Critics of The Shack have lined up to charge the book with heresies ranging from idolatry and goddess worship to universalism. As a theologian who has written a book on The Shack (Finding God in the Shack) I have concluded that such charges are without merit. Of course this is not to say that the book "gets everything right" (what book written by a human hand does?), but there is no evidence that it adopts heresy.

The first difficulty with the charges, as fans of the book have rightly pointed out, is that The Shack is a novel, not a theology textbook. This is not to say that the book does not have theology, but we cannot simply read the theology out of it. As a result, we are always making a leap from a narratival description to a judgment about what the book may be teaching. For instance, critics have been outraged that the book depicts God the Father as an African American woman. But did they have the same rage that C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe depicts Christ as a lion? Fortunately most people recognize that Lewis is not claiming Jesus really is a lion. The symbolism serves the story and teaches us through that story. And so it is in The Shack. It is certainly not teaching that God is a woman. Through that evocative imagery the book teaches us something profound about God's transcendence and the accommodation he makes for us, but sadly the critics have apparently missed the point.

Young has described his book as an extended parable. That's interesting. Consider a much briefer parable, this one courtesy of Jesus: "Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Lk. 15:8-10) Note that in this parable God is compared to a woman searching for a lost coin. Would the critics of The Shack take issue with Jesus as well? FULL POST