Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Quote of the Year on Pop Christianity

As many of you know, I passionately despise the book "The Shack" for many, many reasons. I was reading an article earlier today that had a quote that very much so summed up my sentiments about the book and why I try to persuade people NOT to read it.

"The thing that bothers me the most about the Shack is that it wraps destructive ideas up in an appealing package and feeds it to people who have neither the discernment nor the desire to carefully separate truth from error."
-Mary Kassian

3 comments:

  1. I haven't read the book yet, but my Circle is planning on discussing it in the fall. Why do you dislike the book so?

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  2. I enjoyed certain parts of the book but I am very concerned about two or three primary underlying parts of his book.

    One of them is His understanding of the Trinity. He does not hold a Biblical view of how the Trinity works. Although the author claims to believe in Trinitarianism, he really holds to a view of the Godhead known as Modalism. He mentions the Father having the same wounds as Jesus. which is something that is not at all how the Bible describes Jesus' death for us.

    The Father having the wounds of Jesus is very much related to the second point of which I disagree with the author. The author denies substitutionary atonement; he denies that Jesus died intentionally and willingly on the cross as a propitiation, or substitute, for sinners. (For more on Substitutionary atonement, see http://www.gotquestions.org/substitutionary-atonement.html) The author is not too explicit with this in the book itself, but there are several comments that make it obvious that he denies this. He openly denies it in his ministry, which is something many people do not know about.

    The third point I have a problem with is that the author views the Wisdom of God as being different from the Son, when the Bible speaks very plainly of Christ being the Wisdom of God. It's kind of strange.

    I wouldn't have a problem with the book if it were viewed as something like "The 5 people you meet in Heaven". But I do feel that it will do more to confuse people than it will do to benefit them.

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  3. That is really interesting. I plan on reading the book later in the summer, so I will be keeping your thoughts in mind. Thanks for sharing!

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