Olson’s Finding God in the Shack (2009), he asks, are “we are supposed to believe that God really appeared to Mack as a Trinity of the Three distinct personages of God” (Olson, 12)? In the book, Mack begins to question God, and since God is sovereign and knows the future, was part of His plan the taking a young child’s life? In His sovereignty, does God help us endure such great loss and suffering? Part of what God is doing is “to change our image of God” (Olson, 34), but Mack seems to be saying that God is submitted to us and not that we must submit to Him and trust Him with our lives since He knows the end from the beginning (Olson, p 47), but it’s as if Mack is putting God on trial for crimes against humanity, but God points the finger right back at us because humans own responsibility for going their own way (Olson, 59). It is what Mack calls the “Great Sadness.” To lose perhaps his most prized earthly treasure, the youngest of his three children, was more than he could bear, and as a result, Mack becomes angry at God and has lost his sense of trust in Him. At first, Mack is angry that God has allowed this to happen and He wonders why God allows such suffering in the world, so the author is obviously trying to show how such a difficult loss of such magnitude is experienced.

Mack blames himself for the rape and murder of his youngest daughter due to his inattentiveness during the lake accident, so The Shack addresses specific issues over the grieving process that humans endure when they face tragedies like the loss of a loved one, and particularly when losing one’s own child. In the book, and now the movie, the main character, Mack, grieves over the loss of his daughter Missy during a mishap on a lake. Young (2008) has been called heretical and unbiblical, as far as what God is like and the attributes of the Three Persons of the Trinity, even though the book is primarily about how to deal with suffering, however, those who defend the book say it’s not intended as a theological study of the triune nature of God, rather it’s a look at how we deal with suffering and process our thoughts about God. Does the movie and the book, The Shack, give us a distorted view of God? The Shack

The shack william young