Posted on 06/07/2010 6:51:41 AM PDT by Jim W N
Shocker! "Burning Down 'The Shack,'" [is] a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred biblical critique of the book by someone who knew author Paul Young well and understands what's behind its strange theology. "It's often said that one can understand a book better by knowing the author," James De Young offers in "Burning Down 'The Shack,'" which he wrote to "expose the greatest deception to blindside the church in the last 200 years!" De Young isn't only a New Testament language and literature professor at Western Seminary in Portland, Ore., he holds multiple degrees from respected seminaries including Dallas Seminary, Talbot Theological Seminary and Moody Bible Institute. In addition, and possibly most important, De Young is a former longtime colleague of Paul Young, and was his Portland-area neighbor when Young wrote "The Shack." In 1997, De Young and Young co-founded a Christian think tank, called M3 Forum, and for the next seven years they discussed and probed topics, doctrine and problems facing the church as it approached the New Millennium. Then, in April 2004, Young submitted a surprising 103-page paper in which he embraced universal reconciliation and said, "He was putting aside his earlier evangelical paradigm." Less than two years later, Young asked friends to read the early draft of a novel he was writing as a Christmas gift for his children. Though highly impressed by the manuscript's potential, the friends were opposed to the universal reconciliation they found in it and acknowledged publicly that they spent over a year trying to remove that message. Mainline Christian publishers declined interest in publishing what became "The Shack," so Young and his friends formed their own publishing company to self-publish. "When I carefully read 'The Shack' in January 2008, I was dismayed to find universalism still embedded, deeply and subtly, in it," De Young recalls.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
If Mr. Young has embraced a view that somehow there's no hell, this is a shame for a number of reasons.
1. The Shack is full of the reality of intimacy with God’s family, the Trinity. It tracks very closely and vividly with the book and Bible study by Dr. David Eckman, Becoming What God Intended, A Study for Spiritual Transformation, which made its way around the churches and home Bible studies a few years ago with great success.
2. The Shack is a helpful and effective metaphor for healing among God’s people. Many of us have an inner “shack”, a place where we hide the sadnesses and lonelinesses from hurts and abuse of the past. It is a place in believer’s hearts where God is waiting to help and heal us. The difficult part is our willingness to return to our “Great Sadnesses” that so often we have safely hidden away from our own conscience for years.
3. If there is a “no hell” idea here, it is neither a major point nor a necessity for the main ideas of the book, but it’s enough for the Pharisees and “heretic hunters” in our midst to have a field day with the “relationship over religion” concepts in the book.
4. The idea in therapy and recovery programs and meetings ofttimes is “Take what you want and leave the rest.” One should take the good that’s in “The Shack” and if there is an idea of no hell in “The Shack”, one should leave it. I think this can be done without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
5. I hope for Paul Young’s sake that he does not embrace this “no hell” idea, because it is clearly unscriptural. God’s Word always trumps our “good ideas.” Other well-known and respected Christian leaders have fallen and become of no effect because of this heresy, a prime example being Carlton Pearson.
6. There’s a subtle but important distinction here that is and almost certainly will be the subject of much confusion. The article references “universal reconciliation” but the idea of no hell should be called “universal salvation.” This is an important distinction. I have heard Paul Young quote 2 Corinthians 5:19 and John 1:29, but these along with other scripture, speak of the “universal redemption” that Christ’s death on the cross has afforded all men.
There is a critical distinction between Redemption and salvation. There is no “universal salvation” taught in the Bible. Heaven and Hell (there are 54 references to hell in the Bible) are scriptural and real. The issue between us and God is no longer sin – God has taken care of that issue by Jesus on the cross. The only issue now is Jesus himself who has bone our sin. The question now is: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS? The issue between us and God is no longer sin but believing in Jesus Christ.
He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:18-19.
Notice it doesn’t say the condemnation is sin, but that men did not believe in Jesus who took our sin. A masterful treatment of this is found in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest October 7th devotion: http://www.myutmost.org/10/1007.html
I don’t shop at the Shack anymore, since they insist on having my phone number to sell me two batteries.
And here I was expecting a shocking expose into the inner workings of the eeeevil Radio Shack! Windfall profits on overpriced component cables! Shock! :D
Different Shack, unless that was the joke...
People let me tell you about a place I know
To get in it don’t take much dough
Where you can really do your thing, oh yeah
It’s got a neon sign outside that says
Come in and take a look at your mind
You’d be surprised what you might find, yeah
Strobe lights flashin’ FROM SUN UP TO SUN DOWN
People gather there from all parts of town
Oh yeah, RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER
You know it’s just across the track
People I’m talking about the psychedelic shack
It’s a novel, just like the Left Behind series was a novel. Read it for entertainment, not theology, and all will be fine.
Great read ! It says it is fictional on the cover so what if it makes ya think.
Fiction (Latin: fictum, “created”) is any form of narrative which deals, in part or in whole, with events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and invented by its author(s). Although fiction often describes a major branch of literary work, it is also applied to theatrical, cinematic, documental, and musical work. In contrast to this is non-fiction, which deals exclusively in factual events (e.g.: biographies, histories). Semi-fiction is fiction implementing a great deal of non-fiction,[1] e.g. a fictional description based on a true story.
I guess I missed something, I thought it sucked and it was a struggle to even finish ....but that’s just me.
Don’t you hate that? I am paying with cash, so you do not need my phone or zip code. I refuse to shop where they do that too.
If it was just a novel, it would avoid theology. It clearly was pushing a misrepresentation of the nature of God. Are you now in favor of pro-Muslim novels?
That would be good advice if some people could see the difference. Case in point "The Da Vinci Code"
AAAAAAAAH you just had to mention that wretched piece of crap! ;p
What a hideous excuse for writing that was. Dan Brown makes John Grisham look fluent.
1 - Born again Christians who believe in the Trinity (Father Son and Holy Ghost)
2 - People who have "a great sadness" from abusive or hurtful backgrounds.
No, it was me too. I kept fighting through his quaternian-universalist-heresy to get to the good part everyone was raving about, but there never was one. Maybe that chapter got left out of my copy.
THIS guy makes Dan Brown look fluent.
I started reading the book but felt more and more uneasy with it. The message is subtle. I liked some of the story line, but then it just got weird. I truly felt the HS tell me to quit reading the book, to put it down. I did not finish, never picked it up again.
That was pretty much my reaction, although I managed to finish it.
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