The Good Life

The Shack

Posted November 6th, 2008 by David Fair

I am currently reading The Shack by William P. Young. My mom recommended it, and my sister is so enthusiastic about it that she sent me a copy.  Thanks, Jennifer!

According to Windblown Media:

The Shack continues at #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list for its 23rd straight week! Over 4 million in print!

The synopsis reads:

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.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?”  The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.  You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!

You can find numerous endorsements at the official website.  Here is one from Eugene H. Peterson, author of The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language:

When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!

I’m only about a third of the way through, but it is a good read.  It reminds me of the Frank Peretti wave that swept the country in the late 1980s (This Present Darkness).  I’m told that you must be sure to read the Foreword before you dive into chapter 1.

Have you read The Shack?  How would you rate it?  How did it affect you? (Don’t give away any important details about the plot! Some of us haven’t read it yet.)

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Update:  The further I get into this novel, the more I am concerned that it is based on faulty, perhaps even heretical, theology.  Be warned.  I will update you later, when I have completed it.

Tags: books

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