The Shack: Father-goddess Rising

Many are crediting The Shack,
the novel by William P. Young, with
revolutionizing their faith. With themes
of overcoming loss, working through
anger, and restored relationship between
man and God, Young’s novel has excited
many within the Body of Christ.

Young
has appeared on CBN, and has garnered
fans across the country. The Shack,
continues to sell briskly. Yet, in the
midst of such enthusiasm, does The
Shack, glorify Jesus Christ–or
contradict the Bible with a false image
of the Lord our God?

The novel’s main character, Mack
Philips, has lost his daughter. She has
been murdered, her bloodied dress found
in an isolated shack. Four years later
Mack receives an invitation from God to
spend time with the Trinity in the very
shack where the dress was found.

Nowhere in the Bible do Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit simultaneously assume
physical forms on earth. The Shack,
however, portrays Jesus as a carpenter,
the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman, and
God the Father as a large black woman
named … Papa.

Much like AA’s “higher power,”
The Shack’s, deity comes to Mack in
a form he is willing to accept. While
the novel’s feminization of the Lord is
as trendy as it is Babylonian, the
reader rapidly becomes used to
descriptions of God as “she” and “her.”
At one point the book’s version of Jesus
praises the fictional Father-goddess,
exclaiming, “Isn’t she great?”

Malachi 3:6 states, “For I, the Lord,
do not change.” God is Spirit. In the
entire Bible there is not one single
reference to Father, Son, or Holy
Spirit–or to any of His angels–as
female. It is probably not wise, then,
to go beyond what has been presented in
Scripture.

Unfortunately, this seems a frequent
occurrence in The Shack. The
Father-goddess character tells Mack she
appears in female form “to help keep you
from falling back so easily into your
religious conditioning.” The author and
his publishing team apparently assume
Christians believe the Lord is an old
white man with a beard, and have
produced the book in part to help
straighten us out.

There is an apparent dismissal of the
importance of Scripture, which is
reflected in slippery theology found
throughout the novel. Young writes,
“Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a
book. Especially an expensive one bound
in leather with gilt edges, or was that
guilt edges?” Guilt edges?

The Father-goddess of The Shack,
it seems, is never about guilt or
punishment. She benignly informs Mack,
“I don’t need to punish people for sin.
Sin is its own punishment, devouring
people from the inside. It’s not my
purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to
cure it.”

That sounds wonderful. And, yes, sin
enslaves. However, the novel’s deity
contradicts the Bible. Jesus will be
dealing out retribution to those who do
not know God and to those who do not
obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They
will pay the penalty of eternal
destruction. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)

Although most sermons these days
skirt the issue, Christians receive
punishment during our time on earth.
“For those whom the Lord loves he
disciplines, and he scourges every son
whom he receives. It is for discipline
that you endure. God deals with you as
sons; for what son is there whom his
father does not discipline?” (Hebrews
12:6-7)

But, this is not the message of the
Father-goddess, simply because this is
not the God of Scripture. An excellent
writer, Young plays to emotion and
touches on legitimate hurts and
concerns. The author excels at imbuing
his deity with attributes of love,
forgiveness, and mercy, and this is what
many people have responded to.

Increasingly in novels and movies the
Lord is blithely used as one of the
characters, and given words from the
mouth of man. In this sense, the author
of The Shack, is simply
following the culture.

But something else is going on here.

Universal Reconciliation (UR)
is the belief that Jesus’ sacrifice
allows Christians and non-Christians to
spend eternity with God. In other words,
in UR theology, everybody goes to
heaven, not just followers of Jesus.
Some in this camp even believe this
includes the devil and his demons.

Publisher Wayne Jacobsen acknowledges
that UR was included in earlier versions
of The Shack. Jacobsen
explains:

“While some of that was in
earlier versions because of the
author’s partiality at the time to
some aspects of what people call UR,
I made it clear at the outset that I
didn’t embrace UR and didn’t want to
be part of a project that promoted
it.”

So why did Jacobsen proceed to join
forces with Young? He writes:

“To me that was the beauty of the
collaboration … the author would say
that some of that dialogue
significantly affected his views. …
Holding him to the conclusions he
may have embraced years earlier
would be unfair to the ongoing
process of God in his life and
theology.”

Perhaps, but this allegedly former
theology even now seems to explain some
of the content of the book.

The Bible clearly teaches the only
way to God the Father is through Jesus,
who loved us enough to die for us. Early
in The Shack, Mack’s daughter
asks if the Great Spirit, the Native
American god, is another name for the
Father of Jesus. Mack tells her … yes.
He may as well have told her that Allah
(or any other false patriarchal god) is
also the Father of Jesus.

Of course, if everybody is going to
heaven because of UR, what does it
matter? God, Great Spirit, Allah, what’s
the difference?

His daughter asks the question
because Mack tells the story of an
Indian princess who willingly died so
her people could be delivered of an
illness. According to an Indian
prophecy, it could be ended only through
her sacrifice. The author states, “After
praying and giving herself to the Great
Spirit, she fulfilled the prophecy by
jumping without hesitation to her death
on the rocks below.”

When his daughter calls the Great
Spirit “mean” for making both Jesus and
the princess die, Mack never clarifies
that Jesus’ Father is not the Great
Spirit, or that God the Father has
nothing to do with this pagan legend.

Does the author still have UR
leanings? In his article, ‘The Beauty of
Ambiguity,’ it is not his character
Mack, but Young himself, who speaks to
the Father-goddess. He denies being a
universalist, and proclaims “faith in
Jesus is the only way into your
embrace.”

She asks, “I take it that it wouldn’t
bother you if I decided to save every
human being that ever lived?”

“Nope. I actually hope you’ve figured
a way to do just that,” he replies.

Wait a minute. If Young is still
hoping God somehow ends up saving
everybody, well, that is Universal
Reconciliation. And hoping UR might
happen directly contradicts Jesus
Christ:

“Enter through the narrow gate;
for the gate is wide and the way is
broad that leads to destruction, and
there are many who enter through it.
For the gate is small and the way is
narrow that leads to life, and there
are few who find it.” (Matthew
7:13-14)

Although Young then proceeds to voice
acceptance of the reality of hell, he
complains to his fictional
Father-goddess:

“…why couldn’t you have made
things clear? People go to the Bible
and find all these ways to disagree
with each other.… Everybody seems to
want to acquire their little piece
of doctrinal territory.… Some find
support for Universal
Reconciliation; some find proofs for
eternal torment in hell…”

Young continues with his list. Issues
run the gamut from Calvinism to
eschatology and, having inserted
Universal Reconciliation into the mix,
his fictional Father-goddess never
corrects him. No surprise there. Is this
perhaps an attempt to at least infer
valid consideration of UR by including
it amongst a hodge-podge of doctrinal
concerns?

Incredibly, Young’s Father-goddess
clarifies (?) that she made much of the
Bible ambiguous on purpose! That the
author, or any person, would dare
present doctrinal confusion as the
intended plan of God–and via a fictional
character at that–is chilling. But,
that’s the way it is these days.

“For the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine; but
wanting to have their ears tickled,
they will accumulate for themselves
teachers in accordance with their
own desires, and will turn away
their ears from the truth and will
turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy
4:3)

It’s going to get worse. Goddess
worship, false christs, and many other
heresies will continue to rise. Movies,
novels, and TV will become increasingly
blasphemous.

Readers of this novel would do well
to examine Biblical teaching about the
Trinity,

sin,

repentance,

communication with the dead, and
much else.

Many in the Body of Christ have run
to get a copy of The Shack. Far
better, brothers and sisters, to just
run.

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Endnotes (not numbered in the
original):
William P. Young, The Shack
pg.88
Ibid. pg.93
Ibid. pg.66
Ibid. pg.120
Wayne Jacobsen, “Is The Shack Heresy?”
Ibid.
The Shack pg. 31
Ibid. pg. 28
Ibid. pg. 31
William P. Young, “The Beauty of
Ambiguity”
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

Source article:


http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=1805

Related Article:

The
Twisted Truths of
The Shack
and A Course in
Miracles

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