Some time ago two different friends sent me a copy of the relatively new 
(and evidently quite popular) evangelical novel, The Shack. Another friend has recently urged me to critique it on this blog. So I guess I’ll give you my take on it. If something can simultaneously be full of errors and spiritually helpful, this may be it. But let’s try to sort things out a bit.
Without giving away the plot or the ending, I’ll just say that it’s mainly about a man’s spiritual experience of God some time after a tragedy in his life. The first few chapters read like an ordinary novel—then the main character, Mack, meets God. Here is where the theological problems begin. He meets all three persons of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is a swarthy, more or less happy-go-lucky carpenter type, the Holy Spirit is manifested as a “small, distinctively Asian woman” who “seemed almost to shimmer in the light and her hair blew in all directions.” She was, understandably I suppose, rather ethereal, hard to focus on directly, and full of bright colors and sweet scents. I can see how one would be hard pressed to depict the Holy Spirit in a visible form that could be engaged in conversation, while retaining something of the wind-like mystery of this invisible God. But probably the greatest difficulty is in the presentation of the Father.
“Papa” was depicted as “a large beaming African-American woman”—in my friend’s words, Papa is “big, warm, bosomy (tell me she’s not)… all floury and cozy and wise.” She also cooks delicious food and calls Mack “honey.” Aside from the constant and rather annoying references to the Father with the pronouns “she” and “her,” there are several theological problems. One is the rather little-known heresy of Patripassianism, which claims that not only Christ but the Father suffered the Passion. Hence “Papa” bears the stigmata of the Passion on, uh, her hands. Then there are the several times that the Trinity says that they all became incarnate in Jesus, instead of only the Son becoming incarnate. Obviously the book is not meant to be a theological treatise, and we shouldn’t expect it to be such, but the fuzzy theology can only serve to confuse or mislead the reader if he/she otherwise finds the story appealing.
The Aunt Jemima Father, the good ol’ boy Jesus, and the swirling oriental Holy Spirit certainly do not do justice to or reflect the image of God found in the Scriptures and in the experiences of the saints. But the book’s stated purpose is to make God more accessible “in a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant.” The author is evidently trying to bring God into the modern, jaded, alienated, turned-off-to-religion world by reducing God to a trio of affectionate and engaging friends. Mack has lost a child in a terrible tragedy and has had a painful childhood with a violent and alcoholic father. The book is meant to show how God is present in the midst of our sufferings and brings good out of them, and that He can heal the wounds of our past and bring us to a peaceful and fruitful life through faith and love for Him. Therefore we have the big, happy, wise, and utterly down-to-earth family of the Trinity, which puts Mack at ease and helps him relate to God and open himself up to healing and wisdom.
After reading the above rather odd and inadequate depiction of God (but I wouldn’t call it blasphemous, since the author is obviously well-intentioned and is trying to make God appealing and accessible to those who may have given up on an image of God distorted in the opposite direction), you might wonder why I’m taking time even to mention it. It’s because I think there still can be some spiritual value to it.
If you approach it as a kind of spiritual fantasy that doesn’t really intend to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity but that simply offers a few helpful insights to the spiritually or emotionally wounded, then there can be some value to it. Many people do have “father issues,” and many people are hurt and confused over tragedies in their lives. Such may actually be started on a path to healing by discovering that God is loving, understanding, and willing to help. (But don’t stop here; you need a lot more than this book.) The question remains, however: Couldn’t this same discovery have been facilitated by rooting it in a more orthodox understanding and presentation of the Trinity?
I get the point that the image of a man for God the Father was not exactly what would have given peace and security to Mack, whose only experience of a father was one of harshness and violent abuse and rejection. It is not uncommon for people to project upon God the Father the image of their own inadequate fathers and hence want nothing to do with Him. So the author is saying that God reveals Himself in a way that we can somehow relate to or that meets our needs. One might question, though, whether God’s self-revelation is really about meeting our needs. The Scriptures would say that it is rather about showing us how to be saved, even to the point of insisting that we deny ourselves (set our needs aside), take up our crosses and follow Jesus—and thus find the true fulfillment that we didn’t even know how to seek when all we sought was our own satisfaction, in one way or another.
Eventually, when Mack is up to the challenge, “Papa” does manifest in the form of a wise and gentle African-American man (was the author watching those movies in which Morgan Freeman plays God?). My friend who asked me to critique it said it was too “Oprah-y” for her tastes and felt somewhat manipulated by it. The reader does have to remember that anything that “Papa,” Jesus, or “Sarayu” (the Holy Spirit) says reflects the thoughts and opinions of the author and is not really the voice of God. For example, since Jesus built his Church on the rock of Peter (Mt. 16:18), it is unlikely that God would have the manifest distaste for organized religion that the author puts into the words of the divine persons. (“Religion must use law to empower itself and control the people who they need in order to survive.”)
It’s not a book that I could recommend without a lot of qualifications, but neither is it one that I would counsel you to avoid at all costs. You might actually benefit from parts of it. I confess that I almost didn’t even finish it because of all the theological inaccuracies and highly improbable divine demeanor and dialogue. But there were moments of light, moments of an opening of my soul to God that the book facilitated, despite its faults. The greatest danger would be for those who are not already grounded in orthodox Christianity and true Trinitarian theology. No one should go away from reading this book thinking, “Wow, I never knew that God was really like that!” That’s because God really isn’t like that, except in the general sense that God is loving, wise, compassionate, understanding, and with us in our sufferings.
So go ahead, if you want a little “Oprah-y” spiritual diversion. If your head is already on straight, it can’t hurt. And, since God can work all things for the good, it might even help a little. But go to the Scriptures and the Tradition for your images of God; go to prayer and the sacraments for your healing. Don’t try to bring God down to your level, though, for He’d rather raise you up to his.
