One Small Step Toward Heresy: Casey Reviews the Shack 1

I remember when I was just settling into the city of Birmingham a couple of years ago. Moving to a new city is a bit strange because all of a sudden you have uprooted yourself from everybody you knew. Of course, that means friends and family but for me it also meant a dentist. I had no dentist and I had an aching tooth like you wouldn't believe. In fact, it got to a point that for a couple of months I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain on a nightly and semi-nightly basis. I don't need to tell you that when I could touch the nerve of that tooth with my tongue or a drink of coffee or my finger it hurt like nobody's business. But you didn't come to this blog to read about my dental emergencies. You came to read about my thoughts on the controversial and best-selling book, 'The Shack' unless you have typed the wrong address into the browser, which also happens from time to time.

My apologies for skirting the issue, dear reader/interloper. This book is about pain. I won't be too much of a spoiler because I think it would do you good to give this a serious read yourself but I will tell you the basic premise. There is a guy named Mack. His childhood was sadly all too typical. Mack's father was an extremely abusive alcoholic whose insanity caused Mack to leave home as a teenager never to return again. Despite his scars, Mack is able to have a wonderful life. He marries a woman named Nan and has a handful of beautiful children to go along with a relatively comfortable lifestyle.

Mack's childhood pain is multiplied a hundred-fold when he takes his three youngest children on a camp-out. One of Mack's children is taken from him in a way that I could not possibly describe in a word or two. Mack never sees that child again and the bitterness that he had stored away as an angry young man is stirred up again. Mack is content to wallow in his misery and essentially breathe in and breathe out until the blessed day that he died. The grief and anger he felt had completely overwhelmed him and his isolation from his family and friends only made matters worse.

This book is about God's answer to our friend Mack. God shows up in a mysterious and wonderful way and speaks directly into his painful situation.

I am by no means a prophet or the son of a prophet but I am beginning more and more to think that this is exactly why there is an incredible cloud of controversy surrounding this book. I remember my painful tooth when I think about reactions such as the ones which Mark Driscoll, Al Mohler and many others have toward Young's book. I think the real issue is that Paul Young, much like the dentist that I eventually found in Birmingham, touches everybody's nerve and does not let up until the healing has begun.

The problem of pain is one that many Christian theologians and authors shutter to approach. The problem with pain is that it confuses things. As long as my church is doing well and my children are healthy; as long as the elders are off my back or people are listening to me on the radio or youtube, black and white makes plenty of sense.

The oxygen you breathe as you read The Shack is an atmosphere of pain. This is an incredibly difficult place to be moving inside of but it is the place Mack found himself in and, sadly enough, it is the place many of people both inside and outside of the church find themselves right now.

It would be good of those who are so quick to attack The Shack to provide an answer to pain themselves. Give us a word from the Lord. Not one that disproves a brother in Christ, but one that may better help those who are hurting. They may be hurting due to their own decisions. They may be hurting because their life has taken a sudden, tragic turn. It should not be that way. There is something inside of us that knows the human condition has left us in a place where we struggle to find answers. The Shack is one man's parable (note that word, it will show up again) of God's answer to him in pain.

Don't run from pain, dear reader. There is a place you can run. God drew Mack to spend some serious time with him and that is exactly what he is calling you to do even as you read this. Is there something that has happened in your life that you feel is unnatural and wrong? This is a story about the Three-In-One God appearing to a man right in the midst of pain. He is there for you too, dear reader.

Try not to react in anger to the problem of pain. Let the Great Physician touch your wounds until you are healed. The Shack is a great picture of exactly this.