Many are crediting The Shack, the novel by William P. Young, with revolutionizing their
faith. With themes of overcoming loss, working through anger, and
restored relationship between man and God, Young’s novel has excited
many within the Body of Christ.
Young has appeared on CBN, and has garnered fans
across the country. The Shack
continues to sell briskly. Yet, in the midst of such enthusiasm, does
The Shack glorify Jesus
Christ—or contradict the Bible with a false image of the Lord our God?
The novel’s main
character, Mack Philips, has lost his daughter. She has been
murdered, her bloodied dress found in an isolated shack. Four years
later Mack receives an invitation from God to spend time with the
Trinity in the very shack where the dress was found.
Nowhere in the Bible do Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit simultaneously assume physical forms on earth.
The Shack, however, portrays
Jesus as a carpenter, the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman, and God the
Father as a large black woman named…Papa.
Much like AA’s “higher power,”
The Shack’s deity comes to Mack in a form he is willing to accept.
While the novel’s feminization of the Lord is as trendy as it is
Babylonian, the reader rapidly becomes used to descriptions of God as
“she” and “her.” At one point the book’s version of Jesus praises the
fictional Father-goddess, exclaiming, “Isn’t she great?”[i]
Malachi 3:6 states, “For I, the Lord, do not change.”
God is Spirit. In the entire Bible there is not one single reference to
Father, Son, or Holy Spirit—or to any of His angels—as female. It is
probably not wise, then, to go beyond what has been presented in
Scripture.
Unfortunately, this seems a frequent occurrence in
The Shack. The Father-goddess
character tells Mack she appears in female form “to help keep you from
falling back so easily into your religious conditioning.”[ii]
The author and his publishing team apparently assume Christians believe
the Lord is an old white man with a beard, and have produced the book in
part to help straighten us out.
There is an apparent dismissal of the importance of
Scripture, which is reflected in slippery theology found throughout the
novel. Young writes, “Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.
Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was
that guilt edges?”[iii]
Guilt edges?
The Father-goddess of
The Shack, it seems, is never about guilt or punishment. She
benignly informs Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is
its own punishment, devouring people from the inside. It’s not my
purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”[iv]
That sounds wonderful. And, yes, sin enslaves.
However, the novel’s deity contradicts the Bible. Jesus will “be dealing
out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not
obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will pay the penalty of eternal
destruction…” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
Although most sermons these days skirt the issue,
Christians receive punishment during our time on earth. “For those whom
the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he
receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as
sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
(Hebrews 12:6-7)
But, this is not the message of the Father-goddess,
simply because this is not the God of Scripture. An excellent writer,
Young plays to emotion and touches on legitimate hurts and concerns. The
author excels at imbuing his deity with attributes of love, forgiveness,
and mercy, and this is what many people have responded to.
Increasingly in novels and movies the Lord is
blithely used as one of the characters, and given words from the mouth
of man. In this sense, the author of
The Shack is simply following
the culture.
But something else is going on here.
Universal Reconciliation (UR) is the belief that
Jesus’ sacrifice allows Christians and non-Christians to spend eternity
with God. In other words, in UR
theology, everybody goes to
heaven, not just followers of Jesus. Some in this camp even believe this
includes the devil and his demons.
Publisher Wayne Jacobsen acknowledges that
UR
was included in earlier versions
of The Shack. Jacobsen explains,
“While some of that was in earlier versions because
of the
author’s partiality at the time to
some aspects of what
people call
UR, I made it
clear at the outset that I didn’t embrace UR and didn’t want to be part of a project
that promoted it.”[v]
So why did Jacobsen proceed to join forces with
Young? He writes,
“To me that was the beauty of the collaboration …the
author would say that some of that dialogue significantly affected his
views. …Holding him to the conclusions he may have embraced years
earlier would be unfair to the ongoing process of God in his life and
theology.”[vi]
Perhaps, but this allegedly former theology even now
seems to explain some of the content of the book.
The Bible clearly teaches the only way to God the
Father is through Jesus, who loved us enough to die for us. Early in
The Shack, Mack’s daughter
asks if the Great Spirit, the Native American god, is another name for
the Father of Jesus. Mack tells her…yes.[vii] He may
as well have told her that Allah (or any other false patriarchal god) is
also the Father of Jesus.
Of course, if everybody is going to heaven because of
UR, what does it matter? God, Great Spirit,
Allah, what’s the difference?
His daughter asks the question because Mack tells the
story of an Indian princess who willingly died so her people could be
delivered of an illness. According to an Indian prophecy, it could be
ended only through her sacrifice. The author states, “After praying and
giving herself to the Great Spirit, she fulfilled the prophecy by
jumping without hesitation to her death on the rocks below.”[viii]
When his
daughter calls the Great Spirit “mean”[ix]
for making both Jesus and the princess die, Mack never clarifies that
Jesus’ Father is not the Great Spirit, or that God the Father has
nothing to do with this pagan legend.
Does the author still have UR leanings? In his article, ‘The Beauty of
Ambiguity,’ it is not his character Mack, but Young himself, who speaks
to the Father-goddess. He denies being a universalist, and proclaims
“faith in Jesus is the only way into your embrace.”[x]
She asks, “I take it that it wouldn’t bother you if
I decided to save every human being that ever lived?”[xi]
“Nope. I actually hope you’ve figured a way to do
just that,” he replies.[xii]
Wait a minute. If Young is still hoping God somehow
ends up saving everybody, well, that is Universal Reconciliation. And hoping UR might happen directly contradicts Jesus
Christ:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is
wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many
who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that
leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
(Matthew 7:13-14)
Although Young then proceeds to voice acceptance of
the reality of hell, he complains to his fictional Father-goddess,
“…why
couldn’t you have made things clear? People go to the Bible and find all
these ways to disagree with each other… Everybody seems to want to
acquire their little piece of doctrinal territory…
Some find support for Universal
Reconciliation; some find proofs for eternal torment in hell…”[xiii]
Young continues with his list. Issues run the gamut
from Calvinism to eschatology and, having inserted Universal
Reconciliation into the mix, his fictional Father-goddess never corrects
him. No surprise there. Is this perhaps an attempt to at least infer
valid consideration of UR by including it amongst
a hodge-podge of doctrinal concerns?
Incredibly, Young’s Father-goddess clarifies (?) that
she made much of the Bible ambiguous on purpose! That the author, or any
person, would dare present doctrinal confusion as the intended plan of
God—and via a fictional character at that—is chilling. But, that’s the
way it is these days.
“For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will
accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires,
and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to
myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3)
It’s going to get worse. Goddess worship, false
christs, and many other heresies will continue to rise. Movies, novels,
and TV will become increasingly blasphemous.
Readers of this novel would do well to examine
Biblical teaching about the Trinity, sin, repentance, communication with
the dead, and much else.
Many in the Body of Christ have run to get a copy of
The
Shack. Far better, brothers and sisters, to just run.
[i]
William P. Young, The Shack pg.88
[v]
Wayne Jacobsen, “Is The Shack Heresy?”
[x]
William P. Young, “The Beauty of Ambiguity”