The Shack’s Wayne Jacobsen Resonates with Contemplative/Emerging Writers

Lighthouse Trails has been posting
articles written by fellow researchers on The Shack. This
report should be considered supplementary to these other
reports.

William Paul Young is the official author of The Shack,
but Wayne Jacobsen is one of its editors. According to a

New York Times article, Jacobsen spent 16 months helping to
rewrite the first draft. This would leave the logical conclusion
that Jacobsen had some significant influence on the final
outcome of the book. And with that in mind, readers need to be
aware that Jacobsen is a proponent of emerging and contemplative
books and authors. It’s an important thing to know because
Christian figures are heralding the book, helping it to remain
on the New York Times Best Seller list. Those that understand
this book — its obvious and its not so obvious messages–know
that it’s important to issue a warning. And the fact that
popular Christian authors like Eugene Petersen and Gayle Erwin
(The Jesus Style) endorse the book means that unsuspecting,
well-intentioned Christians will buy the book, and if they
follow the advice at the end of the book, will buy other copies
of the book and give them away to friends.

On Wayne Jacobsen’s website,
LifeStream, he carries a list of books he calls “Favorite
Reading,” which he says have “most shaped” his spiritual
“journey.”1
Of the twenty some books listed, there is a hodge podge of
both contemplative authors and emerging church authors.
These include Brennan Manning, Philip Yancey, Larry Crabb,
Dallas Willard, Mike Yaconelli, Don Miller, Jim Palmer, and
Anne Lamott.

Many of our readers may not be familiar with Jim Palmer and
Anne Lamott. Palmer is the author of Divine Nobodies and is
listed with Petersen and Erwin on The Shack website
as an endorser. Publisher’s Weekly says Palmer is an
“emerging church leader” … that “touched a nerve with
readers who gravitate toward cutting-edge evangelical
writers like Brian McLaren and Donald Miller.”2
On Palmer’s blog, under his links section, he has a link to
contemplative activist

Richard Rohr. Rohr’s spirituality would be in the same
camp as someone like

Matthew Fox (author of The Coming of the Cosmic
Christ) who believes in pantheism and panentheism. Rohr
wrote the foreword to a 2007 book called How Big is Your
God? by Jesuit priest (from India) Paul Coutinho. In
Coutinho’s book, he describes an interspiritual community
where people of all religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and
Christianity) worship the same God. For Wayne Jacobsen to
say that Jim Palmer is one of the authors who “most shaped”
his spiritual “journey” is very telling.

 

Anne Lamott is best known for
her book, Traveling Mercies, and she resonates with
Oprah’s New Age meditation author, Elizabeth Gilbert (Lamott’s
endorsement of the book sits on the back cover of Eat, Pray,
Love.)

 

Jacobsen’s open affinity with
these contemplative and emerging authors may well have
influenced the final draft of The Shack. The book
refers to God as “the ground of all being” that “dwells
in, around, and through all things — ultimately
emerging as the real” (p. 112) — this is the ripe fruit of
contemplative spirituality. One can find this language and
definition of God in the writings of John Shelby Spong and

Marcus Borg, and the concept overflows within the
contemplative/emerging camp. This description of God does
not mean that God upholds everything; it means that God is
the essence of all that exists (in other words, He dwells in
all humans and all creation). New Age sympathizer, Sue Monk
Kidd, would agree with The Shack‘s definition of
God–in her book, First Light, she says God is the
graffiti on the building (p. 98), and so would John of the
Cross who said God is the mountain, forest, rivers, etc.

3

The Shack’s William Young also resonates with Anne
Lamott. In the back of the book in the Acknowledgements,
Young says he is “grateful” for Lamott.

Lighthouse Trails’ concern is that the theology of The
Shack is the Christianity of the future, a Christianity
that has been defined and proclaimed by those such as Brian
McLaren, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and many many writers
who would share these spiritual propensities. For instance,
Nouwen stated that:

Prayer is “soul work” because
our souls are those sacred centers where all is one, … It
is in the heart of God that we can come to the full
realization of the unity of all that is. (Bread for
the Journey, Jan. 16 and Nov. 16 readings)

This is just another way of
saying what Young says in The Shack that God is “the
ground of all being” that “dwells in, around, and through
all things.”

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Other critiques on the Shack:

The Shack and Its New Age Leaven – God IN Everything? by
Warren Smith

The Shack: Father-goddess Rising by John Lanagan

The twisted “truths” of The Shack & A Course in Miracles
by Berit Kjos

The Shack: Imagination, Image, and Idolatry by Larry
DeBruyn

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Other reports from
www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com:

The New Age
Comes to the Girl Scouts of the USA

The Oneness Blessing – Pathway to Global Awakening

Brian McLaren Tour
Starts Soon |

Ken Blanchard Joins “The Secret” Team

Rick Warren
Teams Up with New Age Proponent Leonard Sweet

Al Gore and Tony
Campolo Address Baptist Organizations

Emergent Manifesto |

Deceptive
Roots of the Emerging Church

The
Re-Think Conference |
Deceptive
Roots of the Emerging Church

They Like Jesus,
But Not the Church |
Erwin
McManus

The Secret: A New
Era for Humankind

Yoga, Mysticism & Moody Bible Institute