In the following review, Br. Michael O'Connor, O.P., responds to various religious questions raised by last summer's blockbuster novel, The Shack.  Br. Michael writes from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.

 

GOD IS WITH US:
A Catholic Response to The Shack
by Br. Michael Dominic O'Connor, O.P.

There is no greater religious problem than the problem of evil. Men and women of every generation have wrestled with the question of how it is possible that a good and loving God can permit evil and suffering to plague all that He has created. No simple answer can adequately respond to the mystery contained herein. There is however one thing we can be certain of: God is not indifferent to human suffering. While He may allow evil things to happen, God assures us that we are not alone in our suffering. He is with us.

The Problem of Evil

William Paul Young takes up the age-old problem of evil in his popular book, The Shack. The protagonist of his story, Mackenzie Phillips, is changed forever by an unspeakable tragedy: his youngest daughter is kidnapped and brutally murdered by a serial killer. After months of abysmal suffering, Mackenzie receives a cryptic note summoning him to the shack where his daughter was murdered. Believing that the note may have been sent by God, he returns to this place of horror and there encounters the Triune God: God the Father as a big black woman with a questionable sense of humor (1), Jesus as a Middle Eastern man wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and the Holy Spirit as a small Asian woman, named Sarayu (2). After three days of discussing the wounds of Mack's life and the mysteries of love, freedom, providence and sin, Mack emerges from this supernatural encounter as a new man: able to forgive the many people he had long needed to forgive.

The fundamental purpose of Young's book is to assuage the problem of evil with the consoling truth that God is with us in the midst of our suffering and with Him we will be able to bear every burden. He succeeds in expressing in a fresh and compelling manner some perennial truths that are often forgotten or easily dismissed in our day and age, such as the truth of God's complete goodness and infinite love. However, the Christian truths that are presented in The Shack can also serve to deflect from the very serious untruths with which they are intermingled. The fundamental problem of Young's book is that he presents God in a manner which contradicts the way in which God has revealed Himself to man. In his effort to portray God as close to man and profoundly capable of empathizing with suffering humanity, the author renounces traditional Christian beliefs about God, judging them to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

The "Problem" of Religion

The central error of The Shack is the proposal that a real and meaningful relationship with God can only be found and developed apart from ‘religion.' The author constructs a very sharp dichotomy between God and religion and portrays the Church as the greatest hindrance to encountering God. Sarayu says to Mack: "Religion must use law to empower itself and control the people needed in order to survive" (3). The character of Jesus states: "Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. You rarely see or experience relationship apart from power. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended you for" (4) In another place Jesus explains to Mack that the institutional Church is a man-made system (5). He declares: "I don't create institutions - never have, never will....that's an occupation for those who want to play God" (6). The author even goes so far as to put these offensive words into the mouth of Jesus: "Religion [is one of the] man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about" (7).

Young's book addresses a very real problem - the problem of how evil and human suffering can co-exist with a good and loving God - and he responds to this problem with a profound truth: God is with us, especially in the midst of our suffering. Unfortunately, he fundamentally misunderstands this truth. God is with us, but not in a merely individualistic way.

God is With His People

From the beginning of salvation history, God saw fit to establish a people as his own: a community that was given laws and leaders, that guarded Divine Revelation and developed authentic tradition, and that would eventually become the Church, united to Christ as His Body. As the Catechism teaches, "God has willed to make all men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness" (8). It is precisely through the Church that we are meant to enter ever more deeply into relationship with God. The Church is not an impediment to the ‘wonder of relationship that God has intended us for,' but rather the doorway to it. "God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the ‘convocation' of men in Christ, and this ‘convocation' is the Church" (9).

The contemporary mentality which sees the Church as simply irrelevant, antiquated, out-of-touch, authoritarian, misogynistic, all rules and obligations, and nothing but an unnecessary man-made institution is a terrible misunderstanding of a tremendous reality. The Church exists in order to communicate the very life of God to His people, and it does this pre-eminently through the sacraments which Christ Himself established. Above all, it is in the Eucharist, "the source and summit of the Christian life" (10), that man is given the opportunity to be most profoundly and intimately drawn into an encounter with the Living God. What William Young can only propose in an abstract, intangible and ultimately mistaken way, the Catholic Church offers to God's people in a real, concrete and eminently human way, namely: the real presence of God among us and the opportunity to enter into an authentic relationship with Him.

The Shack challenges us to reflect upon the relationship which God has established with His people as revealed throughout all of salvation history and to see in this relationship the plan and pattern for our own relationship with Him: a relationship which must be grounded in the truth of Divine Revelation, built up by authentic Christian Tradition, and brought to fruition in the Body of Christ, which is the Church. God is indeed with us - not in a ‘shack' of individualistic experience - but in a Church which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

 

(1) William Paul Young, The Shack (Newburg Park: Windblown Media, 2007), 91.
(2) Ibid., 86.
(3) Ibid., 207.
(4) Ibid., 124.
(5) Ibid., 180.
(6) Ibid., 181.
(7) Ibid.
(8) The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 781.
(9) Ibid., 760.
(10) Ibid., 1324.