Name: Fred Rivett's review of The Shack by Wm. Paul Young
Item: The Shack
Rating: 3.5
Author: Fred Rivett

Wm. Paul Young

After his daughter's murder, a grieving father confronts God with desperate questions -- and finds unexpected answers -- in this riveting and deeply moving #1 NYT bestseller. When Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter Missy is abducted during a family vacation, he remains hopeful that she'll return home. But then, he discovers evidence that she may have been brutally murdered in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note that's supposedly from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment, he arrives on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

The Shack

Fred Rivett

Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors!"

"Mackenzie, judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right"

"One last comment," he added, turning back. "I just can't imagine any final outcome that would justify all this.”

"Mackenzie.” Papa rose out of her chair and walked around the table to give him a big squeeze. "We're not justifying it. We are redeeming it"

“Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.”

There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn't mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.

Shortly after that summer that Missy vanished, The Great Sadness had draped itself around Mack's shoulders like some invisible but almost tangibly heavy quilt. The weight of its presence dulled his eyes and stooped his shoulders. Even his efforts to shake it off were exhausting, as if his arms were sewn into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it. He ate, worked, loved, dreamed and played in this garment of heaviness, weighed down as if he were wearing a leaden bathrobe—trudging daily through the murky despondency that sucked the color out of everything.

In a world of talkers, Mack is a thinker and doer. He doesn't say much unless you ask him directly, which most folks have learned not to do. When he does speak you wonder if he isn't some sort of alien who sees the landscape of human ideas and experiences differently than everybody else. The thing is, he usually makes uncomfortable sense in a world where most folks would rather just hear what they are used to hearing, which is often not much of anything.

Mack never talks much about him, but when he does his face loses emotion like a tide going out, leaving dark and lifeless eyes.

William P. Young

Four years after his daughter is abducted and evidence of her murder is found in an abandoned shack, Mackenzie Allen Philips returns to the shack in response to a note claiming to be from God, and has a life-changing experience.

Great book that helps to see God more relationally and try to understand why bad things happen to good people. 

Kolby Denke

Robi Carballo

I don't think I can ever annotate another book more than I did on this one. 🥲 

✔ Makes you rethink life
✔ Makes you question things/belief you've never thought of before
✔ Can literally hit every emotion in you
✔ Many "oooohh" and light bulbs 💡 moment 

❌ It can be draining (not sure if it's the book or because I was sick whilst finishing it)
❌ Not biblical

"So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it."

This book can be a bit controversial with its artistic interpretations of the character of God, but I found it a moving book with depth that helped highlight angles that are often missed by rigid religious thinking.

A great book to read for those who wrestle with the concept of how God can allow horrific things to happen. It won’t answer all your questions, but it might bring new light to them, and that’s rarely a bad thing.

This book can be a bit controversial with its artistic interpretations of the character of God, but I found it a moving book with depth that helped highlight angles that are often missed by rigid religious thinking.

A great book to read for those who wrestle with the concept of how God can allow horrific things to happen. It won’t answer all your questions, but it might bring new light to them, and that’s rarely a bad thing.

the book is pretty good, but it is very slow paced and it is mainly about God and stuff which is not big for many.

Leah Vidal

Nicole Sonja

William Paul Young

Four years after his daughter is abducted and evidence of her murder is found in an abandoned shack, Mackenzie Allen Philips returns to the shack in response to a note claiming to be from God, and has a life-changing experience. Reprint. A #1 best-seller.

Reem Yacoub

One of the best books I have read in my life if it's not the best, this book transformed me in a lot of ways. I just encourage anybody and everybody to read it.

Dave Perkins

Wouter ter Keurs

It was a mindtwisting book. I really didn't think it was like this, but it was good. Not exceptionally good, just good.

It was the writing that kept me from really getting into it, but all the dialogues are fine and they take you somewhere to a place higher where you have some overview about the stuff they're talking about. Still following?

Things are said the way they've never been said, and that's the power of The Shack. 

A must-read, but just a must-read-once.

Shan

Book Frisson

No words could describe how much I love and have needed this book. Now, I have to watch the movie again. ♥️😭

Jade DeArmond

I enjoyed the book and I think it's very well-written and thought-provoking. That being said, anyone looking for a true picture of God and not just entertainment should take this book with a grain of salt. It presents a lot of beliefs contrary to Christian doctrine.

Sheila Goicea

"If you let me, Mack, I'll be the papa you never had."

"If you couldn't take care of Missy, how can I trust you to take care of me?" There, he'd said it--the question that had tormented him every day of The Great Sadness. Mack felt his face flush angry red as he stared at what he now considered to be some odd characterization of God, and he realized his hands were knotted into fists.
Mack, I'm so sorry." Tears began to trail down her cheeks. "I know what a great gulf this has put between us. I know you don't understand this yet, but I am especially fond of Missy and you too."
..."That's why you're here Mack," she continued. "I want to heal the wound that has grown inside you and between us."


-----

I'd like to start of by giving Mr. Young kudos for a job well done. Attempting to portray and break down God into lame-man's terms is downright impossible, because He is that which cannot be understood by mankind, simply because He goes against all of the laws of nature (and society) we believe to hold true. I think his portrayal of God was well thought out, and definitely challenged the stereotypes that come to mind. 

When this book first came out, I remember a lot of controversy about it, for reasons completely unrelated to the actual plot. It may be my time-jaded recollections, but that was the reason I held off from reading it. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't have any (crazy) ideas about God that completely disregarded the Bible. 

The book began interestingly enough, and quickly reveal Mackenzie's character. The luck-warm father, who didn't like to draw attention to himself or to show his emotions. The Great Sadness had attributed much to his already-damaged character and numbed his world. From this point until the revealing of The Great Sadness, I think the book's cadence was wonderful. However, the book tended to be quite predictable (for reasons I won't say to not reveal too much). I also found some of the reactions to the interactions within the book were unrealistic and made too casual. 

(I will reveal that I found myself always wanting a good cup of Jo while reading! Nearly every chapter, Mack had a steaming cup of coffee that just sounded so delightful!)

Overall, this was a good book. I think for anyone who may be seeking to understand more concepts of God (doctrinal), as well as debunk some of their preconceived thoughts of Him, they should check it out. I only gave it three stars because I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I just didn't find myself challenged much by it due to it's predictability (for myself). I know others who have read it and found it to be the opposite. I digress. I would still challenge you to read it, to see if it challenges your perceptions of God or not, for he may or may not appear to you in a different way than expected.

This review can also be viewed on my blog: She's Going Book Crazy

Simon Elliott Stegall

When I was probably 4 years old, I tried to draw God. I knew beyond a doubt what he looked like—sort of a blue, hooded, expansive figure floating over the earth—but after frustrated attempts to describe this vision to my mom, I finally resorted, like a caveman, to my crayon. The resulting blue blob (artfully suspended, cumulonimbuslike, over a drowsy town of squares and triangles) perturbed me. God was surely not this gelatinous! I looked at the crayon in my hand. Gravely it dawned on me: God was hard to draw.

I confess I had heard enough about The Shack to expect I would dislike it. But I tried to smother my prejudice and gave myself to experiencing it first-hand. Let me start off by saying that my 1-star rating has little to do with the theology of The Shack. There are books with much worse ideas about God to which I would give 5 stars—because they are great books. You may agree or disagree with its theology, but only someone who hasn’t read enough to know better would not see that The Shack, by the standards of most acceptable fiction, is a very badly written book. An excerpt:

In seminary [Mack] had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

I wish that last sentence was supposed to be as funny as it actually is.
 
I won’t go into more detail about the writing quality, partially because evidence abounds for anyone curious enough to read it themselves, and partially because that would feel a bit like kicking a lame dog. Plus, one can hardly fault William P. Young for his writing, as it seems his goal was not to write a great work of fiction, but to put forward some of his notions about God, which are apparently quite popular. For me, his notions were unsettling.
 
Writing about who you think God is is called theology. It is fraught with risk and requires diligence and study, as well as a great deal of mystery. Putting your words in a character’s mouth and calling that character God is something else entirely (maybe theosophy?), but Young has no scruples there. And good thing too! For The Shack teaches us a host of things about the Almighty that we may never have known otherwise. For example….

“Not ready?” [God] responded. “That’s okay, we’ll do things on your terms and time. Well, come on in. Can I take your coat? And that gun? You don’t really need that, do you? We wouldn’t want any one to get hurt, would we?”
The large black woman gathered his coat and he handed her the gun, which she took from him with two fingers as if it was contaminated.

…God thinks guns are icky!
 
Throughout the book Young speaks through the mouth of God, sometimes in accordance with Scripture but often with wild improvisation. His God’s vocabulary is largely made up of terms derived from sociology and psychology (sin = “will to power”, sinners = “survivors”; terms that are not wrong, but certainly incomplete). His Christ shows vehement disdain for the Church as an “institution”, though what he means by this is not clear: is he referring to Catholicism? Denominations? Liturgy and doctrine? Or does he simply hate the idea of gathering in a building? Mack (Young's protagonist) is relieved to hear that church is “[n]ot a bunch of exhausting work and a long list of demands, and not sitting in endless meetings staring at the backs of people’s heads…. Just sharing life.” Young’s God seems to have a rather stultified view of church, thinking it ought to be a wild garden, free in its growth and love, rather than the trellis upon which believers depend to keep them from the weeds of their own hearts.
 
There are other issues, and some more serious theological gaffes, but I don’t want to belabor the point. Plus, there are some good things about the book. The Gospel is presented in a clear way, and the theme of God’s love is explored in depth and with real humility. God is intimate, and he is tender, and he is motherly in many ways, and it is good that Young shows this. But the occasional moment of truth doesn't make up for the sloppiness of the rest; like hitting a target with a shotgun doesn't make you a good shot.

But what bothers me most about The Shack isn't all that I've mentioned above; it's something else. None of the stuff Young says about God's love is new; great Christian authors have written about his intimacy, and many great Christian teachers have talked about his tenderness and nurturing grace. So why did The Shack explode into fame as if no one had ever realized the great motif of the New Testament: God is Love? Are we so starved of proper teaching about God’s love that we need The Shack to show it to us? 

I don't think so; I think The Shack is successful because Young has squashed God's love into the vocabulary of our therapy-addicted age, injecting it with wish-fulfillment and spiritual back massages. It's tempting, as victims of our circumstances and physiologies, to think that God will submit to our self-diagnosed need for a cosmic counselor. But eventually this corporate Evangelicalism that produces so much therapeutic Christian kitsch will eventually look at their blobbish crayon God and realize what I did as a child: drawing God is hard.

Brianne Kendall

This story had my mouth hanging open from the get go, wether it was the surprisingly dark opener, the astonishing spirituality, or the heart wrenching climax. Shack was such a refreshing look at God, faith, and man.

Valeria Cruz García 

This book I amazing!! Many people should read it because it is life changing.

Southern Today Gone Tomorrow

Written by William Paul Young, follows Mack years after his youngest daughter Missy is taken an murdered. Now, it is the middle of winter, his wife and surviving children are away, and a note appears that asks for him to meet them at the shack. The shack where they found Missy's bloody dress.

I enjoyed this book, but this is definitely a religious book, and honestly is aimed towards those who are already, to some extent, religious. I definitely wouldn't say that this novel gave me any great realization. It took the idea of God, in the trinity, and made it more accessible and really focused on what Jesus' sacrifice did.

But it didn't do it in plain language. That is why this book is still for the religious. But, really, those who want the bible spelled out for them more. This novel would ask questions, then give you the answers, but not give you the answers to a level where you could really take them into yourself and go farther. It was the same thing over and over again.

Which was the point. You must discover something on your own. Leading a horse to water doesn't mean it will drink.

It wasn't my favorite book. But, it was well written and the reader was engaging. If you are looking for some christian fiction and you are open to a broader interpretation, this is a good book. I did enjoy the discussion of how things changed (I will leave that to the reader to figure out - hint, it is a CHRISTIAN novel).

Ashley Flitter

Honestly, I didn't quite know what to expect. I am not an overly religious person, but I do consider myself spiritual - though I don't usually read any sort of religious narratives. I must say that I was completely blown away by this book. 

Though the writing style or pacing isn't anything special, the words themselves along with the overall message were beautifully written and I had several moments where I was just flabbergasted by the weight of what he was saying.

The premise of the book is fairly brutal, and there were times when I actually cried (that does not happen to me, ever), but the message is so overwhelmingly positive that I didn't mind the parts that seemed sad or depressing.

I read it in 2 days and immediately gave it to my partner to read - I definitely recommend this to anyone who's ever been curious about God or our purpose on this Earth.

Sara 

The book really taught me something about having faith and trusting in God through our times of trouble. The author did an AMAZING job portraying God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and answering some of my questions. 
I needed to read this book, it helped me understand everything just a little more clearly.

Sonia Flores

2017 PopSugar reading challenge #37 A book that's becoming a movie in 2017

Monica

This is a book about forgiveness and redemption through the certainty of being sons and daughters of a God, who has died for us and forgiven us, and who loves us all with special fondness. I find this idea very good and helpful for many people. It can be a mind opener for some, a call to conversion for others, a push to forgive for more...

However, I disliked strongly the way in which the author speaks about certain theological issues. Although I’m not comfortable with God being depicted as a woman I agree that God is pure spirit: it just so happens that in scriptures he wanted to be a Father. But that is not it. The author clearly dislikes St. Thomas Aquinas for no particular reason; he pictures Christ saying that He didn’t found any Church and that He is not our model to imitate; that Jesus had no power and that His miracles were pure faith; that we are justified by faith (we cannot even try to be good, humans just cannot); that everything is lawful... and all this without allowing any dialogue but stating it as facts, with no justification or explanation whatsoever. Everything seems to me out of context. At least that is how I felt.

This book has a good side. Granted. But it can also be very misleading in some issues which might seem small because of the silly way in which they are said...but which are mayor issues in my opinion.

Lauren James

Warning: This is not a Christian Book. I went into it thinking it was and was surprised it was not. I say this because it has a lot of Bibical discrepancies. Clearly the author has issues with God and tried to make God what he wanted Him to be. 

This is a really great review that can more accurately get across what I wanted to say:

http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/...

Matthew Hayward

Janet Doré

I picked up this book because I had heard it mentioned a lot - and it was one of the upcoming books for my book group. I had no idea it was a religious book, which is not my usual genre. I considered putting it down, but decided to stick with it to see what I could learn. Overall, I liked it, although I thought the dialogue to be a bit simplistic (hence somewhat irritating). The author's view on a personal relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit - especially for those dealing with significant tragedy in their lives - was well presented and I got it, even though it is not my personal path. I was quite surprised that his stance was gently against organized religion, instead stressing a very personal faith and relationship rather than rules and the church's power structure. After reading this book, I have a much better understanding and even deeper respect for Christians that have this kind of authentic faith.

Fred Rivett &
The Shack by Wm. Paul Young

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