The Shack and Father God
A little over ten years ago, the book The Shack became an unexpected best-seller, sparking debate and garnering appreciation from across the evangelical landscape. Though originally written for the author’s children and copied at Kinko’s, the book reached number one on the New York Times fiction best-seller list after its release. It hit number one again in 2017 after a major motion picture was released based on the book. The themes of the book are heavy, at times harrowing, and inescapably theological, though they are presented in such a way that the reader can forget it is indeed a work of theology. The theological themes touched on include the character of the church, the problem of evil (theodicy), the nature of revelation, the depiction of God, and our understanding of the Trinity. I want to speak to an element of this last theme because the novel assumes something we are all tempted to assume: in reference to God, ”Father” is ultimately a metaphor and, as such, can be manipulate