The Shack is what happens when a Trinity invented by a 21st-century Westerner attempts to solve the problem of evil by pontificating on relationships, disdaining authority, and baking scones.
Check out a few more helpful reviews:
- Walter Henegar: “Good fiction has the potential to illuminate biblical truth, but not when it effectively supplants it. We need the Bible, not The Shack.”
- Gerald Hiestand: “The net result is a God who rejects—indeed is repulsed by—the use of power.”
- Paul Grimmond: “If western Christianity had spent more time in ‘the shack’ with the true and living creator, and less time wallowing around in our felt needs, then, just maybe, less people would have been fooled. We might have recognized The Shack for the empty shell that it is.”
My goal is to reflect on the book a couple more times on this blog—first, to expand on Hiestand’s observation, and second, to examine why The Shack has had such a powerful effect on people.
Banannery Public 
Ha! I agree that book sucked. Not only did it suck but I’m afraid it has given countless thousands a very WRONG conception of God. His Trinitarian views were messed up, his Christology is wrong, his Ecclesiology disgusts me…it was AWFUL. I wrote the author a an email and got some canned response from them about how happy they are for my support. This proved to me that not only can he not write good, but I don’t think he can read. 🙂
“This proved to me that not only can he not write good…”
Takes one to know one.
I’ve never heard of this book. Am I out of the Christian loop or something? Or maybe I’m *in* the Christian loop…
Haha, yeah, the only reason I really know about it is because of the massive controversy on the Internet. Apparently it is a New York Times bestseller, and Christians are eating it up and buying loads of copies for their friends, but here in Indiana it doesn’t seem to have caught on quite yet. But I think it will eventually, which is why I’m reviewing it now before it does.
…write well
This is aa great post