How ‘The Shack’ Mocks God’s Holiness
Yes.
I’m picking on my favorite rogue Christian and his wild speculations about God again.
Is it because I’m nothing more than a sadistic blogger?
Curmudgeon? Bored?
Or is it because the love affair with The Shack is a good commentary on our contemporary evangelical environment?
Yes to all the above. [Except the bored part.]
See, The Shack still holds clout with the spiritually curious.
Still creeps up in conversations.
And most of the copies I see of The Shack owned by Christians show considerable more wear than their Bibles.
That’s troubling…
Because The Shack presents a flawed portrait of God–what Albert Mohler calls diluted heresy. Let me who you what I mean.
Write Fiction? You Must Follow These Rules
Believe it or not, when you write fiction, you follow certain rules. Rules that guide the plot, setting and characterization.
Young nails it on plot and setting. It’s that last one–characterization–that he misses, a point Trevin Wax made back in September…
I want to expand on that point. Here’s how it works.
If you’re going to write a novel about 18th century Russian peasants…you better get the characterization of those peasants right.
Nineteenth century mathematicians from Brooklyn? Get them right.
Twentieth century bicyclists training in northern California? Get them right.
The God of the Christian Bible? Get him right.
Get your characterizations wrong and you look like a silly know-nothing. And sadly, that’s exactly what Young did–he got the characterization of God wrong.
Let’s compare Mack’s controversial confrontation with God versus some of the Bible examples of confrontations with God to show you what I mean. I’ll start with the Bible.
Biblical Responses to the Holiness of God
When Adam sinned in the garden, Adam hid from God…
When a sixteen year-old king named Josiah read the long-forgotten law of God, he tore his clothes in grief…
When Job antagonized God about his plight, God rose up and riddled off a litany of questions…questions Job could not answer…
When Isaiah bent before the alter of God he screamed “Woe is me for I am ruined”…
When Peter saw Jesus conquer the storm he was terrified and said, “Who is this that the wind and the sea obey him?”
And when John encountered Jesus in a vision he fell at his feet as though dead.
As you can see, the Bible provides an abundant amount of examples that suggest encountering God is NOT a light affair…
And we haven’t even dealt with the hard texts of the Bible. Let’s do that now.
Compare These Tough Texts to…
In Leviticus 10 Aaron’s priestly sons–Nadab and Abihu–offer the wrong type of sacrifice on the altar…
In 2 Samuel Uzzah and his cohorts carry the ark of God on a cart [against God's prohibition to do such a thing] and when the ark threatens to crash into the mud, Uzzah sticks his hand out to catch it…
In Acts 5 Ananias and Sappira hid away some money they promised to share with the community of Christian believers.
What do all of these encounters share in common? Swift execution for what Jonathan Edwards called the “sins of arrogance.”
Mack’s Encounter with God
When Young’s protagonist Mack encounters God, what does he do? Let’s him have it. Throwing in a few choice words to boot.
Nothing out of the ordinary there. In fact, smells like a sin of arrogance. But it’s what God does in response that makes your jaw drop.
He merely shrugs.
My question to you is this: Why should Mack’s encounter with God be any different? I have a thought.
What’s obvious is that Mack is not in the presence of a being who is far superior to him.
We have no sense of awe for Papa. We don’t revere him.
In fact, the God of Young’s book accommodates us. Makes us feel comfortable –not convicted. He appeals to our native narcissism…
A narcissism our secular AND sacred culture nurtures to no end.
As I said in the Craptastic Book That Won’t Go Away post:
We want God on our terms. We want God to accommodate us. To make us feel welcome. We want him to present himself in a way that we can stomach. To justify our emotions like anger, bitterness and resentment.
But Here’s the Problem
In the end, my beef is not with The Shack. It’s with this: Our human tendency to fashion God into our own image, which is tantamount to tampering with the way God portrays himself…
A God who declares he is ferociously jealous for his name.
So what could Young have done to make me happy [not that he's obligated to make me happy]? Killed Mack on the spot after his fit of foul language.
As I demonstrated above, this would not have been the least bit out of character for God.
Understand: Defamation of God’s character carries strict consequences. A character that is illustrated in a demand for perfect obedience to the law of God.
A demand that you and I cannot satisfy. Only Christ.
And only when we see this full, out-stretched picture of redemption do we realize the depth of our dependence upon Christ and sob in relief at his mercy and then bend over backwards in our proclamation to the lost that it is, in fact, possible to have peace with a holy and just God.
Christmas is looming. Do you have an appropriate concept of God?
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10 Comments to How ‘The Shack’ Mocks God’s Holiness
“Christmas is looming. Do you have an appropriate concept of God?”
I honestly think that, being fallen and thus limited in our thinking, *none* of us have a fully appropriate concept of God. You hit it on the head when you said that we have a native (i.e. inborn) narcissism that tempts us to remake God in our image. The only real difference between the carnal heathen who worships a “god” that approves of his every depravity and the righteous Christian saint who thirsts to know the True God more every day, is the fact that we are *aware* of our narcissistic desire to remake God–and we weep in disgust at that sinful inclination and nail its maggoty carcass to the Holy Cross every time it rears its head.
I so agree. I wish I would not have wasted my time reading that rubbish!
I was so dismayed about Mac, mack, or whatever his name is never trembling in fear before a holy God.
That boys disrespect for the all Mighty would have had him struck dead in no time.
Denita, you are right “none of us have an appropriate concept of God.” And the staggering futility that dogs us is that we could spend a lifetime and never even get close to wrapping our heads around him…which in another sense is a majestically beautiful thing.
j sheltonDecember 23, 2009
I have not read this book. Not that I wouldn’t.. Sometimes it’s good to have an understanding about what all the ruckus is about so you can be discerning and hold it to the light of Scripture. Then when somebody being tossed about by the new belief happens to bring it up, you can redirect them gently to what God is really like. But, I already had an idea that the book wasn’t up to snuff. I heard a Driscoll rant about it regarding how you’re not supposed to make a graven image of God and he took issue with God being a woman too.. I agree, even though Driscoll can sometimes give me sore toes stepping on them. But I enjoyed your view of this book.
Hmm, I never thought of it as a staggering futility, so much as a staggering [i]humility[/i]…and a hopeful reminder that Heaven will not be the trite and stagnant place the pagans accuse it of being. There will always be more of God’s revelation waiting around the corner, beckoning us onward as we glory in His infinite presence.
As for the subject I’ve avoided…I couldn’t be more monumentally uninterested in reading this book. The dribblings I’ve read of this literary train wreck have left me feeling mildly nauseous. I would rather pore over the Unabomber’s manifesto and wash it down with a tall glass of Mein Kampf with a Blind Watchmaker chaser. Besides being thoroughly unBiblical, it’s also written as if the intended audience were preteens with the mental acuity of a lobotomized newt.
Demian FarnworthDecember 24, 2009
Denita: Sometimes I wish you were a little more straightforward. < < sarcasm. 
Merry Christmas to you, sister in Christ!
And to you all!
Merry Christmas to you and the whole Farnworth clan, my dear brother in Christ! And to all the commenters here as well! May He bless you all richly and abundantly!
So, I haven’t read The Shack, but from this and other descriptions of the book I have heard, I am bothered by this “equality with God” theme that seems to be there. In response to this blog, I thought to myself, “if we as Christians know this is a false presentation of God, why do we keep propagating it?” My initial response was, “because we think it might bring someone closer to the God who IS love, despite the fact that He does kill some people for their arrogance. It is an easier introduction to God than the Old Testament” Then I realized how sad it is that I/we would actually believe a fictional book can bring people to God better than His own Word can… Oh me of little faith…
Demian FarnworthDecember 30, 2009
Hey Anthony: That pretty much sums it up: “we would actually believe a fictional book can bring people to God better than His own Word can”
Good insight. Thanks for your comment.
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December 23, 2009