"God is a Verb" and Other Truths from "The Shack" -- A Book Review by H.P. Atilano

[Author's Note: This article was first published on Facebook last July 21, 2011.]


I'm writing about a book I finished reading tonight, not as a critic or a literature buff, but as a lost child of God who has found her way back home. So, this will be more of a testimony than a critical essay on a work of fiction. I ought to caution you that if full disclosures of profound spiritual experiences is not your cup of tea, this will be a tedious, boring read. So, you may, as you see fit, leave this page, fully exonerated.

The instant I opened "The Shack," I knew it was written for people like me: lost souls in a spiritual desert. By the time I closed it, I was "home," my thirst for spiritual enlightenment fully quenched. And now that I've written it down, a new flash of insight, another epiphany: reading "The Shack" is symbolically entering this proverbial shack in the story, where the reader gets a vivid glimpse into the nature of the mysterious God compressed in 250 pages of fictional prose. I'm talking of The God that theologians and religious scholars spend 10 or 20 years studying about and yet do not fully grasp, let alone genuinely love. This is the same God you will grow to "truly" love, albeit not fully grasp, after reading "The Shack."


"The Shack" is a novel by William Paul Young, "a Canadian raised by missionary parents among a stone-age tribe in the highlands of New Guinea," so goes his brief biosketch. This much I knew about the author. But after reading his novel, I could tell he, too, was lost and found, broken and healed, blinded and enlightened. Reading him was a pilgrimage in print, a very enlightening crash course in theology, if we define "theology" as the study of God. Having said these about the author, I'm inclined to believe that he is an angel, if, by definition, "angel" means God's messenger. I believe, too, that it was no accident that the owner of this book, Miss Tessa Gonzales Yulo, is in my Literary Criticism class this semester and had the good heart to lend me the book. She, too, is an angel.


I will not go into a semi-detailed synopsis of the novel and spare you the agony of a verbose retelling. After all, it is your "obligation" to find out what this novel is about. You owe this to your self. My role here is just to lead you to "the shack," the way the protagonist, Mackenzie, was led to it by a cryptic note he found in his mailbox, signed by God Himself. I daresay, not many writers who could treat such a delicate subject matter as the nature of God the way he did would get away with it unscathed by both religious and literary critics. But Young pulled it off gracefully and brilliantly till page 250.


I mean, what author-- even of prose fiction-- would depict the Almighty Creator of the Universe as a corpulent African-American woman who speaks like Maya Angelou? The Heavenly Father appears in this novel as you would imagine Oprah in apron, covered in flour and reeking of oyster sauce. Jesus Christ is a Middle Eastern-looking guy in laborer's clothes who laughs a lot, eats a lot, and skips stones over the lake when he's not walking on it. The Holy Ghost is a lady gardener with strong oriental features dressed in plain jeans and brightly colored blouse.


But before you cry "blasphemy!" and judge this book as the myopic critics did, read it and see for yourself, as cleverly told in a compelling narrative by an enlightened author, the following Bible truths:

* God is a verb, not a noun, as Love is;
* God did not create evil and sufferings; we did, a long time ago in a Garden far away;
* God DOES NOT believe in religion; He believes in Relationship;
* Jesus is NOT a Christian (and he said this himself somewhere in the story);
* We were created by Love, because of Love, and for Love and the ONLY way to live is to LIVE LOVED...


This, and more earth-shattering, life-changing revelations about God's innermost thoughts and sentiments exposed as if God were flesh and blood.


I've dealt with Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy, but this medieval guy is sometimes too inaccessible for a Gen-Xer like me. William Paul Young is the Dante of this age, and I'm saying this with the conviction of a soul redeemed from her self-inflicted perdition.


There's one person in my life right now that I couldn't bring myself to forgive. Many times-- and secretly, of course-- I wished this person would die a most painful death. This person broke my soul. And it took a book to COMPLETELY heal me from this brokenness. "The Shack" is my catharsis. I was in there with the protagonist, confronting my own monster, my shadow beast, my id. As God was showing the protagonist how to forgive the man who brutally murdered her 6 1/2-year-old daughter, I was being shown how to kill my already-wounded ego. And, I'm telling you, the pain was so excruciating I had to close the book and weep. I have forgiven, in my heart and in my soul, the person who "killed" me.

Enter "The Shack." Let go. Let God.#