PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- OCTOBER 13 2008

A brief theological analysis of Paul Young's book, The Shack

What do you think Paul Young's purpose was for writing this fictional novel, The Shack? It must be admitted that even a fictional piece of literature has a purpose!

Every author is encouraged to have a clearly defined audience to whom they write, and a clearly defined objective for why they are writing to their chosen audience. Was Mr. Young writing to a non-Christian, seeking audience? Or was he writing for a Christian audience? If it was the latter, what Christian audience was he writing for? Fundamentalists? Evangelicals? Those who are burned out on Christian religion? Those who are sympathetic to the emerging church? Those who are longing for something more?

Mr. Young has explained that he initially drafted the manuscript as he commuted to his work by train, and intended it primarily for the reading of his children. Paul is a father of six children (four boys and two girls), and is a doting grandfather.

Although the scenario depicted in the novel is not based on a particular historical event, the author admits that it was germinated by a six-month period in his own life when his 18 year old brother was killed, his mother-in-law died of a massive coronary, and his 5 year old niece was killed the day after her 5th birthday. Out of such pain, he had to confront the theological issue of theodicy -- of how a loving God could allow such overwhelming pain and suffering and evil in the world He created.

So, are we to conclude that Mr. Young's objective, and purpose of writing, was to address the problem of human suffering? The context of the story of The Shack is certainly sandwiched between incidents of agonizing tragedy and suffering. It’s a timely subject, you know. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, concluding that we should not ask "why" bad things happen, but just deal with it and keep moving. Dr. Bart Ehrman, a noted New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote a book recently titled, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer. He admits that he is now an agnostic, and does not believe in the God proclaimed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. There is no doubt that we (along with Mack in the story) sometimes experience Disappointment with God, as Philip Yancey titled his book, but the question remains: Is the foremost objective of Mr. Young's book to explain the suffering of innocent people? If it were so, one would think that he would have spent far more time explaining the theological implications of the redemptive suffering of the foremost Innocent One -- the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the cruel execution instrument of the cross.

I do not conceive of Mr. Young as a theological wolf breaking into grandma’s house to consume the naive Little Red Riding Hoods of the Christian community.

Mr. Young has had some theological training, and it has been suggested that he selected a fictional vehicle to transport his theological opinions to the readers. This book is, no doubt, one of the most theologically freighted Christian novels to come down the track in a long while. The unmistakable Trinitarian emphasis is a corrective to much of the trite and shallow views of God projected in our day. The character of God is illustrated so thoroughly as the Triune God is depicted as a personal, relational, loving God, sensitive to the individual concerns of his creaturely children.

Although there is much theological emphasis in this book, I would not adjudge it to be a theological treatise masquerading as fictional story. I do not conceive of Mr. Young as a theological wolf breaking into grandma’s house to consume the naive Little Red Riding Hoods of the Christian community. I do not think he constructed this story with that kind of a subversive theological agenda.
Frankly, if this book was intended to be a theological truck, I might be inclined to jump on the bandwagon of the doctrinaire dogmatists who have aimed their theological muskets at the theological deficiencies inherent in the narrative of this story. There are some suspicious theological crevasses to be traversed in the incarnational enfleshment of all three persons of the Godhead; in the possible modalistic patripassionism of scars on the hands of Papa as well as the Son; and in a theodicy based on a "definition by privation," that explains that darkness, death, sin and evil "do not have any actual existence" (page 136).

But I can look beyond those scattered theological land-mines to see a purpose that far transcends such nit-picking criticism. The book was not intended to be a theological textbook.

What, then, might have been his purpose of writing, and to whom?

My conclusion is that Mr. Young wrote this novel, first with his own family in mind, but secondarily with the broader Protestant evangelical community as the reading audience, and his primary objective was to introduce his own family members and the greater Christian family to an expansive panorama of Christian spirituality that has often been neglected, even eschewed and repudiated, in some forms of Protestant Christianity.

Protestantism, in general, has long tended to over-objectify the relationship of God with man, and man with God. Reacting against the subjective "infused grace" concepts of Medieval Catholicism, the Protestants overreacted by couching the Christian’s reconciled relationship with God in a legally imputed and external status or standing before God in heaven, based on Christ's redemptive action on our behalf. The correlative Protestant emphasis on the authority of the biblical text often tended to give the impression that God could only speak to His people through the Book, while the Holy Spirit was essentially viewed as a Gnostic mediator to bring enlightenment via the text.

That being the case, this book, The Shack, is a bunker-busting bombshell that explodes the static and impersonal concept of a logical and logistical relationship with God, by presenting a narrative wherein Mack actually talks to God, and God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) actually talks to him in personal and relational conversations. The subjective realm of the interpersonal relations of the Trinity is opened wide for the participatory relationship of we human beings with our Creator and Redeemer God. And this Triune God of Love (God is not Love if he is not Trinity) cares about how we feel. He is sensitive to our discouragement and disillusionment. He is not shocked by our misunderstandings – or even with our skepticism and doubts. He desires to draw us into intimacy with himself, willing to be vulnerable -- and even crack a few humorous jokes along the way.

Christians have long talked about having a "relationship" with God, but what do we mean by that? In the realm of physics, for example, they refer to the relation of one object to another. Such relationships are often static or mechanical explanations of proximity. For example, what is the relationship of the Earth to the Sun? Christian theological explanations of "relationship" with God have often been equally objectified, external, mechanical and lifeless. The abiding value of Young's book is that it introduces and illustrates a dynamic personal relationship of intimacy with the three persons of the Godhead that is subjective, internal and affects the deepest levels of our spirit and psyche.

The very Person and presence of the living Lord Jesus comes to live in us and to be everything we need in life. As Jesus tells Mack, "My purpose from the beginning was to live in you and you in Me . . . a real indwelling. The human can once again be fully indwelt by spiritual life, My life . . . . A very real dynamic and active union exists." (pages 112, 113). Then, later, God the Father (Papa) tells Mack, "It’s all about Him. Creation and history are all about Jesus. He is the very center of our purpose." (page 192) The center and essence of God’s entire purpose is to draw humanity into a unity of participation in the interpersonalism of the trinitarian Godhead via Jesus Christ -- a Christocentric gospel. We were created for a love-relationship with the God of the universe. The very "presence of God" (page 108) operative in our lives, and that in a relation union (1 Corinthians 6:17) of spiritual intimacy that can only be inadequately illustrated by the closest earthly similitudes of the relationship of a husband and wife (Ephesians 5) or a parent and child (as in this story). That is as close as our natural conceptualizations can take us.

Real, deep, genuine, intimate love-relationships -- that is what we humans are designed for and long for. It’s one thing to know and even quote the verse, "God so loved the world (of mankind) that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). Most every Christian can quote that verse! But, it’s another thing to know assuredly that God loves ME -- individually and personally -- and that there is nothing I can do that would ever cause Him to cease loving ME. No skepticism, no missteps, no lapses, no habituated sins -- "nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ" (Romans 8:36). "God is LOVE" (I John 4:8,16), [Not "God has love to dispense, but "God IS Love"], and he cannot cease to BE who he is – and he does what he does because he IS who he IS. Therefore, he always loves us. He is always FOR us, and not against us. Oh, how important it is to come to know experientially that we are loved by God, and he has no agenda (page 181) to make us into more than we are. We can experience the peace and joy of living in God’s GRACE, as he provides the dynamic for his own activity in and through us, by the living Lord Jesus.

We might ask, as Mack did in the novel, "What do I do now?" The divine reply was, "Just continue to participate in what you are doing, learning to live loved." Oh, the freedom of God’s grace, as we are continually "learning to live loved" by the three-fold God of LOVE. (I want to inscribe that on a plaque to hang on the wall in my office -- "Learning to live loved.") Loved, and constantly taken care of by the grace of the Triune God.

Then God said to Mackenzie Allen Philips, "Mack, you don't need to have it all figured out. Just be with Me." For those rational, logical, and theological types (like me), this is like a dum-dum bullet fired into the brain ... {Mack, Jack, Jim}, "You don't need to have it all figured out. Just be with Me." Christianity is not "content management." It is not propositional systematization. It is not promotional programs. It is not statistical success. It (HE) is relational. It is HIM, drawing ME into a deep intimate personal relationship with himself and with others in whom he lives in the Body of Christ, the Church -- the community of love.

As far as academic theology is concerned, this book isn't! And if viewed through the prism of propositional theology, it can, will, and has been shown to have its flaws. But this book transports us into the experiential theology of knowing the Triune God in a deep, personal and intimate relationship. You might recall that after summarizing his past religious participation, the Apostle Paul wrote, "I count it all as loss, that I might know HIM, and the power of HIS resurrection, and the fellowship of HIS sufferings" (Philippians 3:10). That is what Paul Young's book is all about -- experiential theology -- knowing God in intimate personal relationship.

Well, what do you think? Do you think this is a viable explanation of the objective that Paul Young must have had for writing this novel? Does this not also provide a consequential explanation of why this book has joined the "best-selling" lists of both religious and secular book sales? I think it also explains why this book has received the most vehement reviews of repudiation by those whose religious belief-systems are challenged by the message of relational-GRACE. But on the other hand, it has received the most glowing reviews by those whose lives have been impacted by the invitation of relational intimacy with the Triune God. May God continue to use this book as an instrument to reveal his GRACE.

James A. Fowler -- originally delivered in El Cajon, CA, October 4, 2008

Jim Fowler is theological consultant for Plain Truth Ministries and columnist for Plain Truth magazine. Visit his website at www.christinyou.net.

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