One of the dangers of Christian blogging is dealing with the spiritual hall monitors who seem to live only to smack your heretical knuckles with their ruler of truth. So I risk their wrath (carefully chosen word) with today’s post.

The novel The Shack has begun a wave of debate, hand-wringing, defensiveness and condemnation in Evangelical circles. The book has been called dangerous, subversive and heretical by many critics. I didn’t know any of this when a friend told me that he really enjoyed the book and I should read it. Since I have a book addiction I soon was in possession. I finished The Shack last week. I thought it was a decent and often good read. I was challenged and touched by parts of the story.  And, to be honest, I was bothered by some of it. After finishing the book I did some internet research on what others were saying about the book. Some of the critiques were valuable and thoughtful. These writers pointed out where the book deviated from scripture. Some of the orthodox theological missteps were outlined in clear detail. A thorough review of those concerns was written by author/blogger Tim Challies. I would suggest you balance that critique with a defense to those concerns from author Wayne Jacobson.  I will stay away from the theological debate because Tim and Wayne have presented both sides for you to evaluate. Instead I want to offer a few gentle propositions to consider for my fellow followers of Jesus as the discussion heats up.

Be careful about disparaging The Shack’s author, William P Young. Please be cautious about assigning motives to a person you don’t know from Adam and Eve’s first house cat. I know that I have been called things that were really surprising by my brothers and sisters in the faith simply because they disagreed with something I wrote. The truth is that I now disagree with some of things I wrote and I still think I am a decent guy. Mr. Young apparently was deeply wounded by Christians who should have protected him. I don’t believe Mr.Young set out to write a book that would rock the evangelical community. Apparently he didn’t even write the book with the thought of being published. It was originally written for family members to help them deal with their pain. It doesn’t seem that he set out with sinister motives to undermine theological orthodoxy. He is a fellow wounded traveler trying to reconcile his woundedness. When his theology goes astray I am suggesting that we gracefully point out those areas and don’t attack Mr. Young. Defending truth with grace is always the most effective tactic. But our passion for truth too often makes grace the first thing we jettison.