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Soon after William Paul Young's The Shack hit the bookstores, a friend handed me a copy and said, "You need to read this; it's going to be the next best-seller."

I put the book on my "to read" pile, and it remained there for several weeks. Then, in an idle moment, I picked it up and scanned the first few pages. Soon I stopped scanning and started reading.

The Shack got to me. Admittedly, Young seemed to stray across a few theological boundary lines, but I found myself less concerned about that and more captivated by the way he raised so many of the issues that spiritually devastated people have inside and outside the Christian movement. I'm thinking of issues like bitterness, guilt, powerlessness, and emotional paralysis that often originate from traumatic experiences in one's past.

As I read, I heard Young saying, "Let's fool with an out-of-the-box story that might offer us a fresh appreciation of some very old truths about who God actually is—and how far God might go to establish restorative relationships with broken people like us."

After several chapters, I put the book down. I decided that I could go no further until my wife, Gail, was able to share the reading with me. That evening we lit some wood in the fireplace, and I started back at page one, this time reading The Shack aloud to her. As I read I found myself pausing several times to deal with strange surges of emotion that The Shack tends to elicit from all but the most resistant people.

Gail and I finished The Shack in two evenings and agreed that we'd never read a book quite like it. We spoke of the way the author had prodded us to think new thoughts about the three persons of the Trinity. We agreed that the book would mean a lot to those who have suffered from horrific experiences of physical and sexual abuse and who need their memories to be decontaminated. We went back through the pages and identified places where we'd been startled by the author's insights on the nature of evil and grace. We even laughed at some of the clever antics used by the Three-who-were-One to point out the way of salvation.

For Gail and me, The Shack was a reviving experience.

Some weeks later I met my first Shack critic. I should have anticipated that there would be some who would have problems with this unusual book, who would reject the way the author chose to deal with some of the most precious ideas in all of Scripture.

Of this critic's sincerity, there was no doubt. He and others I would later meet were deeply disturbed that Young had dared to portray the members of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as eccentric personalities with offbeat ways of communicating their message.

Most than once I heard Young accused of blasphemy. I heard him labeled a post-modernist for whom "truth" meant nothing. I was told by one Shack-detractor that anyone refusing to denounce the author and his book could not be considered a sound evangelical.

I can admit to a sense of shock when I realized in the course of my reading that Young had chosen to portray God our Father as an absolutely enchanting, powerfully-mothering, African-American woman. But I will also admit that it wasn't too long in my reading before I found myself wanting to sit at her kitchen table and to enjoy her cooking, her conversation, and her maternal affection. The beauty of the fellowship generated by her presence was what many of us have sought for a lifetime and so rarely experienced.

So what does one do with The Shack? Throw it aside because of its theological liberties? Or let it speak into those places in our lives where we long for a closer walk with him.

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