Andrew Faris has written the shortest review of The Shack that I have read (my thoughts on the book are here). He says,
If I was an egalitarian, arminian, open theist who was rather confused about the trinity and about justification, and who had no concern about writing quality in literature, then I would have absolutely loved The Shack.
But I am none of those things. Seriously, the fact that there is actually any discussion by evangelicals about the merits of this book is indicative of how poorly our minds are working.
Ha ha! Wow. I haven’t laughed that hard in quite some time!
Why aren’t more people chuckling over this fantastic review?!?! 🙂
But I am none of those things.
Ha ha!
Like you, I am also none of those things but, for now, I’ll have to wait until I finish reading the book to chuckle. I’m still in chapter one and, so far, the writing quality has been good and the theology undisclosed, so I’m just snickering a little. jk
Actually, I’m reading the book for the same reason that I enjoyed watching the Matrix: if people will talk about it, it provides the opening to share the reality of the True God. The really twisted stuff that the Wachowski brothers created in The Matrix provided plenty of opportunity to talk about the gospel and how it was similar to (there is a deeper reality behind what we see) and totally different from (God is not a limited game designer, a finite being Himself, but all-powerful and loving) the movies. I’m always looking for openings, even if they wouldn’t be the ones I’d create on my own; the Shack sounds like it fits into that category.
oh you’ll have some openings after this one, assuming you take an orthodox view on the Trinity, Justification, and are even remotely reformed 🙂
Tim Challies’ review of The Shack was really good (found here).
But certainly read the book. You don’t want to get caught hanging out to dry like Driscoll did at Catalyst (or so I hear)…
Hey, if Paul could use the Greek ‘Unknown God” to introduce the True and Living God at Mars Hill in Acts 17:23, we should be able to use our culture’s even most delusional things to point to truth, right? Anything that much closer to the truth should just make it easier!
Luke,
Glad you liked it!
Michaelz,
Good reason to read the book- that’s why I did too.
And in fact, as I’m planning on posting tomorrow, the best use of the book is to illustrate the real, life-altering importance of theology. Most of the book really does end up being theological discussion, and I hope people realize as they read that we need to think well about God because it really does matter!
Andrew Faris
I’m not really sure this would be related to contextualization, but I suppose one could certainly take the time to explain to readers of The Shack what the Bible actually teaches concerning some very important issues of theology. That’s obviously a good thing to do 🙂
But I’m not sure if that gives a good reason for this book to have been written so poorly in regards to theology. Yet, since it has been, we do just as you said (with some very good Scriptures to point out the problems). On a related note, I think many of my emerging/emegent friends have asked a similar question, “should we encourage heresy because we can use it to share the truth?” There are extremes on both sides of the issue, I’m sure. But I think this book has done a lot of damage; so hopefully we can help “redeem” it in our ultra-cool redemptive-historical method of interpreting and preaching – ha ha!
That being said, I enjoyed the story of the book 🙂
“This book includes undiluted heresy” – Dr. Mohler