The Shack: A Lutheran Review

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The Shack The Shack by William P. Young


My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
It is frankly unusual for me to like a bestseller that is a religious book. Most of the religious books out there are hype and non-sense, and are quite anti-Christian.

I haven’t decided about this one yet.

My initial read was that I liked it in some respects, but that there were elements that left me uncomfortable. The book (which has been reviewed a bazillion times elsewhere) is the story of a man whose daughter was brutally murdered, and about an encounter that this man (whose name is Mack) had with God at the place of his daughter’s murder. God is personified as three people: The Father (Papa) is an elderly black woman; the Son (Jesus) is a non-descript man; and the Holy Spirit (Sarayu) as a small oriental woman. There are some fairly obvious Trinitarian problems where, which I don’t think need to be belabored.

This is what I liked about the book. The book does a good job of describing the all encompassing love of God for us fallen sinners. There is a strong sense of redemption in the book, which I found to be powerful and kind of addictive.

Here’s what I didn’t like.

1. It’s hard to pin down difficulties when you talk about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I think that for the most part the book was okay. I did feel, however, that there was a sort of residual modalism that crept in every once in a while. I’ll try and look through it again to see what else that might mean.

2. More problematic, though, was the confusion of Law and Gospel. It wasn’t that bad, but you could easily take from this point a complete sense of anti-nomianism. As a Lutheran, I kind of run things through the Law/Gospel filter when I read them. Sometimes the Law is presented as virtually man made, institutional, and that the Law is really a reflection of our human falleness. The Law is the perfect will of God, and is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is a problem.

3. Even more confusing and potentially dangerous is the view of the atonement set forth in the book. While there is a general sense of redemption put forth in the book, it is unclear to me whether the author sees the death of Jesus as the payment for sin. I didn’t see much justification talk, and I worry that the really point of the author’s view of the atonement is that Jesus died so that we can see how much the Father loves us. It’s hard to pin down.

4. There is also a problem with the means of grace. God is personified as three people, which I can understand from a literary point of view. However, there is very little sense that the way that God speaks to us today is through His Word. Certainly there is no sense of the Sacraments at all. It is clearly Reformed in orientation. You get the sense, too, that God “speaks” through lots of different ways, even through other religions. While I wouldn’t call the book universalistic, there is enough problem there to give me pause.

Finally, I didn’t think the writing was really that good. The dialogue was unrealistic, and he uses the word “sarcastic” way way to much. The book could have used another good edit to fix some of that. But then again, since it has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, what do I know?

All in all, an enjoyable read with a beautiful story of redemption and forgiveness. I can’t recommend it because of the theological problems, but it does have some merit.

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Pastor

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

View all my reviews.

The Flight of the Christian Life (Christmas II)

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Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Christmas 2 (January 4, 2009, revised from 2003)
Matthew 2:13-23

For an audio MP3 of this sermon, CLICK HERE

TITLE: “The Flight of the Christian Life”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for this morning is from Matthew chapter 2, the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt.

Many, many years ago God called a man named Jacob to go to Egypt.  Jacob was an old man, he was tired and hungry, and there was no sign of rest for his soul.  His soul had been restless and in pain since the loss of his son, Joseph, so many years before.  Imagine what it must have been like, to believe your favorite son was lost and killed all those many years.  No father should ever have to bury his own son.  And there they were, left in the land of Canaan, in the midst of a famine.  No food, enemies on every side.  Where should they go?

Egypt.  That is where God commanded that they go.  It was a foreign land, a land of pagans and strangers to the Lord God.  And yet that is where God sent them to go.  Jacob didn’t know that his son Joseph was the governor of Egypt.  Joseph was really their protector, and he was the one that God would use to keep his father Jacob and all of his brothers’ safe, especially Judah.  But God is always taking strange circumstances and bringing about great blessings.

Thousands of years later, another son of Jacob would go down to Egypt, but this son of Israel was not fleeing hunger.  He was fleeing the wrath and hatred of Herod the Great.   Herod could not bear the thought that their might be a King in Israel.  He couldn’t stand the idea that anyone but he would be in charge and in control of his little kingdom.  His hatred for Jesus ran so deep that Herod ordered every male child under two years old in Bethlehem be murdered.

It’s hard to imagine that kind of hatred for the Prince of Peace, isn’t it?  This is the part of the Christmas story where most people kind of want to close the book.  What could be so threatening about a little infant?  Would he start a rebellion?  Would he lead the people to go against King Herod?  What could he possibly do to deserve such hatred?

That’s the thing about Jesus.  For Herod, Jesus represented everything that was wrong in the world.  Herod could not understand the concept of forgiveness, or that God would pay the price for our sins.  It was unfathomable, unthinkable that God would pay for our trespasses.  He must have something else in mind!  He must be trying to take away my power as the king, or so Herod thought.  But Herod did not, could not understand, just like the world cannot fathom the depth of God’s love in the Gospel today.  The world cannot understand God’s love, and so the world rejects Him.

So Jesus fled to Egypt, just like his father Jacob did so many years before.  And just like his great-great-great-grandfather Jacob, Jesus was protected by a Joseph, this time His foster-father.  God used one Joseph to keep the family line and the promised Messiah coming so many years before, and he again used another Joseph to protect this little infant King and his mother.  You see, this is all about timing for our infant King.  His time to die had not yet come.  God protected Him now, but there would come a time when God would unleash His own wrath upon His only-begotten Son, so that your suffering would have an end.

We’re getting a little glimpse into Jesus’ life here, and already we see that this life is not an easy one.  Born amidst the animals, no place to lay His head, this little one will do battle for your soul His entire life.  But the battle He fights will not be fought with swords and guns and weapons.  No, His weapons are poverty and weakness.   He survives on the charity of strangers, but that charity will run out.  He does all of this because of His great love for you, His wayward children.

So what does this mean to you?  What Jesus does this morning is teaches us how to understand our lives of suffering and hardship.  St. Peter tells us in our Epistle that if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.  In order for us to understand this suffering, though, we really have to see ourselves in Jesus’ life.  He left His home for a foreign land, and God saw Him through.  The foreign land to which He traveled, though, was not finally Egypt.  It was death itself.  For truly, what could be more foreign to the eternal Son of God that the road of death?

Yet that is the road that He took for you.  His journey is the road to death, so that your journey does not end in death, but life.  That is the miracle of Jesus’ birth into our flesh.  The real miracle does not lie in how humble was His birth, or the beauty of the scene, or any of these things.  No, the miracle lies in the reality that when He takes on our life, He gathers all of our hurt and suffering and sorrow into Himself.  So when you look at His life, that is your life in Him.

As we near the close of this Christmas season, this is an important lesson for us pilgrims here on earth.  When we talk about the Christian life here on earth, God calls us to look at it through the lens of Jesus’ life.  God does not call you to a life of perfection, victorious living, happiness and fulfillment.  That is what Satan falsely promised Adam and Eve in the Garden.  No, God has bigger plans for you and I.  He calls you in Baptism to a life of suffering and trial, but a life that is shaped by the cross of Jesus Christ.

This is a far greater life, because it is a life of sacrifice that is lived in God.  Only God can bring this about in your life.  You and I just don’t live lives of sacrifice by nature.  You and I are inward focused, self absorbed and possessive, not unlike our friend Herod from our text.  That is how you live.  But by your Baptism, God creates you anew, and gives you this life that is lived in Him and in your neighbor.  You are Joseph and Mary, taking care of the Christ child.  It’s a strange though, isn’t it?  And yet that is the reality of Jesus’ birth.  Jesus puts His very life into the hands of sinners like you and I.
His own life is wrapped up in yours.  When you hurt and suffer, He hurts and suffers.  When He lives the perfect life of obedience to the will and Word of God, you live that perfect life.  And when He finishes His great journey to the cross and the empty tomb, your pilgrimage is complete.

Oh, to be sure, we still have these trials and hardships here on earth.  But look at this babe fleeing in the arms of His mother.  If God can live such a harried and difficult life for you, don’t you think He’ll take care of you here on earth?  That is the gift that He brings to you this Christmastide that goes beyond all understanding.  He gives you the gift of peace, peace that He is in charge.  Peace that He has suffered all things for you.  And peace that will bring you eternal life.  Believe it for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.

Knowing the Mind of God (Christmas Day 2008)

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Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Christmas Day 2008
John 1:1-14

For an audio MP3 of this sermon, CLICK HERE

TITLE: “Knowing the Mind of God”

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  Our text for today is the Gospel lesson from St. John chapter one, particularly verse fourteen: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 NKJV)  This morning we will reflect in wonder upon the mystery that in Jesus Christ, God bares His soul to us and gives of Himself in a way that none of us can ever truly comprehend.

Every one of us has a sort of running conversation that goes on within us.  You know what I mean.  You talk to yourself.  You talk to yourself about whether to get out of bed, what clothes to wear, how you feel, what you want to do, how much coffee to drink.  You can have pretty extended conversations with yourself.  Luther talks about this as follows:

Furthermore, we must realize that this Word in God is entirely different from my word or yours. For we, too, have a word, especially a “word of the heart,” as the holy fathers call it.4 When, for example, we think about something and diligently investigate it, we have words; we carry on a conversation with ourselves. Its content is unknown to all but ourselves until such Words of the heart are translated into oral words and speech, which we now utter after we have revolved them in our heart and have reflected on them for a long time. Not until then is our word heard and understood by others. St. Paul touches on this in First Corinthians (2:11): “No person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him.”

Can you imagine what it would be like to know another person like that, to peek in to their interior monologue?  None of us ever knows another person that way.  First of all, we would all be too afraid.  Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we would run and hide at the thought of another person truly knowing our thoughts.  They are too close, too private, too personal.  They are too full of sin and selfishness and heartache and sorrow and want and need and pain.  None of us could bear that level of self-disclosure.  None of us could handle being that exposed.  Not to our children.  Not even to our spouse.  It would be the ultimate in too much information.

Yet that is exactly what God does in sending His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into our flesh.  The divine life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have existed in all eternity with that holy conversation going on.  The Father showing His will to the Son.  The Son receiving that will of the Father and returning it to Him, all happening in the Spirit.

But God, who is rich in mercy, did not wish to exist simply in Himself.  He spoke the Word, and it went forth in creation, making a world out of nothing.  God bared His soul to the world.  But sin entered in, and the voice of God was not heard.  We stopped up our ears to His voice.  We refused to listen to all of the great and mighty things that He wanted to tell us.  So He sent His prophets.  Time and time again God sent them, so that His mind would be made known to us.  But what did we do?  We killed them.  We threw them out of our cities.  We were too busy, too bored, too uninterested in the things of God to care about such trifles.

But finally, God bared His soul to the world in a way that none of us could ever truly comprehend.  He sent His Son, His Word made flesh.  The author to the book of Hebrews put it this way:

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…” (Hebrews 1:1-2 NKJV)

God has bared His soul to you.  He has opened His mind to you by sending His Word, His Son, His voice into your flesh and blood.  It is unfathomable.  It is mysterious and wonderful.  It is the greatest gift that anyone has ever given, anywhere.  And it is all for you.  Two of God’s children had that Name and Word put on them this morning in Holy Baptism, as each of you did at just the right time.

Our heavenly Father, you see, has no secrets from you, none that matter to us anyway.  His bares His very soul to you in sending His Word into your flesh and blood.  Trust Him now.  Believe in Him, and live.  Know that the God who would do such a great and mighty deed would never seek to hurt or harm you.  He loves you, with every fiber of His being.  Could there be any greater gift?  No.  That is the gift of Christmas.  God becomes man so that we might become like unto God.  Believe it for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

And now may the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.

When All Was Still…

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and it was midnight, your almighty Word O Lord, descended from the royal throne!

The Christ-Mass is ended.  The children are in bed.  All the presents are wrapped and under the tree.  The nog has been drunk.  The morning will bring two baptisms and the festival divine service.  It’s time for a long winter’s nap.

Except for the long part.

Sleep well, dear friends.  We rise with our Lord.

-LL