William P. Young’s The Shack was destined to be an evangelical best seller. Eugene Peterson’s endorsement on the cover asserts, “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!”
An interesting evangelical trait is to brand books that convey concepts already embraced by the popular evangelical culture as bold and prophetic and groundbreaking. That’s what Peterson does here. I must admit that I am not a sufficiently adequate historian to know what Pilgrim’s Progress did for that generation, and I wonder what Peterson thinks The Shack will do for ours.
It has sold so well because it expresses in fiction form the contemporary evangelical mindset. Its popularity rests not in its presentation of some theological truth that we need to embrace but in conveying so graphically what we already believe.
We find God reduced to a jiving black woman. How more politically correct could he make God out to be? I am not suggesting that God is white. However, neither do I find Scripture characterizing God as being hip and cool.
And no doubt Young wants us to get in touch with God’s feminine side, even though Scripture portrays Him as a male. Yes, He can relate to us as a nursing mother at times, but if this inclination represented the essence of who He is, the Bible would have presented Him as a woman.
I had a professor at NYU that observed that, “God created man in His own image, and man has been returning the favor ever since.” Though this view of God does not reflect the one given in Scripture, it does match the God of today’s evangelical community.
This portrayal of God constitutes just one aspect of The Shack that corresponds to contemporary Christian culture. The whole book might be considered a commentary on the current evangelical mindset. Note, for example, the distain for the church. Even the format, the narrative, reflects the contemporary culture.
Therefore, what the book serves to do for us is further petrify us in our unbiblical view of God and life. The book is not ground-breaking but ground-hardening.
This acceptance of The Shack despite its unbiblical orientation reveals another facet of the evangelical approach to life. Of course, as with the secular world, the hallmark of contemporary evangelical thinking is acceptance. God accepts unconditionally, and so should we. Therefore, even though some aspects of the book might miss the scriptural mark, we are not of the narrow-minded, Pharisaical orientation that makes an issue of such minutia.
Rather, the wizened response of the thoughtful evangelical reader looks past those theological misrepresentations and reflects, “I believe I understand what he is trying to say.” In other words, if his intentions are good, we can overlook some heresy for the sake of making the point.
This approach to sanctioning fiction or nonfiction literature makes for a toxic theological climate. In our commitment not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we have left the baby to wallow in some very polluted water.
But the worst issue resides in our failure to apply this spirit of understanding and acceptance and tolerance evenly. While we have all he toleration in the world for someone advocating heresies compatible with our culture, secular and evangelical, we extend no such latitude to those who are out of step with the culture.
When is the last time you heard someone say, “I don’t agree with some of the positions they take at Bob Jones University, but I think I know where they are coming from”? Contemporary evangelicals possess the capacity to swallow the heretical camel to their left, but strain at the gnat to the right.
This bias in toleration toward the left relentlessly shifts our thinking in that direction. Just as the frog in the kettle, the baby is not aware of how toxic the bathwater has gotten even though it has inflicted on him a life-threatening disease.