The Shack

I just finished reading The Shack. I had heard about it months ago, as it was making the rounds in various church reading groups, and quickly dismissed it as Christian fiction not worth reading. However, I was wrong. It is worth reading for many reasons and has specific and general appeal.

The story is about the journey of Mack, the protagonist, to conquer what he calls The Great Sadness, a sense of depression that has lasted in his life since the murder and kidnapping of his daughter. He receives a message from Papa, the name his wife gives to God, to go to the shack where he found the only traces of his missing (and accurately presumed dead) daughter. Here, he encounters God and begins to heal wounds, old, new, and current.

I can quickly get behind stories of forgiveness. I can not so quickly get behind anything I feel comes from a religious standpoint. I called myself 'aversive to religion' for a very long time, and part of me is. Religion can induce a state of obstinacy in me like very other few things. Thus, it was hard to dig deeper to try to understand the message of this book. What I found what that, like Mack, I do a lot more judging than I realize, some of which is very deep, and this book and God are included. I judged this book before I read it. I judge the idea of what God is (if you believe in Him/Her/It, you have permission to go ahead and see this as me readily judging God on a daily basis). Yet, there really are some true and good lessons in this book.

The author, William Paul Young, talks about forgiveness, what it means to stop judging others, how we cling to our pain and how it affects those around us, what love is and how it manifests and what kind of power it has. I love all of these messages, largely because I had to begin to learn them and give energy to understanding them in my own life. It was beautiful to see someone talking about what I call the cornerstones of my life in a religious context, because I see the things I do, especially those that are the most transformative, as lacking a religious element, though strongly tied to spirituality (which I actually do not even like to attribute this stuff to).

However, one overarching message was that humans sought independence and with it came very bad things. In fact, with independence came every bad thing we can name and even those we can't name or can't comprehend. Freedom can only come from depending on God. This element alone is enough to warrant caution in reading this book. I don't think freedom comes from having a new master. Freedom comes from letting go.

That aspect of the book made me feel like all the other stuff I had learned about God, religion, and Christianity did for most of my life. We are born dirty and can only seek redemption through God. We are powerless without God. Those things could not be further from the truth. I'm not sure where people who hurt others fit into this, and I am still learning how to deal with them, though I do believe they deserve love, but that absolutely does not absolve them from facing the consequences of what they do to others. Regardless, humans have a lot more power than we think, we just have to realize where that power is (ourselves). I don't think we are born dirty and corrupted either, but we can easily become that way.

I don't like the message of dependence upon God, or the idea that we aren't whole to begin with. These are limiting beliefs, and I don't understand why people so readily believe them. I experience freedom daily, in various moments, without God or any other deity. This comes from letting go and letting things be and refusing to exert control over things, as hard as that sounds. We don't need a master to be unfettered. But, maybe you believe we do. If it works for you and makes you happy, I'm happy you found something that works.

All in all, The Shack is worth a read, for the sake of better understanding your own beliefs. I was scared it'd make me question, make me go through the struggle of monumentally changing my belief system (again). What I found though is that my conviction is stronger than I realized, that there is truth in everything, and that there is some overlap in what I believe and what Christians or any other religious follower believes.

This book was an interesting stepping stone on my own Path.