A Brief Response To William Paul Young's 'The Shack'

William Paul Young’s, The Shack shares the story of a young man finding his way back to God after tragedy strikes. “When William Paul Young set out to write The Shack, he had no idea that his faith-based tale would capture the hearts of 20 million readers around the world” (“The Story Behind William Paul Young’s Best-Seller The Shack,” par. 1-1). When Young set out to write the book, he wrote most of it while on the computer train going back and forth from his 3 jobs. His six children loved his writing, he originally put his words down on paper as a Christmas present for his all of them to keep; never did he expect anybody else to read his story except for friends and family. “The story of the book is also intriguing.” (“A Brief Response to William P. Young’s The Shack,” par. 3-1). The Shack is described as emotionally gripping, many cried several times throughout the story also desired a closer a relationship with God. As the story begins, Mack Allen Philips’ unintentionally leaves his 5 year-old

Stuck somewhere between pessimistic and realistic, he finds himself back at that dreaded place once again attempting to go inside and look around for whoever claimed to be God. “Once on the porch he stopped again. Voices were clearly coming from inside. Mack rejected the impulse to run away...” (Young, 84). Anybody receiving a letter from someone who claimed to be God would have several questions and be in a state of disbelief. For mack he had his guard all the way up, he was even unsure of how to knock on the door if God really were behind it. “Mack decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large, beaming African American woman”(Young, 84). Mack was unsure how God was going to look, but this lady was not at all what he had imagined in his