The Shack vs Mark Driscoll

Over the last couple of days I’ve been following some interesting discussion stemming from a couple of facebook posts by Matthew Henderson (pastor at my old church in Aberdeen) which link to articles talking about the theology and ideas put across in William Paul Young’s The Shack.

It’s been very interesting, the responses ranging in subject from bits of heresy and poor theology to how parts of the book have helped and encouraged individual readers, to the difficult balance between exact theological accuracy and artistic creativity, to some commentators utter disbelief that anyone could take any word in The Shack seriously.

I enjoyed the book as a whole, and found it helpful in thinking through some interesting ideas about the nature of God, some of which I agreed with, others which I didn’t. Perhaps the biggest issues in my mind are that it doesn’t really portray the holiness (or “otherness”) of God that well, and the general impression that sin isn’t that much of a problem (see Tim Keller's post here for more on this).

In one of the comments posted, this little talk from Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church was highlighted. Now, I’ve heard a few of his sermons from time to time, and on the whole I like a lot of what he says. And on this one I generally agree with what he’s saying: that Christians not being sure of what they believe is a big problem. But I found myself disliking the way he went about it - he tends to present very bald statements in a “take it from me” kind of way while his audience (how many of whom have bothered to read the book?) chuckle appreciatively in the background. I don’t like the way in which he condenses long discussions and ideas down to pithy accusations. Here’s a few examples, along with my slightly peevish responses :o) :

“The book is about the trinity” - well yes, but primarily it’s about grief and loss.

“It’s graven imagery” - (minor tangent: nice to see you’re quoting from a nice modern translation of the Bible, completed in 1611) - I don’t know, but I don’t think the author is suggesting we go out and start worshipping big black women. So what about all other works of fiction that seek to suggest something about God? What about music and songs? Artworks? I heard a quote somewhere recently that said something like “It’s a shame that the evangelical church is so suspicious of interpretation and creativity, except in the sermon every week.”

“It’s goddess worship” - eh? I think you’d be hard-pressed to come to this conclusion from the book - it makes very clear that in this story (a work of fiction no less), God happens to choose to reveal himself to Mack in this way (if you don’t know the book, the God-the-Father character reveals himself to Mack, the main character as a large african mother-figure with the name Papa) because it’s the form to which Mack will best respond at that time - in another part of the book he appears as a father figure. Interestingly, the Bible refers to both masculine and feminine qualities of God (as you might expect, given that both human male and female are created in the image of God), but generally refers to him as, well, Him.

“It’s modalism” (that is, the belief that the trinity is one, but acting in 3 different capacities (modes, I guess) when the fancy takes him) - “Papa says: “I am truly human in Jesus”.” - Actually, my overall impression from the book was of three very distinct characters, yet somehow all one - which seems a reasonably fair reflection of how we generally (try to) understand the trinity. In any case, you could equally read the above quoted sentence in the form “I (the three-in-one Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit) am truly human in Jesus”.

But the one that really annoyed me most of all was his opening statement:

“How many of you have read the book The Shack? ...(hands up)... if you haven’t, DON’T”

WHAT?! What kind of useless advice is this? How can we possibly hope to engage with any of these issues from a position of ignorance? We should be reading it AND ALSO weighing it up against scripture to find its holes and inaccuracies. Since the book is out there in society already, perhaps we should be making use of it to challenge and engage with people (both affirming the helpful ideas and countering the bits we’re concerned about) rather than indignantly picking holes in it.

So pastors, please keep teaching the sound theology, but how about teaching the rest of us how to weigh up things like this against the Bible and to counter them ourselves. As Mark implies, the major problem itself is perhaps not so much the book itself, but its widespread undiscerning acceptance as truth.

But I think it’s equally dangerous to create a bunch of followers who can now counter an argument in favour of The Shack with one-liners such as “It’s goddess worship” without having bothered to read the book and weigh it up against scripture themselves.

Spleen vented. Thank you. What's everyone else's take on The Shack?
J

p.s. please stop shouting at me - the amount of my agreement with your sermon is not related (in a good way, at least) to your decibel level.