After a grueling search, authorities find strong evidence in an abandoned shack indicating that Missy has been murdered. Mack takes his children on a camping trip in the Northwest that ends disastrously-a serial child-killer abducts Mack’s youngest daughter, Missy. The plot is built around a sympathetic character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips (Mack), and his struggle with faith. According to the publisher, Windblown Media, over six million copies are in print. That is an astounding accomplishment for any book, let alone one with a $200 marketing budget.

Such backlash could contribute to the book’s success: “If you condemn it, people will read it.” By April 24, 2009, The Shack had spent 48 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, much of it in the number one spot for trade paperbacks. Opponents claim that literally portraying the Trinity as three persons is heretical they also dislike the book’s message that Jesus looks unfavorably on organized religion and wishes that people could just “get along” despite their differences. The book has become both a fascination and an object of contempt to millions of Christians.

(Either Drew Barrymore or Björk could play her in the movie adaptation.) The Shack leads readers to think about how a Trinitarian God relates to humanity, albeit in ways some may find silly or worse. Jesus is a carpenter who looks like a Middle Eastern version of Bob Vila from “This Old House.” The Holy Spirit, a hippie Asian woman named Sarayu, tends a garden and flits in and out of scenes at will.

God the Father, a k a “Papa,” is portrayed as a jolly African-American woman who can bake a mean scone while attending to the affairs of all creation. The Shack, a bestselling novel by William Paul Young, attempts to put flesh (literally) on the Trinity. Not even priests understand that.” The Trinity is an essential doctrine, yet few of us know much about it or its significance to our lives. I once overheard an adult initiation sponsor tell a catechist, “You don’t need to worry about the Trinity. A mystery,” “beyond comprehension,” “impossible to understand fully”-these are some of the phrases Christians use to describe the Holy Trinity, a central tenet of the faith.

The shack book william p young