The Shack

The Shack is the most absorbing work of fiction I've read in many years. My wife and I laughed, cried and repented of our own lack of faith along the way. The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God. Michael W. Smith, Recording Artist --Michael W Smith, Recording Artist - personal endorsement

Reading The Shack during a very difficult transition in my life, this story has blown the door wide open to my soul. Wynonna Judd, Recording Artist --Wynonna Judd, Recording Artist - personal endorsement

This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' did for his. It's that good! Eugene Peterson, author --Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.


Product Description
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.
Against his better judgment he arrives as the shack on a wintry afternoon and walk back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book.

As you can guess from the title of this review, I am not a believer. I only read this book because someone very close to me, who is a Christian, sort of slipped it in, saying it had gotten great reviews and that she "thought I would like it." As in, thought it would awaken some deep god-shaped hole in me and thereby somehow bring me out of my hellbound outcast state and into salvation.

There are several reasons why that didn't happen, and most likely won't happen if you give this book to a nonbeliever.

#1, and I do not mean to be offensive here, atheists/nonbelievers tend to be well educated and well read. That means if you give them a book that is poorly written and dumbed down, they will end up discounting it, even if they begin by trying to be objective. To say this book is poorly written is putting it mildly. It reads like a romance written by a seventh-grader in her secret journal. The characterizations are hackneyed at best, nonexistent at worst, the scenario so ridiculous that suspending one's disbelief is simply not worth the effort. For this reason alone, most nonbelievers will not even make it to the end of the book, and will come away even more certain that Christians have to be pretty stupid if they really think such claptrap classes as good writing.

#2, it does nothing toward resolving the question of suffering. This conundrum: How can a good god allow suffering?, looms very large to many nonbelievers. As in point #1, if you are dealing with someone who is well educated and intelligent, you had better be able to discuss things on their level. This book is so childish no educated person could take it seriously. God stating that he is "there for" victims of the most horrible suffering, does not answer the original question: Why does he permit that suffering in the first place? The question of suffering is not to be taken lightly, as it is at the root of many people's nonbelief. For instance, the book did nothing to answer my personal question: Why do I have a genetic illness? If the best answer Christians can come up with is, "It's a mystery," that's a problem. You guys are going to have to come up with something cogent and compelling, and "But god will be there for you while you're suffering" isn't it.

#3, although you may think that books like *The Shack* will make unbelievers at least curious enough to read the Bible, wherein they will discover the ultimate truth and become Christians, it doesn't work that way. You would be surprised at how many nonbelievers have already read the Bible, even multiple times. Sometimes they got their biblical exposure at church in their previous life, sometimes they have read it so they can debate Christians on their own ground, sometimes just out of curiosity. Most nonbelievers aren't impressed with the Bible, seeing it as a compilation of ancient Middle Eastern myth (Old Testament) and the syncretic "theology" of Judaism version 2.0 (New Testament). *The Shack,* being poorly written and reasoned, is not going to convince them otherwise.

#4, it is insulting to realize you are viewed as a "Missy Project" case. When I understood why the person gave me the book, I was angered. There was nothing special in her giving me the book, she was just casting her net to try and increase Christianity's numbers (and get in good with Papa?). This is absolutely guaranteed to further convince nonbelievers that Christians are insincere and are just trolling for bodies rather than really caring about where nonbelievers are actually coming from.

So this is as much a warning as a review. If you are thinking of Missy-izing people, think again. As a nonbeliever I found the whole *Shack* experience distasteful and off-putting. It did not make me believe or even want to believe; rather it confirmed for me that Christianity is not where the answers are. If you are seriously trying to reach a nonbeliever, you should do it face-to-face, one-to-one, over a long period of time, respectfully, and intelligently. *The Shack*/Missy Project is the absolute opposite of this and thus will fail every time.