For those of you who have already read The Shack, I wanted to tease out a few other points beyond these.
The most wrenching part is God’s demand that Mack forgive Missy’s killer. But there’s something unsatisfying to me about the moment: part of how he’s able to go through with it is that God showed him Missy’s current happiness. Most people don’t get that gift and indeed it’s not part of what God promises in Scripture. Many of us would be forgiven for saying: “well, I’d get over my grief fast too if you could show me my loved one.”
Also: it seemed like a bit of a cop-out that they were able to catch and punish the killer. Part of the message initially seemed to be that you shouldn’t try to understand God’s modus operandi through human notions of justice. But then in the tidy ending, God does make sure the bad guy gets what’s coming. It was emotionally satisfying but I thought it might have been a bit braver to go with the idea that Mack would have to hold on to God’s love while knowing that the killer escaped judgment, at least in this lifetime.
What did you think of the book?