The Boy that You Loved is the Man that You Fear

Currently reading: The Shack by William Paul Young on page 148

If you’ve read this book and it was a piece of literature that affirmed your faith or brought you to God… Just stop reading now.

I understand and like the idea of the uplifting books. I like the idea of the faith based books. But, I don’t understand when these types of books start to contradict the basic beliefs of the writings which the religion is based on.

In The Shack there are a lot of claims made from God as a character in the novel. The problem is many of the statements made by God seem to fly in the face of the Old Testament actions of God. Now, if this book was meant as fiction and was not to be marketed towards believers, that is fine, but this just like other Christian arts was meant as a sort of testament of the author’s faith.

The problem I am having is that God states that all people are God’s children and she loves them all the same. That she could not punish one unjustly just as a father cannot unjustly punish the children he loves. My mind immediately goes to some Old Testament happenings. What about the many wars where God orders the Jews to annihilate other groups of people? When he tells them to kill all the men, women, and children of a village? What about when God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah after Abraham explains to God they can’t all be guilty? What about the mass killing of all people during the great flood?

The book does go over the whole sins of the father stuff, but even that is convoluted in the way it is stated. It doesn’t explain he can’t punish people for their father’s or son’s sins, it instead asks if a father’s sin which causes a son’s sin should be punished along with the son’s sin. Which to me is confusing the whole subject.

I'm not saying anything negative about the Bible. That is not my purpose. (Hell, I wrote a book about the Bible... It's down there on the Buy button at the bottom of the page.) I think it is just commonly misunderstood or at least seems to be contradictory to a lot of this book.

I think the book has a good message, but it just doesn’t line up well with the messages of the Bible.