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Showing reviews 1-5 of 4377
 Why People Are Shacking Up with the Shack September 5, 2010
David Ord (Pearl River, LA United States)
The story paints God in a much more human way than we've generally understood God from so many of the churches. In this sense it's certainly a tremendous advance on the harshly judgmental figure "up there somewhere" of popular culture.
It's not heresy to fictionalize God with human traits as some "believers" are saying about this book. On the contrary, if humans are made in the image and likeness of God, then clearly we share God's basic nature.
We are God's spitting image, says Scripture. It even calls us "God's offspring," describing us as God's children.
I don't know about you, but I'm basically like my mom and dad, and my son is basically like me. That's what the term "offspring" points to--the fact that we bear each other's likeness, having come from each other. Hence God can be understood by understanding the essence of humanity.
Look at our essential humanity--not its distortions, which we call "sin" (missing the mark, like an arrow missing its target, by not being true to ourselves)--and you see the divine.
In fact, Saint Paul actually said this in his letter to the people in Rome. The invisible nature of God can be understood by looking at the creation God made, he declares, and this includes even God's "eternal power and Godhead."
So when we look at the creation--especially humans, in the image of God--we can know what God is like.
Having said this, The Shack completely misses it when it comes to projecting three personalities onto God.
God doesn't have a personality.
And yet, God is ultimately personal--the most personal reality there is, in fact.
If God is the source of all, then God is revealed in all, which is of course what Scripture shows in both the West and the East.
The Eastern scholar Dr Radhakrishnan comments: "There is a fundamental reality without which things would not be what they are." It's this basic reality that I have in mind when I use the word God. It's this that both Jesus and Paul had in mind when they spoke of God.
While The Shack is a positive step in understanding for many, we need to go further.
God isn't "a being" like you and me, or God would be finite. And yet, paradoxically, as the essence of all beings, God is ultimate Being. God is the heart and core of each of us, manifest in each of us, and manifest in the entire creation. This is why Jesus referred to God as "the Father within."
Although The Shack uses metaphor, it nevertheless implies we will ultimately meet a being who is God, along with two other personalities--the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
Not true.
We will never meet God as a person, which would make God finite. We will never look at, shake hands with, or hug a being called God. God isn't like that at all, having no finite form like we do.
And yet God is known to us in the most intimate of all ways as the heart of our own personhood.
Western thinking has often fallen into the heresy of imagining God as three personalities, but this entirely violates the understanding of God correctly encapsulated in the doctrine of the Trinity. I would venture to say most Christians hold the idea that God is three personalities--a heresy that completely violates the oneness of the divinity.
The triune God isn't three personalities, or even one personality. However, this single reality--this ultimately oneness--is manifest in billions upon billions of personalities. That is, God is made known in you and me; and, in less evolved form, in all living creatures and indeed the whole creation.
God is pure consciousness, which is the source of all conscious personalities. Yet God is not a personality.
But doesn't the Trinity teach that God is "three persons in one?" Yes. But that doesn't at all mean personalities, for the word "person" has changed meaning entirely in the more than 1,600 years since Saint Augustine first used it to describe God in the fourth century.
We can know the essence of God--in ourselves. We are God incarnate, as Jesus of Nazareth clearly shows us. He is simply the fully developed mirror of who we are, as I explain in the Namaste book Your Forgotten Self Mirrored in Jesus the Christ.
There is much more and we'll continue tomorrow. But banish the idea we are ever going to meet a personality called God. We are already meeting God--in each other's personalities, as Jesus made abundantly plain.
The Shack is a step in the right direction. It just needs taking a whole other step further.
To read more in this series about a deeper understanding than The Shack offers, go here: [...]
 The Shack September 5, 2010
Titania
A wonderfully captivating book that takes the reader on an imaginative journey from horror to peace and forgiveness. I could read this book again and again.
 Amazing and enthralling September 5, 2010
Joan H. Murdock (Las Vegas, NV)
I was unsure when I started if I would like this book.
The further into it I got the more I could not lay it down. It surprised me with the ending. I would read it again, and I have sent it to others.
The Shack September 5, 2010
Cheryl L. Patti (St Pete Beach, FL, US)
This book came in a timely manner and was in great shape, very satisfied with this seller
 Embarrassing for Christians... September 3, 2010
Mike
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As an atheist/agnostic type, I read this book at the insistence of a Christian friend in turn for her reading an atheist book of my choosing.
It is absurd how many people think this book might actually report a true story, including my Christian friend. The story is all fiction, admitted by the author, even the main character of Mack was made up. I don't understand how individuals can ever believe a epic dream where the person flies, swirls in color and is serenaded by forest animals. Furthermore, after being emotionally distraught over his loss and experiencing massive head trauma, he supposedly remembers intricate details of his encounter with God totaling 150 pages and containing numerous long theological discussions.
There are plenty of flaws in the books presentation and content, but one stands out as most humorous. God appears to Mack as a big black woman in order to not reinforce a stereotype of God as a bearded middle aged white man. From a visual perspective this explanation make sense. However, when majority of the shack encounter involves this big black woman doing and saying the most stereotypically black things, this character choice becomes terribly ironic.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 4377
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