The Shack - Critical Review by Pastor Jim Osman

I'm Jim Osman, reporting for WVW News on The Shack.

The movie.

This last week I had a chance to go watch The Shack in theaters, and it is obviously something of a Christian phenom. Its penetration into the Christian subculture in terms of its message and theology I don't think can be overstated.

The book has sold over 20 million copies, and so it comes as no surprise that they would want to make a movie out of the book. And the message of the book and the movie, they are the same. But what are the problems with The Shack?

Well, I think that though this is not a comprehensive list of problems with The Shack, I do believe that most of them can be summed up under five different categories. Number one, this view of the Trinity or the Godhead.

Number two, Christology. Number three, the Atonement. Number four, its view of sin. And number five, its universalism. So let's take each one of those five. And this will kind of give you a sort of a five-point outline to share with your friends and when you try to explain to them what the problems are with the movie The Shack.

First of all, The Shack's view of the Trinity. The Shack's view of the Trinity is not strictly Trinitarian, as Christians should want to see God's nature affirmed. Neither is it modalistic or even anti-Trinitarian.

It's almost as if the author tries to portray a version of the Trinity by affirming that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the I Am. And yet there are sort of hints or allusions to sort of a modalistic view of the Trinity in terms of the persons and how they suffer, which I'll talk about here in just a moment.

In the movie, the Father is portrayed as a black woman. The Holy Spirit is portrayed as an Asian woman. And Jesus is portrayed as a Middle Eastern, Arabic-looking young man. And that is how each of the persons are portrayed.

And this, of course, is not a strictly Trinitarian view of the Godhead, though each person affirms that they are the I Am, and they are three separate and distinct persons. They do not share in one essence or one nature the being of God, which would be Trinitarian theology.

And so there is a problem, at least we should have a problem, with our God being portrayed as a black woman, since God identifies himself in the male gender always. And so, of course, to Jesus, when the second person of the Holy Trinity appeared in human form, he didn't appear as a Jewish woman or an Asian woman or any other kind of woman.

He appeared as a Jewish man. He came in the body of a Jewish man and took upon himself human flesh as a Jewish man. And the Holy Spirit is always referred to as a He in the masculine gender as well. And so it should be disconcerting to Christians to see God referred to and portrayed as a.

Woman.

And this woman in the Father, in the Father in the film, is referred to as Papa. So that's one of the first problems, is the non-Trinitarian, quasi-Trinitarian, deluded-type Trinitarian view of God.

The second problem is the Christology. In The View, at one point, the main character, Mac, asks the Jesus figure if he is fully.

God.

And, of course, Jesus, the Jesus figure, affirms that he is. But then he asks him, and you're fully man too, right? And it's almost for a moment as if the Jesus character thinks about it and hesitates.

And then he says to him, I am the best way that a human can relate to Papa. So it's not as if he affirms the humanity of Jesus or denies the humanity of Jesus. It kind of leaves it up to question and just says, quote, I'm the best way a human can relate to Papa, close quote.

So that is a problem with the Christology of the shack, is that the humanity of Jesus seems to be minimized, if not implicitly kind of denied or at least backed away from. The third problem is the atonement and the shack's view of the atonement.

There's an ancient Christian heresy known as patripassionism, which was the idea that the father suffered on the cross with Jesus or that it was the father who suffered on the cross and not the son, the second person, the divine second person of the Trinity.

At three different points in the movie, the different characters of the Trinity are seen to, or the different characters that played this Godhead, are seen to have suffered. At one point, Mac is accusing the father of abandoning the son or Papa, the woman, it's hard to even talk about this, accusing the woman of abandoning her, his, its son on the cross.

And she says to him, no, I didn't abandon him. I was there suffering with him the whole time. And she points to the scars on her wrist, indicating that the father figure in the shack suffered on the cross.

At another occasion, we see the Holy Spirit also have those same scars on her wrist in the movie. And of course, that is almost like a theopassionism, the idea that all three members of the Trinity died on the cross or suffered on the cross.

And that is a heresy, the divine son, the second person suffered on the cross, not the father or the Holy Spirit, just the divine son. And so that patrapassionism and theopassionism is something that is wrongly portrayed in the movie and ought to be of concern to Christians.

And that's where the modalistic view of the Trinity kind of comes into, kind of comes into the film. The idea that all three persons were there suffering on the cross when the son was there suffering on the cross or that God in his being suffered on the cross.

And so that is manifested or in three different modes, father, son and Holy Spirit. The fourth problem with the film is the way that they treat sin. At one point, Mac asks the father, so what about your wrath?

And the father, Papa, the female woman in the movie, says, wrath, you lost me there, she says. And another point, I don't need to judge sin because sin is its own punishment or I don't need to punish sin.

She affirms over and over in the movie that there is no judgment, there is no punishment for sin. Sin is minimized, sin is seen as something we do because we are influenced negatively by our surroundings or our upbringing or the circumstances in which we are born.

So the idea of personal responsibility for sin is minimized in the movie. And the fifth problem with it is William P. Young's blatant universalism throughout the entire movie. There is the denial that anybody is punished for their sin, that anybody goes to hell, that there is anything, anything by the nature of an eternal punishment for sin in the afterlife.

According to the movie and according to what's said in the movie, all are atoned for, all are reconciled to God and all go to heaven. And there's never any suggestion that there is an eternal punishment for sin.

So those are the five problems with The Shack, its view of God, its view of the person and the nature of both the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ, its view of the atonement, its treatment of sin and its view of universalism.

Those five things together mean that what The Shack presents is a different God, a different Christ, a different atonement, a different view of sin in the fall and a different view of redemption and eternal life and what is required to gain eternal life.

The Shack tries to deal with a very real human issue, the reality of suffering, the reality of sin in our world. And why is it that these horrible things happen to us? And the reality of human tragedy.

But The Shack fails in offering to us a solution for these very real issues. The solution to these issues is the realization that sin exists because we, God's creation, have brought sin into this world.

We have ruined this creation by our rebellion and we are guilty of sin. We are dead in our trespasses and sins and we need a redeemer. We are personally responsible for our sin and we deserve an eternal hell.

That is the message that The Shack should have communicated. And not only that, but that God the Son stepped into human history and lived a perfect life and he died a perfect death in order to redeem from sin and from eternal wrath all those who will place their faith in him.

The answer to the problem of human suffering and to sin is not a denial of the justice of God and not a denial of eternal punishment, but the realization that God has and is dealing with the sin issue in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that eternal life can be gained by repentance and faith in him.

That's the message to those who suffer and that is the hope that we have of eternal life in Jesus Christ. That is the very solution that The Shack missed. I'm Jim Osman reporting for WVW News. Back to you, Brandon.