Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

Rating : - Hand-Slap Reviews
I have read reviews of The Shack that really lambasted the theology contained therein.

Those reviews frustrate me. They are hand-slaps saying, "No, no! Stay away from any theology but the Bible! Bad Christian!"

They ignore, across the board, the real issue. The real issue is the reason that this book is so wildly popular. People who love God and want to serve Him with their entire lives... people who read the Bible... people who pray... people who go to church... people who try to do good in their lives and BE good... these people are struggling.

They find themselves striving to please a God they only half know. They desperately want to know Him more intimately but are stuck behind a religious and cultural barrier. Reading the bible offers what seems to be a two-dimensional view at times.

This book helps people broaden their perspective and get in touch with how God feels about them, the humanity of Christ, the approachability of our saviour.

The negative reviews citing all the bad theology are interesting but offer NO REAL HOPE to the Christians struggling with very real issues.

The Bible says, "Test all things. Hold fast that which is good." I found A LOT of good in this book. I did find some things that bothered me theologically. But the great thing about the book is that I now feel I have a firmer grasp on who God is, who I am, and what it means to come "boldly before the throne of Grace." So guess what? I can take those issues to my Lord and ask HIM about them. I can decide that this author was right-on in many points but a bit off in others.

You might say, "Well, if you REALLY read the Bible, you should already know all of this about God. You should know how much He loves you, how you can approach him, etc. You shouldn't need any external literature to help you understand."

Unfortunately, this is just not true. Our view of faith and theology is most often shaped by cultural/church/societal/family influences and then we later try to apply the scriptures in a manner to fit what we have already learned and absorbed. For those of us who have been in church since our youth, our ideas of who God is was established long before we began to peruse scripture.

Similarly, one could make the argument that ANYTHING outside the Bible is unneeded. One could just as easily say that the office of "teacher" is unnecessary because we have the Bible and the Holy Spirit will teach and remind you of "all things." That is, of course, ridiculous. We are human beings and never were meant to interact with God through one means of communication alone.

This book is serving in an office of "teacher" to many people. It is not meant to replace scripture or discernment at all but is a TOOL for opening up ideas about God that have long ago been locked away.

Please don't throw out the baby with the bath water. This is a great book. Read it. DISCUSS it (if you're a young Christian, discuss it with an older Christian you trust). Toss the ideas around. Compare them to scripture. Talk about what bothers you and what you loved. Talk about how you've been thinking about God and how that has changed.

As Christians, we don't have to be afraid of the "different." We are to be wise but never fearful. I'm pretty sure God can handle any questions this book raises.