The Shack - Wm Paul Young

This Christian novel has sold over three million copies and we wondered whether it should be translated into Persian: so someone had to have a look at it. Young kept me turning the pages as his story line was unexpected. The young daughter of a Christian couple is brutally murdered after being abducted from a holiday campsite. This part of the novel was like a straight thriller, almost like you were watching a film. Then the twist. At the start of the book the father, Mack, who had taken his children camping gets an odd note from ‘Papa’ to visit the shack where his daughter was killed. When he arrives at the scene of his nightmare and starts to vent his anger there’s a Narnia moment. The shack turns into an idyllic cottage in the woods and Mack’s hosts for the weekend is the Trinity: Papa, a large wobbly ever cheerful black lady; Jesus in jeans; and Sarayu, a thin Asian woman, also in jeans, but with a brightly coloured blouse. I can’t think of any novel that fictionalises the Trinity in this way, so the way they relate keeps one’s interest levels up, even when they almost get into preaching and are unbearably soppy. But though Young pours a lot of theology into his plot, he makes sure the teaching never takes over. There are three main issues he deals and all are given orthodox answers – but they are brought more alive in the context. Why does God allow suffering (free will, he couldn’t stop the murderer); what happens after death (there is heaven – and Mack gets to see both his daughter and father, whom he had had a difficult relationship with); and what’s the key to moving on from unjust suffering. Forgiveness. So we go on quite a journey with Mack, from coming to terms with the murder, to then forgiving the murderer. A sub-plot to these questions is how to stop relating to God as a set of rules, and how to relate to him as a real person, as Mack does during his Alice In Wonderland week-end. Finishing the book I confess I had felt moved, a bit like I did when I watched ET. The author hits all the painful buttons – loss of a daughter, but seen in heaven having a great time; difficult relationship with a distant father, also resolved by the heavenly vision, and a dry relationship with God, very definitely resolved by spending a week-end with the Trinity. And yet…there was some uneasiness in my mind. It was all too neat, too nice, almost too packaged. I know grace is at the heart of the Bible, but I sometimes wonder whether it’s taken too far in book like this and we end up creating a god in our own image. Read almost any page of the Bible and God is wild, unpredictable, out of the box, passionate, ready to love, but also ready to judge. But here God was literally domesticated, Papa was the cook serving up delicious cookies with a motherly smile. There was no talk of hell, or wrath, or holiness. On the front of the book there’s a quote from Eugene Peterson saying the book is comparable to ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. That is a regrettable comparison, because Pilgirm had to escape a burning city, and pass through many trials and temptations. Here there is no sinful city to get out of, just instant access. It all seemed too easy. But…still well worth reading. But we won’t be translating it. Iranians Muslims have enough trouble with the Trinity already without us throwing in the idea that God the father is a large black woman who bakes cookies.