"The Shack" and the Trinity
Many things have been written about The Shack since it was published in 2007. The cover page informs us that it was the #1 New York Times Bestseller and that over three million copies are in print.
Clicking through the different web and Facebook pages, where people share how The Shack has affected their lives, you will read expressions of praise as well as of condemnation, mainly from the Evangelical side. Why this interest? Why this polemic? Why such an emotional discussion?
Maybe because someone dared to write a story (and that’s what it is: a fictional story) about a very human God and – and a very female God? But that’s not the only problem.
The Shack is the story of Mackenzie (Mack) and his family. During a camping trip his six-year old daughter gets kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer. The reactions within the family reach from intense sadness to guilt and to extreme anger with God. Mack’s state of mind is described as The Great Sadness. Why would God allow something like this to happen? A few years after this event, Mack finds a mysterious note in his mailbox: “Mackenzie, It’s been a while. I’ve missed you. I’ll be at the shack next weekend if you want to get together. Papa.” The message appears to be from God, who invites him to go to the place of Mack’s nightmares; the shack is the place where the last evidence of his daughter was found - a blood-stained dress. Mack’s curiosity is greater than his disbelief and fear. When Mack gets to the shack he encounters the Trinity in very human forms. He meets Papa - a “large beaming African-American woman”; Jesus – a Middle Eastern man, “dressed like a laborer, complete with tool belt and gloves;” and the Holy Spirit: an Asian woman in the clothes of a groundskeeper or gardener, called Sarayu. (pg. 82)
Too weird? Maybe… But what follows is an extended question and answer session with the three persons of the Trinity, about their life, about humanity, about freedom, authority, forgiveness, redemption and the meaning of suffering.
At this point the reader has to keep in mind that we are talking about fiction and not about a book on Systematic Theology. While the explanations fall short in their biblical and traditional understanding of the image of God as a Father, the Incarnation of Jesus, and the meaning of religion, tradition and authority, it provides fairly good theology about the mystery of the Trinity. While the author himself comes from an Evangelical background, he portrays the Trinity for the most part according to Catholic Tradition, as some Catholic Theologians confirm. Young presents the Trinity as three distinct Persons who share so intimately in each other’s lives that they interpenetrate each other so that Mack cannot have a conversation with one of them without the other knowing what has been said.
The passages about the Trinity are certainly among the most successful paragraphs in the book. Here is a key passage:
“But what difference does it make that there are three of you, and you are all one God. Did I say that right?”
“Right enough.” She grinned. “Mackenzie, it makes all the difference in the world!” She seemed to be enjoying this. “We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father, and worker. I am one God and I am three persons, and each of the three is fully and entirely the one.”
The “huh?” Mack had been suppressing finally surfaced in all its glory.
“Never mind that,” she continued. “What’s important is this: If I were simply One God and only One Person, then you would find yourself in this Creation without something wonderful, without something essential even. And I would be utterly other than I am.”
“And we would be without….?” Mack didn’t even know how to finish the question. “Love and relationship. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exists within Me, within God myself. Love is not the limitation; love is the flying. I am love.” (pg. 101)
In another scene, Young describes what “I am love” can concretely mean. Mack watches as Papa, Jesus and Sarayu prepare for dinner when Jesus drops the bowl with the sauce that Papa had just prepared. Instead of getting angry all three end up laughing heartily, joking with each other and helping each other to clean up the mess. “Mack’s mind was full of thoughts. So this was God in relationship? It was beautiful and so appealing. He knew that it didn’t matter whose fault it was – the mess from some bowl had been broken, that a dish that had been planned would not be shared. Obviously, what was truly important here was the love they had for one another and the fullness it brought them. He shook his head. How different this was from the way he treated the ones he loved!” (pg. 105)
We have heard it so many times: God is love – and we are created in his image. We are created to love God and each other with the very same intensity with which the persons of the Trinity love each other. But what does it mean? Some passages in this book can be really inspiring. They can make us think about the traces of God’s love in our lives. Maybe we don’t always see them. Maybe we have the same difficulty in trusting in God’s love as Mack does. And maybe we have the same difficulty in giving and receiving authentic love from each other. How little do we know and understand about the impact of the mystery of the Trinity for our faith and our lives. Immanuel Kant wrote in the eighteenth century: “The Trinity has got no relevance to practical living.”
Maybe it’s this tension between the mystery that surrounds the Trinity and the human images we find in The Shack that draws the attention and confusion of many. Maybe we are still lacking good explanations about what the Trinity can mean for our lives as Catholics and Christians. While a fictional story, The Shack can inspire us to reflect on and learn more about this truth of our faith.
From a Catholic view the book is certainly problematic on many levels. I found a very sound critical review on the Abbey Bookstore. Catholic reviews recommend reading The Shack with the Bible and the Catechism at hand. But the book can be an invitation to draw more deeply into the mystery of the Trinity and relate it to our lives. Fr. Tom Norris writes in his book The Trinity that the Church’s teaching on Trinity “can never be passed over as ‘high theology.’ Neither can it be left high and dry as a fresh understanding of an integrating mystery of faith but without major repercussions for daily living. On the contrary, it becomes an invitation to live the Christian life and so discover the ‘life that is hidden with Christ in God.’ (Col 3:3) Dogma has to translate into spirituality. … What is most striking is the principle of mutuality at its core: love one another! The ‘new commandment’ brings the life of the Trinity down to earth, for this is how the eternal Persons live for each other and in each other in the bosom of the Godhead. (Jn 1:18)” (Thomas J. Norris: The Trinity. Life of God, Hope for Humanity. Towards a Theology of Communion.)
Whether God appears as an African-American woman or not, God certainly invites us to meditate and reflect on this mystery. God calls us to become more and more what he created us to be: an image and likeness of a God who is love, who is Three and One.
