![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The book is useful in that Young makes a number of assertions and arguments that serious Christians should consider. In so doing, however, he creates false antitheses between faith and life, belief and practice, doctrine or religiosity and the experience of God, all of which in his view are mutually exclusive. Young means to dismantle preconceived notions about God and all religious conditioning (93, 119, 179, 205). However, there is another task threaded throughout the book. His aim in the story is to offer an approachable God of relationality and love through whom his protagonist can make sense of tragedies, failures, and disappointments. The shack is William Paul Young's metaphor for the heart housed by hurts, lies, and secrets. Over the course of one weekend in this supernatural company, Mack comes to terms with what he believes about who God is and how God regards him. Upon arrival, Mack encounters three people in the Oregon wilderness, each presented by the narrator as a member of the Trinity: God is a beaming African-American woman named Papa Jesus, a handyman in jeans with Middle Eastern features and the Holy Spirit, an Asian woman named Sarayu who is an imperceptible presence at best. In the telling, Mack receives a mysterious note one winter afternoon, four years into his "Great Sadness," inviting him to the shack where his youngest daughter, Missy, was murdered after her disappearance from a family camping trip. Man meets God in this fictional story of the middle-aged Mack. ![]()
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