The Shack

As I read The Shack, I had to keep reminding myself that this is an allegory. Some readers are put off by the way God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are represented.  God is personified as a “large, African-American Woman” by the name of Papa, the Holy Spirit is personified as a “small Asian Woman” by the name of Sarayu, and Jesus is a homely ‘Middle Eastern man”.  But if the reader can get beyond that, the book addresses such questions as:

If God is Love then why did he create hell?

If God loves us then why is there so much suffering in the world?

Why does He allow deranged people to kidnap abuse and murder innocent children?

What is the Trinity?

So even though you may have your own answers to these and other questions, this book may give you a new refreshing slant, as it did for me.

Each chapter is prefaced with some very fine quotes like:

 “God is a verb” – Buckminster Fuller

“An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of his children.

He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part,

but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if

there were no others.”

-      A. W. Tozer.

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully

as when they do it from religious conviction”

-      Blaise Pascal

“Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God.”

-      G. K. Chesterton

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of

Truth and Knowledge

is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods”

-      Albert Einstein

“Sadness is a wall between two gardens”

-      Kahlil Gibran

“The soul is healed by being with children”

-      Fyodor Dostoyevsky