Thoughts on The Shack

Though many Christians (and, I guess, curious non-Christians) were cautioned against seeing the movie The Shack, I went and saw it anyway. I just had to. After reading the book almost 10 years ago, I was curious to see how the movie was put together and, despite some obvious theological errors, I wasn't disappointed. The Shack is the fictional story of a man whose young daughter disappeared while on a family camping trip and was later discovered murdered in an abandoned shack in the mountains. The story recounts how sometime later the girl's father, Mack, was led back to the scene of the crime through a providential prompting by God. There, in a dream sequence, Mack meets the Holy Trinity - Papa (God), Jesus and Sarayu who was supposed to be the Holy Spirit. This "trinity" takes him on a journey through his pain and anguish and, ultimately, to a place of forgiveness and restoration.

To be sure, the story's author, William Paul Young, is no theologian. That much is clear. Here are some of the glaring errors: When "Papa" (the black woman playing God the Father) said she was with Jesus during His suffering on the cross, a red flag immediately went up in my mind. It is a cardinal tenet of Christianity that while Christ was dying on the cross He experienced hell, a total abandonment by His Father, taking on Himself what we deserve because of our sin. Also, I thought the centrality of Christ was minimized and there was the suggestion that no one in the Trinity had ultimate authority. That is to say, the Father had no more authority over the Son than the Son had over the Father. Again, this is wrong. Jesus's biblical identity is based on His perfect submission and obedience to the Father. His humanity was perfect because His Sonship was perfect. And the movie smacked of universalism, the idea that, in the end, everyone gets saved and goes to Heaven because God is love and wouldn't throw anyone into hell. Again, that's heresy and frankly, Young ought to know better given his background (Evangelical Protestant). Young's problem is he is trying so hard to not be a legalistic Pharisee-type that he ends up denying God's severity because of a misguided compassion. He may be well intentioned but it's been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

All that said, the movie was not without insight. I thought it dealt brilliantly with the very important related subjects of forgiveness and responsibility. The segment on "Wisdom" was especially poignant. In this part, Wisdom personified stepped down from her judgment seat and told Mack to sit in it and judge the world because every human being sits in judgment of his fellow man and of God. Wisdom asked Mack while he sat in the judgment seat, "Doesn't the legacy of brokenness go all the way back to Adam? And what about God? Isn't He at fault? He set all this in motion when He knew the outcome." There it is. Ultimately, we blame God for our wrongdoings and hardships. In this way, the movie defended God's honour. To make a long story short, Mack soon discovered that he wasn't up to the task of Judge. And neither are we, by the way.

This leads to my favourite part of the movie. It is when Papa confronted him with the awful truth that he (Mack) just didn't believe that God was good. We may say and believe that God is great but many doubt His goodness. Was God good when Mack's little girl was kidnapped and murdered? What about in the real world where people starve to death daily or are sold into slavery via human trafficking? Was God good while the Holocaust was going on?

Here is where we must learn the lesson of the Old Testament story of Job. Job was a man who lost everything yet refused to curse (blame) God, at least not at first. Because of that, He was more righteous than his dogmatic friends proving that theologians can be pretty useless when it comes to matters of the heart. The Book of Job ends with God pulling the carpet out from under everybody in the story (including Job) and calling all their judgments, questions and religious theorizing into question. All were struck silent before the King of the Universe who they saw, in the end, was very good - as well as great and mighty.

It's true that bad things happen in life, often to good people, but not because God is sadistic or vindictive. It is because people are sinful and all of creation has been affected by that. Why does God allow it to continue? No idea, but He won't let it go on forever. The Creator of everything from the billions of galaxies above down to the lowest amoeba below is more than capable of answering the thorniest of questions and making everything right in the end. A good lesson from The Shack is that God is good and is good all the time and before we ask Him why He allows bad things to happen, we would do well to remember that He could ask us the same question.