"The Shack" Review!!

Heartwarming, controversial, as well as accompanied by “The Great Sadness”.

Beginning this winter term I was required to choose a book in which I could read while following up on the reading with an extraordinary book report. So I began my search to find an utmost astonishing book. The process began by looking on the hazardous school computers just until I realized something very amusing through the whole process. I work at a Christian Bookstore called “Christian Supply”. I get an employee discount there and it would be an advent place to start looking for this compact pieces of paper with words I’d be reading for the next couple weeks anyway. So after coming to work that day, searching long and hard through what few yet impressively stocked shelves we had there at my work, I finally found the book of a lifetime, which would end up not only being a good book for the project, but would change my life from the inside out.

I think you should know, I read books quite slow. Though not because I’m a slow reader, instead because I like to learn from them as much as possible and be able to pass on the story to someone while remembering a majority of the book. On top of my slow reading though, this book was a very indulging depressing book, that is up to the first 85 pages or so, then it gets quite fun from there on. So in order to keep going through the sad parts I would read sets at a time till I could get to a steady joyful part of the book and read continuously non stop. I was none the less indulged into this book for all the right reasons too. Though from the un-expected, quite non-original title, “The Shack,” it was quite frank to me this book wasn’t going to be as great as it spoke of on the front cover. Yet due to the lessons in which my old foster parents taught me, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, definitely came into play during such an exquisite novel as this one. Not to mention all of my work’s fellow regular shoppers kept mentioning to me how good a book it was throughout my job, and to be honest, now that they know I’ve finished it they’re bombarding me with my thoughts and opinions on the novel itself. I’d have to say, if I’d have to be a novel for life, I’d choose being, “The Shack”, any day out of the week.

The screaming Dramatic Situation from this book is this: Great story teller dad Mackenzie Allen Phillips has his littlest daughter Missy taken from him by “The Lady Killer” the kidnappers MO (59), and is then accompanied by “The Great Sadness” due to it all (25), which was only overcome by major events through which God Himself in the views of the Trinity make themselves present to him though not through a un-original dream-sense but an adventurous amount of deep breathtaking conversations and experiences in a heaven like world still reflecting his own at his long awaiting homeland. Having his youngest daughter Missy Allen Phillips take from him leads to the undoing of his utmost and from then on growing hate towards the one we all think and remember as the “Loving God or father to all” (94).

The theme justly given throughout this book has a lot to do with all that comes after the first 85 pages yet in time reflects on the tragedies amongst them in an enlightened depth. Seeing the whole picture is key here in this book, though on the other hand, it isn’t the theme of the book exactly. Despite what many others may often believe, the theme of the book goes much deeper into what we can comprehend. It’s more throughout the purpose of coming back to God not only in the midst of our, as I mention it again, “Great Sadness”, but also in our joyful times as well. We need both in order to have Him all the time in our lives. So all in all it’s that when you are going through something joyous or depressing of nature, you must let God in as shown here:

“Is there anyway out of this?”

It is so simple, but never easy for you. By re-turning. By turning back to me. By giving up your ways of power and manipulation and just come back to me.” Jesus sounded like he was pleading. “Men, in general, find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and return to me.” (147)

There are many conflicts in this book of a beginning love and hate relationship with the Father God Almighty. They arise due to his anger towards God for allowing his beautiful Missy to be grasped by the murderous arms of a Lady Bug Killer, and then dragged away to an abandoned shack in the middle of the forest as shown here:

A member of the forensic team opened the door of the shack to let them in. Generator-powered lighting illuminated every part of the main room. Shelving lined the walls, an old table, a few chairs, and an old sofa that someone had hauled in with no little effort. Mack immediately saw what he had come to identify and, turning, crumbled into the arms of his two friends and began to weep uncontrollably. On the floor by the fireplace lay Missy’s torn and blood-soaked red dress.

This was the scene in which Mackenzie Allen Phillips began to utterly detest his wife’s pet name for a now seemingly utmost un-caring, un-righteous, un-deserving god, “Papa” (38) From on past the first 85 pages, Mack began his Journey into the figuring out, of why this had to happen, or bitterly known, why did it happen. Throughout the book Mackenzie Allen Phillips continuously questions the three women appearing as the Trinity to as why they allowed this tragic moment in time to happen in and amongst they’re knowing of it. At times Mack would begin to feel at ease again from time to time, yet not ever fully until he see’s his daughter one last time through a waterfall in a cave with “Da Judge” or otherwise known as Sophia (171). Jesus talks about why the judge’s name is Sophia, as he walks with Mack into his next heart throbbing environment. She is shown through proverbs as “a women calling out in the streets, trying to find someone who will listen to her?” (171). She ends up being the one to change Mack’s thinking through what we later find out was God’s idea, “The Waterfall Scene With Missy”. Although Sophia wasn’t part of the “Trinity” she was the one I believe changed Mack the most when it came to his conflicts with God and the rest of the Trinity. Only by allowing him to try and judge God himself, which as shown in the pages of this book, isn’t as one might expect. Conflicts arise, and are fixed through countless efforts of pain and suffering due to the constant reminders of what has happened rather then what is happening now.

I’ve saved the best of this book report for last. The Dialogue of this book has intrigued me beyond reasoning. It’s shown me in a personal sense how I can refer to God and Jesus, as well as the Holy Spirit as one being in three parts coinciding with one another equally and is the same experience through relationship in which God wants us to experience with Him. God created man and pulled women out of man to have a trinity relationship with him all along. We were however, enticed by the Serpent’s deceitfulness by taking of the fruit in which God himself commanded us not to eat from. Knowingly, we chose to eat from it anyway, separating us from the once pure and divine trinity in which God had made us for. I have now begun to call God in my own personal sense “Jerry” as if he were my father. Just like Nan, Mack’s wife calls God Papa, I now call God Jerry because I have a dad in this world who abandoned me named Jerry. So from this I hope to learn to love God as I would love Jerry if he ever came back into my life. God can now begin to fill that void in my life of not having an earthly father. Even then, I still believe He will bring Jerry in the human form, back to me and in my life. The Dialogue in this book is amazing. I love how the author brings the Trinity into an un-societal version of three odd women, all representing God in one. They often speak in unison when referred to as “Which one of you is God?” “I am,” said all three in unison.” (87) This book has amazed me in so many ways. The dialogue has intertwined itself with the description of the book itself and has never held back when bringing light into Mack’s life as well as my own.

Works Cited Page:

All data was found from the book, “The Shack”, written by William Paul Young.