The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity, William P. Young, Windblown Media, 2007. Reviewed by Pastor Michael LeFebvre.

The Shack is a modern-day allegory of the Christian life. Like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, William Young’s The Shack is a vivid tale designed to teach the reader about the way of salvation. But Young’s vision describes a different kind of salvation than Bunyan’s classic. Bunyan’s pilgrim labors under the burden of sin and only finds freedom from its guilt by receiving forgiveness at the cross. Young’s protagonist is cast in a more postmodern image. The Shack’s central character is Mackenzie Phillips, whose struggle is not with sin and guilt; Mack’s burden is “the great sadness”—the accumulated emotional baggage from his abusive childhood and the death of his daughter. Rather than seeking his own forgiveness, Mack’s journey is one of learning to forgive God for letting him suffer so much, and learning to forgive the people who so deeply wronged him.

In a visionary weekend with God at the site of his daughter’s death (the shack), Mack is allowed to confront God with all his bitterness and questions. It is in this weekend with God that the book leads us through a series of doctrinal lessons on subjects like prayer, why bad things happen, forgiveness, judgment, man’s free will and God’s sovereignty, knowing God, and inner healing. In The Shack, God provides Mack with answers through elaborate object lessons and lots of love, until Mack’s anger and “great sadness” melt away.

The immense popularity of the book shows that its author has touched a chord in the contemporary church. Readers identify with Mack’s angst and are hungry for answers to the questions Mack raises. That much is commendable about the book—the church would benefit from more novels that confront the hard questions about God’s hand amidst the dysfunctionality of modern society. But, while this book purports to answer Mack’s questions in the voice of God, the answers often sound more like American public radio than Scripture.

For instance, a major theme through the book is God’s supposed despair over mankind’s use of authority. God explains to Mack that he never intended for people to live in hierarchies, since “Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you” (pp. 122-123). A major theme of the book is the author’s vision of a world where loving relationships are so pure that structures of authority are unnecessary. This sounds more like a vision from a 1960s commune than from Scripture.

Significant attention is also given to the author’s vision of the Trinity. Perhaps the greatest, positive contribution of this book is its strong emphasis on love within the Godhead as the source for all Christian love. In a period when trinitarianism, and intra-trinitarian love, is often neglected, The Shack is pointing the church’s attention in a profoundly important direction with this cover-to-cover emphasis. However, while Young has captured a right principle here, his particular vision of the three Persons of the Godhead bears more resemblance to the modern television family than the biblical testimony of the Three-in-One.

God the Father (“Papa”) is introduced in the image of an African-American mother figure always busy in the kitchen dishing up folksy wisdom—curiously like “The Oracle” of the first Matrix movie. (Is it a coincidence that Papa tells Mack that mankind is living in a “matrix…while completely unaware of its existence” on p. 124?) In Mack’s vision of the Father, Papa is not “in charge” within the Trinity. “We have no concept of final authority among us,” he explains to Mack, “only unity,” thereby setting the role model for the aforementioned idea of human society without authority. Furthermore, this version of Papa disavows any idea of wrath. He doesn’t punish sin; “Sin is its own punishment” (chap. 8).

The Holy Spirit is introduced in the image of an Asian woman with ethereal characteristics reminiscent of eastern mysticism. She is not so much a minister of divine order, but one who loves “fractals” formed by introducing messiness and chaos into our lives (chap. 9). Jesus, a Middle Eastern carpenter, is indeed “Lord and King,” but he “never really act[s] in that capacity with you.” He prefers to leave mankind to their free will, since “to force my will on you…is exactly what love does not do.” Actually, rather than thinking of Jesus, or indeed the full Godhead, as asserting authority over us, Jesus offers Mack a new perspective: “In fact, we are submitted to you” (chap. 10).

Gone is the vision of Bunyan’s pilgrim fleeing the City of Destruction, mindful that he deserves divine wrath and is amazed to find grace. In Pilgrim’s place is Mack, whose suffering gives him the right to question God (even Job never got that far). Furthermore, despite Mack’s sins and those of his afflicters, the God of The Shack makes it clear, “I don’t do humiliation, or guilt, or condemnation” (p. 223). Here is a novel image of God and a new doctrine of salvation.

Does William Young really intend to replace the historic vision of God and salvation with his new picture, or is this review simply nitpicking? At countless points throughout the story, we find Mack amazed at what he is learning. The reason is because this vision of God is so very different from everything Mack used to think about God: the things he learned, for instance, in family catechism as a boy (p. 107) and in seminary as a young man (pp. 9, 65, 198). This constant refrain on Mack’s “retraining” is significant, because it tells us that the author knows he is confronting us with a new vision of God to replace the one we grew up with.

“I am not who you think I am” (pp. 119-120), Papa calmly replies when Mack remarks at how different this God is from what he had always understood from the Bible and from seminary. In fact, Mack’s journey cannot begin until he finally abandons his seminary training to “only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course” in order to welcome the possibility of new “direct communication with God” beyond Scripture (pp. 65-66). On this basis, Mack’s journey helps him even to “see [God] in the Bible in fresh ways” (p. 198). The Shack really is a new vision of God beyond that presented in an orthodox reading of the Bible.

The result is a vivid tale that shows keen insight into the crises of American life but is too hasty to abandon biblical orthodoxy to address those crises. If someone wants a somewhat more contemporary sequel to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, search the internet for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad,” and enjoy an excellent update of Bunyan’s classic that really is well adapted to the American church.

The Power of Prayer: The New York Revival of 1858, by Samuel Prime, Banner of Truth, 1991/1998. Reviewed by Pastor James Faris.

The current economic crisis has crippled Detroit probably more than any other city in America. We who minister here know many who have been significantly affected amid layoffs, foreclosures, plummeting home values, and the gloom that pervades the region. Thus far, the Lord has not been pleased to work a great awakening in our day. Yet, God’s people can be encouraged by seeing how He has worked in the past in similar circumstances through Samuel Prime’s book The Power of Prayer: The New York Revival of 1858.

The United States experienced an unprecedented economic boom through the 1850s. Railroad mileage tripled, manufacturing, agriculture, and mining production multiplied, and immigrants poured into the country. New York City could not imagine that the good times would end. But in the late summer and autumn of 1857, boom went bust. A banking panic sunk many banks, stymied business, and unemployment soared. Businessmen’s faces grew long, and some committed suicide. Religious devotion ebbed. Many, in retrospect, believed that the economic collapse came as God’s judgment.

Jeremiah Lamphier, a 38-year-old lay worker for the Old North Dutch Church on Fulton Street, took note of the spiritual and economic decay, and he began asking the Lord what he could do. This man, who sat for the previous six years under the preaching of J. W. Alexander in the 19th Street Presbyterian Church, was led of the Lord to begin a midday prayer service for businessmen. Public invitations welcomed people to seek God in prayer for five minutes, ten minutes, or the whole hour if possible.

God poured out His Holy Spirit on those prayer meetings in a remarkable and unexpected way, such that an estimated one million people were converted over the following two years. Samuel Prime, the editor of the New York Observer, bears eyewitness testimony to the remarkable impact of the Spirit of God in that place in The Power of Prayer. His work, written with the help of other eyewitnesses, describes the nature of the prayer meetings that began in the Fulton Street church and quickly overflowed to many other churches around the city. He captures the unity of gospel preaching coming from various pulpits around the city. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this revival was the lack of extraordinary preaching as seen in the days of Whitfield and Wesley. The churches, which had been poorly attended, saw attendance swell. God was pleased to work through the daily corporate prayers of His people and the ordinary faithful preaching of the gospel in a remarkable way. The awakening stands as a reminder to every generation that the work of revival is God’s work, and that He loves to use the prayers of His people as a means to that end.

Prime describes vividly the way in which prayers were requested and uttered for unbelievers, and the answers to prayer that God wrought in a wide variety of individuals, families, and communities as the Spirit brought deep conviction of sin and conversion. Refreshingly, the revival was not marked by excessive emotion, as in the days of Charles Finney, but there was no lack of genuine passion. Prime frequently observes in his accounts that “there was scarcely a dry eye in the room” amid the urgent and fervent supplications of the saints.

Finally, we are reminded that God is often preparing soil when we discern no visible divine activity. Many of those converted in 1858 had been carried to the throne of grace by loved ones for years and even decades. The joy and hope of those intercessors becomes ours anew as we read of God’s gracious answers to them.

The short volume is mostly testimonial. Occasionally, details bog the reader. The greatest strength and weakness of the book is that it was written within a year of the events described. Readers must look elsewhere for historical perspective.