost a child to extreme violence and suffered with my own great sadness, and the glowing reviews that I came across for it whispered to me of a measure of comfort. I couldn't wait to get a copy and dive in. I needed to feel that kinship with God, even if it was through fiction, that had been lacking since He let my child be brutally murdered and taken me for reasons that I can not fathom. Needed to know that I wasn't alone in my pain. I did find great comfort in C.S. Lewis's "A Grief Observed," for example, so I knew that it was possible for me to seek and find a measure of solace in other people's shared sorrow. I understand that reading a story (that's what it is, a work of fiction) about one man's relationship with God can bring comfort to many who are broken, but dear Lord, this book was a crap salad. The author's lack of writing skill, the syrupy tripe, the ridiculous foreword - Our Hero left home at 13 and 'ended up' overseas somehow for the next part of his life? Coming from farm folk that probably never thought to get him a passport? Oh, please - how stupid does the author think his audience is? The trite "tin box full of worldly possessions" - how overdone a device does the author need to inject into the first few pages? At least I can say that I was forewarned, yet I trundled on, blindly - mea culpa, mea massima culpa. And it only gets worse from there. The author's need to dress almost every phrase with overused similes or metaphors made reading this book distasteful. I actually said to my husband, 'the people that urged this person to pursue a career in writing should be forced to read literature as penance."
Let me just say before I sum up: Please don't take offence if you read this book and you loved it. I'm not attacking you. I'm opining, which is what this space is for. If it changed your life for the better, good for you. I truly am happy that it did. The world needs more people who look at the bigger picture and do their damnedest to love one another. There's too much hate and anger simmering in the general populous. Just don't attack me because I didn't like it.
So here's my review in a nutshell: this book is poorly written drivel that will appeal to the under-read and under-educated who don't know to seek meaning in books of superior structure, quality, and constitution.
Peace.

DON'T READ THE INTRODUCTION.
DON'T READ THE INTRODUCTION.

Often I find myself reading more about a book beforehand than I do actually reading the book. This was not the case with "The Shack". I knew very little about the piece, save that it held great prominence within many Christian circles; of which, the general consensus was that the book was life-changing.

Naturally a skeptic, I endeavored to read it after it had been passed along to me from someone who had received it from someone, etc. and so forth. Needless to say, the blank page of perception I had for the book in the outset was perhaps the most fundamental portion to making the book fantastic.

In every way "The Shack" challenged my heart, my views towards God, forgiveness and others. It brilliantly displays the love of God so emphatically that the reader can hardly resist the candor with which it was written. I found myself over and over convicted and gripped by the story the author conveys. Most of all I assure you, you will not be disappointed with where it leads. By all accounts it was one of the most powerfully written books I have ever read.

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Finding God in the Shack: Seeking Truth in a Story of Evil and Redemption

The Shack: Unauthorized Theological Critique

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