When I first saw the book, “The Shack” it was on the bookshelf at my parents-in-law’s house. It looked fairly intriguing and the back cover description and critical reviews looked promising. My mother-in-law explained that it had been lent to them, but neither her or my father-in-law had yet to be able to read it. So, I asked if I could.
I won’t try to do much in the way of a synopsis of the book; my job is not to write a book review. Rather, I’d like to give some of my impressions of what I read. (If you’re looking for a synopsis, I’m sure you can “google” it.)
My initial thoughts of the book were that it is poorly written. In fact, though I was moved by some of the more emotional passages, I never once thought “now, this is a well-written book!” Again, I’m not a book reviewer, but if it had been better written, it would have surely been easier to read or enjoy and it might have made the message stronger and more captivating. I will commend the author for his first effort. To get this much attention and controversy with your first book is quite an accomplishment.
So... controversy? About 3/4’s of the way through the book, I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was reading it. This particular friend has two theology degrees and tends to be fairly opinionated and authoritative about his viewpoints. His reaction was, “that book has been pretty thoroughly debunked by a good many folks in the Christian community.”
Well, that caught my attention! There had been several places in the book that I felt like the religious picture Young was painting was weak or “loose,” but I hadn’t really thought about it being something that would need to be “debunked.”
I was curious and started to look online for material that supported this “debunking.” Within a search or two the ‘H’ word popped up.
The ‘H’ word?
Yep. “Heresy.”
Would I go so far as to say it’s heretical? Hang on for part two and I’ll let you know what conclusions I came up with...
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