A friend of mine who teaches at a Catholic high school told me that all of the teachers of his school were instructed to read the novel “The Shack,” the huge Christian publishing phenomenon. It has become a controversial book in some quarters, but nonetheless has managed to be number one on the New York Times Bestseller list for 33 weeks in the paperback trade fiction category. Here Fr. Barron gives his take on the wildly successful novel.
July 31, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Good summation and review. I have no desire to read it, but this gave me some idea of what it is about since I imagine the book will come up as a subject.
July 31, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Did he say, "trust in God even if we can't see what God is doing" ? It is like God had something to do with evil. We know that while God knows all the evil that is to happen, God has nothing to do with it.
July 31, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Of course, he left out the fact that the writing and plot are DREADFUL.
Other good explanations of the Trinity: Theology for Beginners (by Sheed) and Three to Get Married (Sheen)
July 31, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Yeah… Protestants can have their watermelons. I'll eat meat and potatoes.
August 1, 2009 at 12:48 am
It is a popular book, but I felt that it diminished God.
August 1, 2009 at 1:43 am
Funny how, as Fr. Barron says, that there is a Lutheran mindset in the story. My friend's Lutheran (LCMS) pastor declared the book heretical, and instructed his congreagation to avoid it.
August 1, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I read a Fundamentalist Christian Theologian's review and I think they nailed it on the head. This book is full of heresy plain and simple.
August 1, 2009 at 7:48 pm
The book is heretical- even by protestant standards- I read some reviews- including protestant ones on it- it introduces multiple heresies- a must avoid work!
August 3, 2009 at 2:29 am
Wow… I read it because I had a woman during a Project Rachel bible study mention it when we were discussing forgiveness. And the best line to come out of the book (that hit all of us that struggle with forgiving others) is the line from God about "get your hand off their throat long enough for me to work on them." Meaning that we're to stop choking the hell out of the ones that did us wrong so God can work on that person.
Otherwise, I took it at face value, it's religious fiction and I knew that going into it. I don't fill my bookshelves with stuff like this but a book that I know has helped people through their own personal suffering, I won't condemn. All the people I know that read this book happen to be Catholic and they have all grown because of it. (One even joined the Catholic Church because she was able to see the forgiveness side in this book and found that feeling of how to forgive in our Sacrament of Reconciliation.)
August 3, 2009 at 5:37 pm
"My friend's Lutheran (LCMS) pastor declared the book heretical, and instructed his congreagation to avoid it."
To the extent that it depicts God as "mother" through use of feminine imagery, it could be considered problematic, even heretical, by Catholic standards. As to its enabling conversions, one cannot comment on individual cases, but the parable of the seed includes those which fall on bad soil, and amidst thorns.
August 3, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I noted the active status of the dead in the book (Missy and the other faithful departed playing a role in the lives of loved ones left behind), their prayers for us, and the presence of a form of purgation in the after-life (Mack's father finds reconciliation with his son).
The book is certainly not Protestant in the classical sense; it presents a synthesis Christianity that draws a little from here and a little from there. I would classify it under the same category as C.S. Lewis' beliefs. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a suitable name for that category.
August 5, 2009 at 3:28 am
“The Shack”professes false Christian doctrines and a New Age philosophy. Worse yet, although the book is listed as fiction, the author tries to raise this book to the level of Gospel several times in the Forward and After Words by claiming this story may be based on a real encounter with God!
Some of the outrageous assertions in this book include:
1. the Holy Spirit proclaims there is no longer a need for the Ten Commandments (pages 202-203 of the paperback version),
2. Jesus could not perform miracles (page 100)
3. God doesn’t need to punish sin as sin is its own punishment (page 120)
4. religion, politics and economics constitute the “man-made trinity of terrors” (page 179)
5. God is man’s servant (page 236)
This book is a New York Times best seller. The backers of this book have created “The Missy Project”; this group believes the book should be read across our culture to help them see God in their lives. The Missy Project requests compelled readers to advertise this book by doing a book review in a local paper, blog, or radio show. The backers are encouraged that “after a sufficient number of these books are in circulation” the book will be made into a movie.
By distorting 2000-year-old Christian teachings, this book is just as dangerous as the “Da Vinci Code”. For true edification a Catholic would better spend his time reading “The Imitation of Christ”