THE SHACK, By William P. Young

I listen to a podcast regularly called "The God Journey", and I had heard those guys talk about a book called "The Shack" every now and then, but I didn't really pay that much attention to it. One day, I was talking with a girlfriend about different books we'd read, and she mentioned that she had just read a book called "The Shack", and that it was possibly the best book she had ever read. So that kinda grabbed my attention, and I went to the "God Journey" website to see what they had to say about it. In the meantime, I ordered it from Amazon to read it for myself.

I finished reading it last night at around midnight, and thought about it a lot this morning when I woke up. So what can I say about it if I don't wanna give the story away? I'll do my best.

I can't say that I would have read "The Shack" if I had just stumbled across it in a bookstore. The back-cover description says that the character's daughter had been abducted and brutally murdered. I generally steer away from books with those kinds of topics, but I was so curious as to why this was such a "life-changing" book - A novel at that!

The story starts four years after Mack's daughter has been murdered. Her blood-soaked clothes were found in a shack in the mountains. As you would guess, life has not been the same for this family. Mack lives with what he calls "The Great Sadness". One day, he gets a note in his mailbox, an invitation, to go spend the weekend with God at the shack. Mack wonders why in the world God would meet him there, of all places - the place of his greatest pain and despair. So Mack goes...and he is taken on a journey where he is confronted with the truth of who God is.

I'll have to admit, at first I was a little thrown off by the forms in which God appeared to Mack, but as He explained why He had done so, it made sense. He was what Mack needed, when he needed it. As Mack changed, so did the form in which God appeared to him.

"The Shack" isn't some religious "how-to" book. It is very honest, and will take you by surprise with its honesty. The dialog between God and Mack uncovers what many of us really think of God. And it also shows us that He is not how we think He is. It exposes our deepest and most hidden misconceptions of Him, even the ones that those of us who have been "religious" for a while may have. As Mack was shown things about himself, I found that they were things that I also had buried deep inside of me. Things that I never realized I felt until I saw it in print in front of me. At one point, God says to Mack, "You don't trust me, because you don't know that I love you". Simple, but true. We don't trust God, because we can't comprehend how He loves us. We're suspicious of what will come our way if we trust Him completely. That means we don't really know that He loves us.

One of my favorite parts was when the Holy Spirit, represented as "Sarayu", works on Macks' "soul". It was a beautiful analogy, but that's one part that I can't give away. It was the surprise element that gave it it's power.

As for the ending, I felt bittersweet about it. But it ended just the way it should have.

This novel has much truth about God, about life, about us, and especially about our preconceived ideas about God. But it's important to keep in mind that because it is a work of fiction, it's probably not an infallible representation of God. While I did see a lot scriptural truth in it, I wondered about certain details, such as God making sarcastic comments from time to time. But keeping all that in perspective, this is a beautiful story. It made me cry in a few places; it made me laugh in a few places; It made me repent in a few places. It showed me how God loves each one of us individually. The line on the front cover says "Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity", and that is a perfect description of this book.