Mixed Feelings?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist for anyone to figure out what I really think about the book The Shack. It has caused me great frustration as a spiritual leader to observe so many of the Lord's faithful buying into a book that has a perverted and distorted and heretical view of the Trinity. In fact, I do anticipate that one day Young will have to stand before God and answer for all the people he has led astray and I'll bet God won't be a laid back black woman at that point nor Jesus be some goofy looking putz of a guy. I have a feeling he'll come to understand what it means to fall into the hands of a Holy God.

So why do I say "mixed feelings?" Simply put, I have a desire to avoid conflict and avoid potential issues within the church. But, that said, my calling is not to keep people happy but rather to guide, teach, admonish, and exhort God's people from God's Word. And when there is heresy rampant, it must be addressed. That is how many great works of faith came about, from pastors answering challenges to orthodoxy within the church. It is because of this that the Arian controversy was refuted, and the Gnostic heresy was challenged, and many other issues that have stood to divide the Church. It took faithful men of God to stand in the gap and declare spades to be spades.

That said, I am calling a spade a spade. I am calling The Shack to be one of the most dangerous books to be written in a long time, and it is a book that DOES NOT need to be read by faithful Christians. It presents a false view of God as being real and while it is a work of fiction the response of people to it warrants great caution. People are calling this a work up there with Pilgrim's Progress and other great works of the faith, and I have to look at that and say that it is insane to say that a book that counters the biblical witness to the Person of God can be seen as high as a work of classical Christian literature.

This is a review by Mark Driscoll about the book, and I believe he says it better that almost anyone else can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK65Jfny70Y

I really hope that Young recants his heresy and can be welcomed back into the fold of God. And I really hope that Christians who have bought the lie repent and return to a biblical Trinitarian view of God that is in line with the witness of Scripture. Until then, I will labor to counter this and to admonish the people of God to stay far away from it.