The Shack and C.S. Lewis

Several of us were discussing The Shack recently, particularly all the controversy over its' theology. Personally, I feel that some of the ones who are warning against reading The Shack are missing the main point, which is that God is committed to friendship with us and continually provides opportunities for that to happen. It may seem unlikely that the Trinity would show up in a cabin to help a struggling man, as happens in The Shack; indeed, I am not expecting that is actually going to happen to me or anyone I know. Yet the premise is not so far-fetched. God already did something "way out there" in the Incarnation. That Jesus would reside in the womb of a young Jewish girl and be born into this world in the same manner as you and I is incredible! And it shows the lengths God will/did go to in order to have a relationship with us.

Theology matters to me, greatly. I think it is easy, though, to grab onto certain theological concerns and miss something important the author is saying. As I mentioned to my friends, we hold C. S. Lewis in high regard for his great volume of work, and we should. Meanwhile, there are probably many evangelicals who assume that Lewis believed all the same things many of us believe, but that isn't true.

I was thinking about this on my way to work this morning, and I recalled an article I read years ago by J. I. Packer about C. S. Lewis, and I thought I would link to that in this post. It turns out that you have to pay to read the whole article, but if you're interested it is well worth it. Here is the link: http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1998/september7/8ta054.html.

Here is another article that points out some of the same things as the Christianity Today article: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/4749.htm.

Again, my point is, if we got all hung up on certain tenets of C. S. Lewis' theology we might never read his books, and we would be the poorer for it.