Re-posted from Malvern
Friday, March 3, 2017
By:
Joshua Waddles
How do you explain the concept of a loving God to someone who’s been through hell?
The first thing I liked about The Shack was how it didn’t flinch away from reality. Setting up the backstory for the protagonist, Mack, the movie showed a horrible real life situation. At first I thought they were going to give an easy, feel-good answer. But they didn’t. Life doesn’t give easy solutions to horrible problems and neither did the movie.
There were a couple of things that I really liked about the movie, but can’t really explain or it would be giving too much away. This is one of those movies that is based on mystery and questions. And I liked most of those questions.
I will say that some of those questions seemed a little generic for someone who was dealing with a crisis of faith after losing a kid. At least early on. But when they started on the subject of judgment, that’s when the movie really picked up for me and made me say, “I never thought of it that way.”
This is the strength of the movie: the religious philosophy. The Shack dealt with a wide variety of issues in a way I haven’t seen very often. The premise is also a brain twister. If you could talk to God, what do you think God would say?
One thing I need to note is that this movie is sad. I had to think about Pokémon to stop from tearing up through most of it. So step in to The Shack if you like sad movies or religious philosophy.
