The Shack offers a different way to look at life

Four years ago, Mackenzie "Mack" Philips took his three youngest children on a camping trip in Oregon, when tragedy hits. While getting ready to head home, Mack took his eyes off of his youngest, six year-old Missy, for a few minutes. In that time, someone abducted Missy, took her away from the campground to a shack in the woods and brutally murdered her. This put Mack into a "Great Sadness," a state he is still in when we first meet him in the present day. Depressed and unable to help his now-youngest daughter deal with her own sadness, Mack receives a letter one day that he believes to be a note from God, inviting him back to the shack for a weekend.

Filled with conflicting emotions and doubts about the note, Mack sends his wife and kids to her sister's for the weekend and sneaks off to the shack. There, he comes face to face with God, in an incarnation he never would have imagined. Together with God and a couple of God's companions, Mack reflects a lot on his faith (which he had just about given up on) and how to help himself and his family heal.

Style
The Shack is told by "Willie," William Paul Young's alter ego and Mack's close friend, 'as told by Mack.' This is a cute convention, but apparently it has led many readers to think that Mack is a real man and that this is a true story. Young has stated in interviews that there is no real "Mack;" he is just another character in a book.

Young originally wrote The Shack for his children, with no intention of having it published. In some ways, I think this allowed him to be more creative in his depiction of God and the Holy Trinity, since he was not concerned about how his ideas would be received by critics or the general public. The flip side of this is that there are areas where the storytelling is choppy.

What I found most distracting while reading The Shack is that there were times when Mack would chuckle to himself about something and think a corresponding thought, and the style/inner monologue didn't really match the writing style from the rest of the book. It didn't feel as natural a part of the story as a main character's inner thoughts should feel to a reader.

Young describes the drive out to the Eastern Oregon campsite with great detail, making it obvious to readers that he knows the lay of the land intimately. While detailed scenery descriptions can paint a distinct picture in readers' minds, there is also a risk of getting bogged down in details, which is what happened here at times. I don't think that reading for pleasure should ever have to feel like a chore.

My Thoughts
Slowly, The Shack seems to be gaining in popularity due to word-of-mouth, particularly in the Christian community. I read it because the education director at my church recommended it for the church's Mom's Book Club. Having had Catholicism shoved down my throat in childhood, I took a pretty long break from the church, and in my early adulthood only attended sporadically. In the past two years, my husband and I have placed weekly mass back into our priorities, for various reasons. Being told that reading The Shack would change my outlook on my faith seemed like a worthy cause.

In many respects, reading The Shack did change how I look at worship. Every reader will take away something different from reading the interactions between Mack and the components of the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). What I got out of it is the importance of strong relationships and some new ideas about the roots of evil. One idea presented here is that having too many rules and regulations in our lives create evil in people. I'm not entirely sure I got to the same place on this one, but I do think that having too many rules can inhibit creativity, which is the basis of problem-solving. Inability to think of new ways to solve problems often leads to the old standby of fist-fights and wars.

A central issue in the book comes from the common thought among God's doubters: "If there is really a God, how can He let brutal crimes happen to innocent children?" While this is a valid question, people also need to be responsible for the actions. God doesn't tell anyone to fight or kill; those are decisions made independently. If mankind wants to feel in control of its own destiny, we can not get mad if a hand from above does not step down and intervene whenever something bad is about to happen. That does not teach us anything. Of course, if we are going to take responsibility for our own actions, we also need to be able to forgive others who are willing to take responsibility for theirs.

Of course, there can be no "uber-popular" book about God that doesn't have some sort of controversy around it, and Young's non-conventional way of looking at God certainly gives people lots of material to pull accusations out of, but I don't personally judge fiction on controversy. The Shack is a creative story, told in a mediocre writing style, that offers readers different perspectives on interpreting their own faith. If you can't handle violence against children, or reading a book from a Christian perspective with an open mind, then you should not read this book. Otherwise, reading The Shack will give you something new to think about.