The Shack Review

Just got done reading The Shack by WM. Paul Young. Yeah, it's been out for a couple years and I think I have a vague memory of it causing something of an uproar in the Christian community. I only recently picked it up and only because my inherited mother, Lisa, recommended it to me.

I was not overly anxious to read it when she told me about it. Some poor guy's little daughter is brutally murdered and he has a really hard time dealing with it until he goes to the shack where she was killed and spends the weekend there with God. But, as is often the case, I got it so that I'd have something to talk about with her more than any real desire to read the thing.

I kept wondering, what? Is he going to sit on the floor of the shack and talk to some disembodied voice or some white light for two days? What could the author possibly think God would say to someone in that situation? I love you? It's all according to my will, so get over it? I just couldn't imagine.

Having now finished it, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It was a real tear jerker, for one thing and I don't really like sad books. I think I cried off and on, mostly on, through the last third of the book. I'm so glad I was alone because I felt dumb enough with my red puffy eyes and sniffing huge amounts of snot back into my nose without having an audience. I haven't cried that much since... I don't know, Walk To Remember?

But because I did cry so much, I guess I got into the book. It took a couple chapters. There were some things in it that I disagreed with, theologically, but on the whole it was well written and was at least thought provoking. I had decided even before I started reading the book that it was going to be appreciated for its entertainment value only and should, in no way, be a religious guide. Mom warned me that it had some errors in it. I figured I was just going to have to look at it like the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

Anyway, it had some interesting views on God and religion and the human condition. It talked a lot about human beings' independence and free will, the price and the illusions.

On the whole, I would recommend it to people who are like minded in that they are not so religiously zealous that they could not look past the dogma of the book, but who are religious enough to grasp the finer points and the branches of views presented by the author. That is not a very wide audience, I guess. ~laughs~