The Shack

I read The Shack this week and, although this may surprise some people, I wasn’t impressed. I feel a bit guilty for that – I’ve heard such great things about it. Friends have raved.  I expected to be moved and really wanted to like it but it left me more annoyed than inspired.

I should explain… I’m not much of a follower. I mean I don’t think I’m anti-social, I like people just fine and have friends, have even been a member of groups, but I’m just not one to watch a movie or read a book simply because it’s the popular thing. In fact, I’m contrary enough that if something is “the thing” then I’m likely to set it aside. Snobbish of me I know, but I just don’t put much faith in bandwagons. This means that I’m often not quite up on the popular culture — and sometimes means that I don’t discover some great things until much, much later because my snobbishness got in the way.  I know there are blockbuster movies that are amazingly wonderful but I think that most blockbusters are simply the newest thing out there. I don’t use Oprah’s Book Club as suggestions for my reading list, but I’ve also read some good books and found out later she had recommended them.

So, The Shack… it seemed that the only thing I heard about this book was praise (well, except for the pastor who preached that no “good Christian” should read it because, gasp, God is portrayed as a woman and that will lead us all down the slippery slope to goddess worship. I wanted to ask him what he though about the verses in Psalms where it says that He covers us with his wings and ask if considering that word picture would lead to chicken worship but I refrained). So I resisted reading The Shack in large part because it was so well loved –  I just wasn’t going to hop on the bandwagon.  Like I said earlier, when I finally decided to read it I expected to be moved. This book is about a person with a deep hurt and, as a result, has a lot of questions for God. Hmmmm, sound familiar? Based on what I’d heard, I wanted to see myself and my relationship with God and experience some kind of catharsis. This is the kind of life-changing reaction to the book that I’d heard from others. Maybe I set myself up to be disappointed.

I didn’t hate the book, or think it was a bad story, I was just left a bit flat. Every good story has some underlying message, but the question is, which came first – the story or the message? While reading The Shack, I felt that the author had a message he was trying to proclaim and created the story to show a way to relate to God. I never felt that Mack had taken residence in the author’s mind and he had to put him to paper. Instead I felt that he had been moved considering how God wants to reach out to us at a very personal level and chose to create a story to explain those thoughts. 

There were definitely parts of the story that I liked. I loved the garden – the chaotically, beautiful, fractal mess of the garden and what it represented. The discussion about judgement made me stop and think (and, ironically, I wonder how this post fits in). Forgiveness seemed a bit too easy, although I did appreciate that God said even in the midst of forgiveness there still may be some appropriate, lingering anger. Although it’s been said a zillion times and can easily be cliche, I needed to be reminded that it’s not about rules but about relationship.

I don’t regret that I’ve given a few hours of my life to read The Shack or feel that my time was wasted, I just wasn’t as moved as I expected, and wanted, to be. What was your experience? What did I miss?