Tag Archives: The Shack

Welcome Forest Hills Church

8 Dec

I just saw that Forest Hills Church linked to my review and response to other opinions on The Shack.  Thanks so much for the link.

Forest Hills Church is doing a Christmas Series called Christmas At The Shack.  Here’s where you can find the messages.

On another note, I listened to an interview with William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, and it was really great, it’s from Catalyst so there is a discussion before hand that you gotta get through, but the interview is worth it. You Can download that here.

Great Post on the Shack and it’s Author

1 Aug

I appreciated the Shack for it’s display of the relationship between the trinity.  It’s a book that has brough a lot of healing to a lot of souls.  It’s controversial, and I get a lot of comments from people who don’t see the potential for grace in this text.  

Today I read this post from Bob.Hyatt, who had a chance to interact with Paul Young.  Great post.  All you shack haters please read it.  It might stop the hating, if you hear from the source.

Dude, It’s a Metaphor!

3 Apr

So I was listening to Mark Driscoll talking about the Trinity today, and he was talking about the Shack. which our church has recommended people read. I don’t usually post my disagreements with other church leaders on here, but I just had to. And normally I think Driscoll is encouraging and challenging in a good way, I totally dig on his teaching. But I couldn’t let this one go, because he’s painting everyone who reads this book as a Heretic, and that’s just wrong and it’s not his job.

I think that the biggest struggle that Driscoll is having with the book is Metaphor. William Young is not saying that God is a woman, or that the Holy Spirit is an asian chick. The whole thing is a metaphor trying to get across one of the most complex issues in our doctrine in an accessible way.

Driscoll argues that the book proposes modalism, which is a weak arguement because throughout the story you see that the Trinity is independent and yet unified. They are all working together, in Community and Love.

Pilgrim’s Progress, Hind’s Feet on High Places, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the Shack are all efforts to teach people the love and grace and mercy of God in a way that is accessible. Are they going to get it 100% accurate to the nth degree? Are they going to throw footnotes in all over the place? No. It’s a story, it’s a metaphor. If it helps people get a grasp on the love of God, and if it sets them in the right direction to ask more questions and to continue to pursue Jesus then it has worked.

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a woman who lost a coin and went looking for it. In all this kingdom of God, are we really just under the bed of this woman who is doing her spring cleaning? No, it’s a metaphor. So is the Shack.

The struggle that I am having with these hip, cool, new reformed Pastors is that they are uncomfortable with metaphor, and questions. And the danger is that they are going to get into a place where they are looked at like just the Reincarnate Jerry Falwell (but they vote democrat instead of republican).

Dude, It’s a Metaphor! You can’t read it like a treatise. Relax, breathe, take you meds and lay off the red bull.

The Shack – Review

30 Jan

I probably never would have picked up this book if it were not for my friend Robert Doell’s recomendation.  Robert works at Lifeway and everytime I go in there he has something new to recommend.  Which is great, because I like reading books that others have read.  So the most recent recommendation was The Shack by William P. Young.

Now this book had several things going against it from the get-go.  The biggest hinderance is that I don’t really dig fiction lately, and I don’t know if this was fiction or not, but it’s kind of marketed that way.

It was kind of hard to really get into, because the story took a while to set up, and I really didn’t understand why I should care about this Mack guy (the main character).  But I was comitted to finishing it so that I could have an intelligent conversation about it, as it is growing in popularity.

After getting through the set-up, I really don’t want to spoil this book for anyone, so please be patient.  Mack goes to a cabin where he experienced a great tragedy in his family, and he has an encounter with the Trinity.

The way the author presents the trinity is fascinating.  The most intriguing thing about it all is their relationship/community/love-fest.  They are presented as unique in character but one.   It’s pretty cool.

But this book is really great as it works through the issues that Mack has to deal with to move past the tragedy in his past and with his family.  The book talks about grace, forgiveness, redemption, free-will, salvation, and all kinds of good stuff.  So it’s a pretty heady book if you get way into it.  But it’s still very accessible.  That’s probably the greatest strength of using the story format.  It allows for the point to be made with out beating the reader over the head with it.

This would be a great book for a book club, or for people who are going through recovery programs, and even grief counseling.  So should we read it?  Sure.  Are people going to disagree with it?  Yes.  Are people going to take a lot of it way to seriously?  Probably.  But we can still get a lot of great truth and encouragement from this story.

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