The Shack: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

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This book is a story of God sharing his heart with a broken man. The first section of the book will hit you in the chest, as it describes what the author calls "The Great Sadness" of the novels protagonist. This is a hard book to review because you pretty much have to separate it into two parts. The novel, and the theological. And so I end this review with a challenge. If you really want to be spiritually transformed, don’t spend your money buying this book. Instead, go out and help someone in need or donate to a worthy cause.

These were some of the interesting parts of the book that helped me personally. There were other parts that I thought were very dubious theologically. I thought there was so much real good valuable stuff that these departures could be overlooked, but this is not a theologically sound book and I can't caution that enough. It has some profound nuggets mixed in, however. Actually, we wanted you to give up trying to be righteous on your own. It was a mirror to reveal just how filthy your face gets when you live independently." Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." (Luke 24:45-48)There is a tremendous amount of the author’s philosophy delivered in this book that I will react to through the remainder of this review. Buy a set of books as gifts to battered women’s shelters, prisons, rehabilitation homes and the like where people might be really encouraged by the story and its message.

On the one hand, I can see that the author attempted to bridge the gap and present a book that might cross religions. However, since the book was so heavily based on Christian principles and beliefs, this attempt fell flat. It was clear that the god presented was based on Christian teachings.Yet, even amongst Christians there are many differences in theology. This author focused largely upon one of those areas where different denominations have varying beliefs -- free will vs. predestined fate. The author was clearly in the "free will" camp. Not surprisingly, readers who fall in the "predestined fate" camp will take issue with one of the major premises of the story.