PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- MAY 5, 2008
You will never view God the same way again . . . really, you won't!
I was not asked to write this review. I was compelled.
LITTLE ELM, TEXAS (ANS) -- I have read thousands of books and written a respectable number of reviews. Most of the books were worth reading twice. A few, like The Shack, by William P. Young, is worth reading again and again.
Some books I've read were about religious subjects, nonfiction books that taught about God or how to be a better Christian or that tried to explain portions of Scripture.
Frankly, The Shack offers more fresh revelation about the mystery we call God than all the rest put together. Yet, just above the barcode on the back, next to the price in U.S. dollars, is the word "fiction," which is nearly impossible to believe once you've reached the bottom of page 248. And the fact that you find it hard to believe is equally amazing.
The publisher gives away the story on the cover.
"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."
I would have added, ". . . and it will change yours as well." It would have sounded like hype, but it would deliver on the promise.
The cover also quotes Eugene Peterson, who enthusiastically likens The Shack to the John Bunyan classic, Pilgrim's Progress. But I think it compares more truly to C.S. Lewis and his delicious insights in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
On the inside back cover of my copy are more than a dozen page references and notations. But they are not for study; they are for dinner, to chew slowly and savor, to be absorbed by each cell, enriching it and, by extension, enriching me.
Admittedly, The Shack will disturb your theology, yet it is so solidly biblical that all you can do is take hold of your preconceptions about God and man and re-shape them into agreement.
The Shack calmly, subtly and systematically lays open the things that are most important and familiar to us, from our concept of the Trinity and our own identity to issues like responsibility, expectations and even good and bad. Then it undogmatically illuminates them and enables us to re-examine and perhaps redefine them. At the end, the reader is left with a sense of lightness, liberty and clarity that is reminiscent of the salvation experience.
Do I exaggerate? Probably I do. But you need to understand that I am still somewhat intoxicated by my latest reading and thirstily working my way through the inside back cover.
I might add that this is the only book review I have written in which I have never met or talked with the author. That is by design. About William P. Young I know only what is written in a brief paragraph on the back.
Nor do I want to know him . . . at least not as an author, not as someone doing book signings or answering questions on talk shows.
If I ever meet William P. Young, I hope it will be someplace quiet, where we can just pray together and experience the God he introduced me to . . . maybe even in a rundown little shack at the end of a descending game trail that led into a small hidden valley in the Oregon woods.Ron Brackin
ASSIST News ServiceYou can order a copy of The Shack from Plain Truth Ministries for $15 including shipping. Call toll-free 1-800-309-4466, ask for item #B249
ORDER A COPY OF THE SHACK ONLINE
JOIN GREG ALBRECHT FOR AN INTERVIEW WITH THE SHACK AUTHOR WILLIAM P. YOUNG
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