Title:
The Shack
Author: William Young
Publisher: Windblown Media
Pages: 256
Genre: Religious Fiction
The book follows the life of an injured father of three who is slightly depressed and bored with his life as a church going Christian. During a camping trip, his youngest daughter disappears and the entire northwestern region of the United States is put on alert. The trail of the murderer leads to an abandoned hunting shack in a remote forest. There is evidence that the child was raped and murdered. After long and tiresome attempts the search is given up. The man can no longer cope with life. He receives a letter in the mail from God with instructions to meet at the remote shack.
The story is the tale of the man meeting the God Triune. He spends a long weekend with them, learning about them, and building a relationship with each. He learns in three days at the shack what a lifetime at a church never would have taught him. The man learns that the traditional God whom we hear of at church is a bore. Religion is a bore. The "true God" and the "true Trinity" are beings with whom we should have a deep and meaningful relationship. Each of the three has a different personality and a different role.
The author makes an attempt to define God. However it is a God as defined by the new age evangelicals and non-denominational churches. There is very little Biblical basis for a God of the type as defined here. The God of the Bible has not changed for over 6,000 years. He is still a powerful, vengeful, jealous God whom demands our respect and reverence. The book became frivolous and fallacious as soon as the man met God. In order to define the true God, one should be wary of breaking one of His commandments in order to do it. The 2nd commandment as issued by the same God that this book contended to define is:
"Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,"
The author made God into an image and a false one at that. This is a book written for a specific and large body of non-denominational Christians who will pounce on anything that gives them an emotional high. Also, there was no literary contribution. If there wasn't an eager group of non-denominational Christians waiting in line to purchase whatever might help them in their pursuit of the false and people friendly God, this book never would have made it to press. Read the Bible if you want to know who God is.
. As the characters meander their way through England, France, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey the plot slowly unravels and leads to something dark and mysterious.