On Sunday’s message, the first part of our 5-week “WHY: church?” series, I used an illustration from the book, “The Shack” by William P. Young.

It’s a New York Times best-seller, with over 7 million copies in print, and has caused quite a stir in Christian circles!

I like to read these kind of books (e.g. Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code, etc) to know what is being said and to be in a first-hand position to answer questions that arise and counter any issues that result.

I have a file on my computer of articles and resources that can help us think through such books and the controversy surrounding them, and I’d like to share the relevant “Shack” ones with you today.

In April 2009, Dr. Albert Mohler dedicated a radio program to presenting his review of the book. He closed the radio program with these words:

“…Whenever you have an issue in which you are dealing in a narrative-fictional context with theology, you need to be really, really careful. It’s dangerous enough to write theology. But when you try to put it in the form of ‘theological fiction,’ or ‘Christian fiction,’ it gets all the more dangerous because you are inventing dialogue and inventing characters. And this is one of the grave, grave problems I have with this book [The Shack]. If you put God in some kind of character format—in this case as an African-American woman—you’re going to be creative and create a fictional character. Now, is it responsible to do that with the God of the Bible? I have grave concerns about that, but the concerns grow more grave when you look at the dialogue imbedded within the book and the fact that this simply, by any measure, falls far short of biblical Christianity. There is very little in this book about salvation, but there is absolutely nothing in this book that would help you to understand how one comes to be made right with God through the atonement achieved by Jesus Christ, the Son. My main issue is not with the particulars of the story—in some sense a story is a story. My problem is with what is imbedded in the story and this is a danger regardless of whether the story is presented as Christian fiction or something else. Remember, everyone has a purpose in writing a story. In this case, regardless of intention (I cannot read the man’s heart), I can tell you the effect of this book is deeply subversive of the Christian faith and I think inherently seductive as well.”

Listen to, or download, the full radio program here.

Also, Tim Challies, blogger and author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, has written a 17-page review of The Shack. You can download the entire review as a PDF here.