I tried to hate The Shack, the best-selling novel about God by William P. Young.  I really did.

Why?  For one thing, when it comes to wildly popular Christian books, I’ve been Jabezed before.  But mainly, it just makes me feel smart to put down what everybody else likes.

And The Shack cooperated at first.  For 80 pages, it gave me reasons to scoff.  Forgettable secondary characters.  Heavy-handed foreshadowing.  A guy named Mackenzie Phillips. (Why not Val Bertinelli?)  Besides, the tragedy of the book’s first act is spelled out in a paragraph on the back cover, ruining the suspense of the early chapters.  You can’t pick up this book without knowing that a man is going to a shack to meet God.  Let’s get there already!

On page 80, we get there and…WOW!  Everything changes!  The prose improves (the book credits two collaborators - maybe one of them took over here), and the shack itself is transformed from a run-down, ugly hunting shanty into perfect woodland cabin that transcends Thomas Kinkade and becomes something closer to Tolkein’s Rivendell, a place of rest, beauty, truth, and healing.  Mackenzie (Mack) gets to have it out with God - the whole Trinity, in fact.  And it isn’t easy for him.  He’s been hurt in two of the worst ways a person can be, and he isn’t going to get over that easily.  But Mack’s weekend with God - who is never threatened yet never compromising, always truthful yet always loving - begins to heal him.

The Shack isn’t afraid to take on the big questions:  Why does God allow evil?  Why didn’t he intervene just this once?  How can God be three yet one?  What does it mean that Jesus lived here as fully God and fully man?  Why do we have to forgive?  What about non-Christian religions?  And even when the answers made me uncomfortable, I could always think of Scripture to lend support to the author’s ideas.  The Shack makes a valiant and mostly successful attempt to present Biblical theology in a creative and fascinating way.

Some have called The Shack heresy.  I strongly disagree, but I must acknowledge that The Shack has some rather jarring images.  First among them is God the Father presenting himself as a large black woman (who actually says "Sho ’nuff!)  But this isn’t about goddess worship any more than Narnia is about animal idolatry.  It’s about how Mack needs to see God’s love at that moment, and it’s an attempt to take seriously those Scriptures that compare God’s love to that of a mother. 

The Shack does have some theological weaknesses.  It skirts the issue of hell, although it does say that people can reject God’s love.  And it soft-peddles judgement when God says "I don’t need to punish people for sin.  Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside" (p. 120).  True, but incomplete.  There’s also plenty to quibble about in its depiction of the Trinity, but I appreciate the author’s boldness in taking on this difficult doctrine and for getting the discussion started by putting flesh on Scripture through this novel.

In sum, I liked The Shack a lot in spite of myself.  I’ll probably read it again (starting on page 80 of course).  Why the love?  Two reasons:  First, The Shack takes seriously the Biblical truth that God IS love (1 John 4:8, 16), that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).  Second, and most importantly…I just want to go to the shack myself!  This book reminds me of the promise that someday, we will.