Book Review

Back in May, I read THE SHACK and I blogged then how it was a good book, but left me feeling somewhat like it just didn't feel right reading it. I couldn't help but feel like, with all the current hype about it, that people might look to that for their spiritual/theological answers instead of looking where they should, in the Bible. There is a little song that my children listen to that I think of, and it says, "In the Bible alone, it is there you will find, to love and obey a great God."

With that being said, of course I naturally asked my brother, a Presbyterian minister to read the book and tell me his thoughts on it. I received this email from him today and I thought it was really good:

e,

here is a good review i found on the book. http://byfaithonline.com/page/arts-culture/the-shack-what-god-should-have-said?comment=1026
i read the book while at the beach and would agree with this reviewer's opinion. i might add that the book is not that good of a fiction novel and an even worse presentation of theology! His god is way too familiar and altogether like us! And as far as a fictional attempt to answer the ? how a loving God can allow suffering and evil in the world, i think he does a pretty poor job. There are some wonderful non-fictional books out there on that subject! i will spare you all the sermons at this point, but i will add as well that the writer seems to have no understanding of or appreciation of the saving presence of God in His church. to him the church is just another unnecessary institution of man. i might suggest that the "place" where we meet with the Living Triune God and He communicates lovingly with his people and instructs them and feeds them is in his church (the true shack in the world). Yes, the Lord is present with his redeemed people! And in the midst of his church, He speaks to us and nourishes us through the medium of the preached word and the bread and the cup! So many are already running to the woods and looking to the stars and the rest of the natural world to "find" God. This book will only encourage them the more to keeping looking for the saving knowledge of God in themselves, or in their personal experiences - whether good or bad, or generally within the natural fallen world instead of looking to the Christ of the Scriptures and resting upon his personal experience for us. They will hasten to a "relationship" with a god of their imagination (only loving, never truly holy in His justice or wrath) stirred on by this imaginative literature and never enter into a saving, living relationship with the Father through faith in Jesus Christ and baptism into His church, the household of faith, the family and kingdom of God!

Thanks brother for the review, opinion and for sparing me the sermon.

I think he is so intelligent and knowledgeable about the Word! I'm lucky to have him....Now, if just one person in my family could become a doctor (MD), then I could be good spiritually as well as physically!