Shacking Up With Heresy

 The Vatican II sect sees nothing wrong with anything, so it's no surprise that there was no denunciation of a planned movie to be based on William Paul Young's blockbuster "Christian" novel The Shack. The Christian Post has reported that shooting will begin on The Shack film this summer by Lionsgate Films. The headline read: "Oprah, Forrest Whitaker, Idris Elba to Star in Controversial 'Shack' Movie." I suggest that Traditionalists prepare to give answers to Shack movie viewers concerning the Trinity and the nature of God, since the Vatican II sect members will be clueless (at best), or supportive (at worst).

 For those who haven't heard of the book, here is the synopsis given by Amazon.com:

""Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness.
Four years later in the midst of what he refers to as 'The Great Sadness,' Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.
Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.
In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant 'The Shack' wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?"

This self-published book has sold nearly twelve million copies since its May 2007 release. It debuted at #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List and remained at either #1 or #2 for an astounding 87 weeks. It has also held the #1 position on many other bestseller lists, including Amazon.com, USA Today's Top 150 Books, Barnes and Noble and Borders Books and was the #1 book of 2008 at ChristianBook.com. According to the author, in late 2008 the book was selling at a rate of 87,000 copies a week in the secular book stores alone. All of this has allowed Young and his two publishing partners the luxury of holding out for just the right major motion picture deal as well.

 So, what's the big deal? Isn't it good that a "Christian" book is well-received? Don't be fooled. The underlying theme of the book is "universalism"--the heresy that everyone goes to Heaven. (You can be sure Mr. Jorge "Atheists can go to Heaven" Begoglio keeps a copy by his bedside).

The Most Holy Trinity is blasphemed by Young. God is portrayed in The Shack as a large African-American woman named "Papa," also called "Elousia." (perhaps a play for so-called "LGBT" perverts?).  Jesus is a Jewish carpenter complete with a tool belt, and the Holy Ghost is depicted as an Asian woman named after "Sarayu," a mystical river in ancient India related to the Hindu deity Kali. Clearly, there is a "trinity" in The Shack but it is absolutely not the Most Holy Trinity.

Here's a short list of some pertinent problems:

•  Young's "Papa" character insists that sin is its own punishment. This distorts the reality of Hell and discounts eternal retribution for sin.

•  Readers of The Shack are told that Jesus is only the best way to know God – not the only way.

•  The Shack teaches that, when Jesus went to the cross, God Almighty died there, too. This is a heresy known as patripassianism. 

•  The Shack states that there is no structure or hierarchy within the Trinity and that the three personages of God are all equally subject to one another and to humans as well.

 If all the above weren't bad enough, the whole book reeks of universalism, the tenets of which are as follows:

1) God wills all his creatures, people and angels, to be saved and to acknowledge Jesus as Lord; and God’s will cannot be thwarted  

2) God’s attribute of love limits his attribute of justice(!) It is unjust for a loving God to send people who have lived a short life to an eternal (everlasting) Hell. 

3) God has already reconciled all creatures—all humanity and all angels—to himself by the atonement of Jesus Christ at the cross. 

4) This reconciliation will be applied to all people either before death or after death, and to all the fallen angels, including Satan. 

5) For those who do not accept salvation by faith in this life God will provide salvation by sight after they have died. 

6) Faith is necessary to appropriate reconciliation in this life; God’s love delivers unbelievers (and fallen angels, including Satan) from Hell in the next life. 

7) The sufferings of Hell are not punitive, penal, or eternal, but corrective, restorative, purifying, cleansing, and limited in duration.

8) Hell is not forever, but will cease to exist after all people and the fallen angels, including Satan, have been delivered and enter Heaven.

 

9) God has acted as the Judge of all at the cross; there is not a future judgment for anyone.

 

10) Universalism is the teaching of the Bible. It is the teaching of Jesus. 

11) Universalism was the majority belief of the Church for the first five centuries.

 

12) The Church is an obstacle to universalism. All institutions including the Church and the government are systems of hierarchy that use power to control people. Young in The Shack has "Jesus" say that they are diabolical and that he never created any of them, i.e. there is no One True Church. 

 And isn't this in agreement with Bergoglio's sentiment that "proselytism is nonsense" and "There is no Catholic God?" Sadly, with once beautiful Catholic churches "wreck-o-vated" into looking like a shack, soon they may have some joker "deacon" reading from The Shack, too. (Gotta keep those "readings" at the Novus Bogus relevant, right?).