Canadian born William “Paul” Young not only imagined such a gathering, he wrote about it. The result is “The Shack,” an unexpected publishing phenomenon that has hit No. 1 as paperback trade fiction on the New York Times bestseller list.
“Response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Young, who receives 50 to 200 e-mails a day from “people whose lives have been changed - people who are rethinking their relationships with God and with each other.”
Young, who calls himself an accidental author, didn’t plan on the “whirlwind” of activity that has followed the book since its release in 2007. He wrote the story for his kids to give them a better understanding of who God is, and he said it lent itself to a fictional account.
“I think art has a way of communicating where other types of literature do not. It allows you to bring your world into it.”
He made copies of the story for his children and a friend who saw a copy encouraged him to do something more with it. The rest, as they say, is history.
The fictional encounter follows Mack Phillips as he struggles to deal with his troubled childhood, then faces every parent’s worse nightmare. Four years later, he receives a note he believes is from God, whom his wife calls “Papa,” inviting him to meet at a shack in a state park that was the focal point of his family’s tragedy.
As he describes the meeting, Young depicts God in what some may consider to be an unusual way. “I didn’t want my children to perceive God as a large white male,” he said, referring to Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings.”
“God is a spirit, all maleness and all femaleness,” Young said. “This breaks the paradigm. Breaks the mold. There’s a lot of scripture that speaks of God in the feminine way.”
Taking God out of the “little male box” allows readers to view Him differently, not in a legalistic way.
Young said he doesn’t find in the Bible the idea of “God is the enemy.”
On the contrary, he says scripture reveals a God who is “traveling down many roads to find us to work to redeem us from the inside.”
The book was considered too cutting edge for Christian publishers and too spiritual for the secular press, so it was published by “a couple of people with faith and now they can’t keep it in the bookstores,” James Robinson of Life Outreach ministries said in introducing Young on a recent segment of his TV show, Life Today.
Because of Young’s different approach, there has been a bit of a backlash, but it’s been minimum.
The Southern Baptist Association, which operates Life Christian Stores, pulled the book from its shelves for a week in June while it was reviewed.
“There were concerns raised by some who felt it was not theologically sound,” said Chris Turner, media relations manager for Lifeway Christian Resources. “We did a full review.”
Based on the fact that “The Shack” was fiction, not theology, Lifeway determined it “was a book we wanted to continue to carry.”
“They couldn’t find anything unorthodox about it,” Young said.
The book is “doing well in stores” and is on the top sellers list at Lifeway, which has a location in Temple, Turner said.
“It’s consistently been as good a seller in our stores as it has been in others,” Turner said.
Young said he spent a “tremendous amount of time” on the theological aspect of the book and it was a collaboration with many people who he called “great thinkers.”
“There’s no attempt to say this is the voice of God speaking,” he said. “But, there’s a strong reliance on scripture throughout.”
In fact, he said, one of the offshoots of the book is that it has sparked a national conversation.
“It’s moving people back. Not only to examine scripture, but to look at it differently,” he said. “What if it’s the goodness of God that leads us to repentance and not the anger of God?”
Young said sometimes people are so educated in theology “that we can’t hear anymore.”
“People need to be able to bring their theological paradigms and talk about it,” he said.
That conversation is a good thing, Young said.
It has the reader thinking about things like the “relationship that exists inside God himself that we get invited into.”
Turner said he believes the book has caught on with readers because a man’s pilgrimage to deal with himself and his relationship with God is “a journey most people are on.”
The book, which also moves the main character through a healing process, has “helped a lot of people deal with some suppressed issues,” he said.
Young, who grew up on a mission field, has been married 29 years to his wife, Kim, and they have six children and two grandchildren.
He said he’s just thankful to be a part of what the book has done.
“I’m so grateful I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m so grateful I wrote it for my kids and that I didn’t have any identity as an author,” he said. “There’s a tremendous freedom on this side.”
In having that freedom to write what he wanted for his kids, “God has decided to give it to His kids. It’s incredible,” he said.
--tleytham@temple-telegram.com
