A couple months ago I received a copy of Mega Belt by Nick May to review for Energion Publications. May’s goal in this writing is to write a believable fictional account of a young man named Gil. Gil’s life reflects the experiences Mays’ has had in the Bible Belt and with Mega Churches. May uses irony and satire to engage his reader throughout his recounting of Gil’s memories.

Each chapter in Mega Belt covers various life experiences an average churcher1 would have in the Bible Belt. The chapters cover things like our Easter Sunday traditions, Ice Cream socials, Youth Group, Mega Churches, hitting Rock Bottom, and more. If you are from the North (as I am) you may find it difficult to relate to many of Gil’s experiences. However, there are times when a lot of these traditions and questions posed by Gil will reflect some of your own experiences, regardless of where you call home.

For me the first few chapters of this book were slow and fairly dry. It started to get more interesting around halfway through the book. I really felt like the last two chapters were the best chapters. May admits in his foreword that most of his readers will “hate how it ends.” [XI] Frankly, I thought the end was fine. I didn’t expect a huge conclusion to Gil’s thoughts, I felt like this book represented the beginning for Gil. I think most people on a journey with Jesus will share some of Gil’s frustrations and are probably around the same place spiritually that May left us with him.

I give this book 3 out of 5 Circus Peanuts. It is a fairly short and easy read. I did not think there was much insight was given, but May was just trying to tell a story, so you shouldn’t expect much insight.

The Plot

Avatar takes place on the planet Pandora. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a blue humanoid species, with feline characteristics. The Na’vi are also much taller and stronger than humans. Pandora is filled with wondrous flora and fauna, unlike anything seen on Earth. It also has large deposits of a rare mineral called Unobtainium.

The RDA corporation, run by humans, has landed on Pandora and is trying to harvest this rare and expensive mineral for profit. One of the largest deposits of Unobtainium is right beneath a large Na’vi tribe. The only option for RDA is to move the Na’vi to a different location, any way they can.

A scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) developed a way to combine Human DNA with Na’vi DNA. These Na’vi are called Avatars. Each Avatar has a single “host” who controls it — basically whoever’s DNA they used to create it. The humans mind is then connected to the Avatar’s mind which allows the human to go out in Pandora to interact with it’s surroundings as a Na’vi might.

The main character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is put into the Avatar program by happenstance. He is an ex-Marine, paraplegic and is used by RDA Corporation to negotiate the Na’vi’s eviction. With the promise of getting his “legs back” he becomes torn between his growing love for the Avatars and his orders.

The 3D

I really thought the 3D added to this movie, the planet Pandora was remarkably beautiful and the 3D added to its believability. James Cameron (the creator of Avatar) worked long and hard to create what he created and succeed greatly in imagining this beautiful world. This was my first 3D movie, in a long time. The last one I remember was an IMAX movie at the Bostom Museum of Science with Red and Blue glasses. Cameron actually had a special camera developed to create a new “3D” for this movie. I still felt like this 3D gave me a bit of a headache. In my opinion, the problem with fake 3D is that your brain feels like it should be able to focus on certain objects, but the director wants you to focus on different objects. In real life, if a sword point is right in your face, you can focus on the tip of the sword or the person holding it. In a 3D movie, if you try to focus on the tip of the sword, but the camera man is only focused on the person holding it, your brain freaks out and gives you headache. At least, that’s how I think it works :).

So, yes, I did leave Avatar with a slight headache, but it was worth it just to see the 3D version of this movie.

The Movie

In order to truly critique Avatar you have to compare it to Star Wars. Why? Because James Cameron’s goal with Avatar was to beat the socks off of George Lucas [1]. Cameron has actually been working on Avatar since 1995… probably before that in his mind, since he was inspired to become a director after watching Star Wars. However, the technology was not where it needed to be in 1995, so he had to sit on it… and he sat on it for a long time. But he wasn’t just sitting, he was working on helping improve 3D by convincing Sony to develop a special 3D camera. Then he had to work on getting buy-in for 3D projects from movie theatres, which required him to support other movies going 3D before he could do Avatar. He worked with a linguist to create the a language for the Na’vi to speak, they named all the flora and fauna on Pandora, with Na’vi words, English words, and Latin words. I really get the impression he has spent his whole career on trying to beat Lucas – even if it was only the past 15 years.

So, what did I think of the movie? Well, Cameron succeed in making a much better version of The FernGully. The plots between Avatar and FernGully are almost identical.If you do not remember the movie, it was animated, and put out by FOX back in 1992. I actually remember it fondly and thought it was a good movie when I was 12.

The differences between The FernGully and Avatar are:

1. The protagonists in FernGully were harvesting trees from the rain forest, not Unobtainium from Pandora.
2. The victims were magical fairies, not the Na’vi.
3. The “hero” was a logger who was accidentally “shrank” to fairy size by one of the fairies to save him from being crushed by a falling tree, not an ex-marine turned into an Avatar.

Other than that, the plots are very similar. Of course The FernGully was a lot more silly because it was a childrens movie and Avatar is much more mature. I do find the similarities/differences to be quite humorous though.

Do I think that Avatar is going to be the next Star Wars? Well, it’s hard to say. Star Wars was a like nothing ever seen before in the theatres. It was also big enough to have a franchise created from it. Avatar is like nothing ever seen before in theatres, but I’m not sure its big enough to have a franchise created from it. Star Wars took place in the Universe, not just a single planet with a single victim. In Star Wars thousands of components and characters worked together and against each other. In Avatar, it was just one group of victims, one group of protagonists, and one group of heroes. All of the success Star Wars had, plus a driving vision from George Lucas allowed Star Wars to become a huge franchise. I have no idea what Cameron’s vision is for the next “Avatar” (if there will be one)… but if he wants to beat Lucas, he needs to have one. Right now, all Avatar has is beautiful CG and a borrowed plot.

That’s not to say that Avatar was bad, it was good, it was really good. I felt very connected with the characters, the movie made me wish I was on Pandora and that I had the ability to be an Avatar, to experience what Jack Sully was experiencing. I would recommend seeing this movie, especially in 3D.

I have to give this movie 4.5 Circus Peanuts. Cameron succeeded in pouring his life work into this movie and coming out with something great… I hope he can continue the franchise like Star Wars, but I doubt it will happen. But they did make a sequel to FernGully, so I could be wrong.

Check out Speck’s website for more information about their cases and other products.

I purchased mine from TechNGnet at Amazon.

Challies concludes his review by warning his readers, “That The Shack is a dangerous book should be obvious from this review. . . . I urge you, the reader, to exercise care in reading and distributing this book. . . . Read it only with the utmost care and concern, critically evaluating the book against the unchanging standard of Scripture.”

Although I do disagree that The Shack is a dangerous book to read, I agree that we should all read it with care and concern, prayerfully and critically evaluating the book against Scripture. What concerns me most about The Shack is not the book itself, but the negative reviews I have read about the book. Most of these reviewers are very influential among their respective church cultures. They have turned a whole society of Christians against Young without ever laying an eye on The Shack. Claiming that Young is promoting Goddess worship, universalism, inclusivism, modalism, and more is just inaccurate. When I read these reviews I always wonder if the reader had actually read The Shack or if they skimmed through it looking for what could be wrong with it.

In the introduction of this series, I mentioned that a recent Facebook conversation resparked my desire to write this review. During that conversation I said, “I would be interested in finding out how many people commenting on this thread have actually read the book.” I find it interesting that none of the people giving The Shack a negative review said whether or not they had read the book. The only people who actually read The Shack were the people giving it positive reviews.

What I found most scary was when someone told me that I was being unreasonable to expect reviewers of The Shack to actually read the book. This mindset seems prevalent among some Christian leaders. The justification is “when a member of my church explains the nature of God in an entirely erroneous fashion and then proceeds to tell me that the book The Shack was instrumental in formulating her ideas, I have every reason to be concerned about what she has read, regardless of whether or not I have personally read it.” To which I must respond it is very irresponsible to pass judgment and elude to discernment about something we have never experienced/read. Just because someone comes away from a book with some “off-the-wall” ideas does not mean that the book teaches those ideas. Some prominent examples would be, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentacostals, Baptists, Catholics, etc. and that is after reading/studying the Bible! Not a fictional book written by an author who admits it is purely a metaphor.

To conclude, The Shack, is definitely a controversial book. Before you pass judgment on it, please take the time to read it yourself. Read it prayerfully, discerningly, and compare it to what is revealed to us in Scripture. You may find that the negative reviews written about it are mostly out of context.

Is Young 100% correct in his theology? Probably not, but I do not expect any of us are. Young is talking about the journey we are all on towards Jesus, I do not suppose we will be perfect in our theology until Jesus comes back.

Related: Check out this interview of William P. Young from CBN.

The last section of Challies review is, Trinity: Who is God? He starts of by asking a simple question, “does The Shack teach what the Bible teaches [about the Trinity]?” [11] The simple answer is probably not, because the Bible does not really teach much about the Trinity. However, The Shack does explain the Trinity in a very easy to understand way. Challies immediately goes on a tangent claiming that Young is sinning by portraying God and the Holy Spirit in a human form. Claiming that the “Bible is clear that God cannot and must not be portrayed in an image” [11] is a not accurately describing the Bible. There are many instances within Scripture where God is given human attributes — Exodus 7:5, “I stretch out My hand;” Numbers 6:24, “The Lord make His face shine on you;” Psalm 34:15, “The eyes of the Lord;” Psalm 89:10, “Thy mighty arm.” Furthermore, Young is not truly presenting God as a human figure. God admits, in The Shack, that their forms are not their actual forms. They are representing themselves to Mack as a way to relate to him.

Challies goes on to attack Young’s view of hierarchy. However, this again becomes a verbal dispute. Challies assumes because Young says that there is no hierarchy between the Trinity, then there is no submission between the Trinity. But Young never claims that, in fact, quite the opposite – Jesus does submit to Papa in The Shack. Further, in The Shack, when they discuss their relationship as the Trinity, they are discussing it as a relationship with no need for hierarchy. They have such a “good” relationship, that they can submit to one another without a predefined ranking order. This is not a Scriptural idea, but it’s not a unScriptural idea. Challies’ (and other traditional Christians) idea that hierarchy exists between the Trinity is also not Scriptural and it is also not unScriptural. Challies’ complaint is one of traditional understanding, not one of Scriptural purity – although he seems to confuse the two.

Challies brings up Young’s view of distinction, complaining that Young blurs the lines of that personhoods of the Trinity. He questions The Shack saying, “In one of his first encounters with Papa, ‘Mack
noticed the scars in her wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his’ (95). Note that these scars were present on the wrists of the Father and not just the Son.” [14] Claiming that Young believes that the Father was on the cross. However, it is quite clear that since Papa admits that he is neither male nor female, then Young is clearly using physical symbolism to represent truth. The truth that Young is claiming is that Jesus sacrifice was felt by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as well. This is not too hard to believe, afterall, do not most traditional Christians believes that the Godhead was changed when God the Son became man? I do not think that Young is blurring the lines of personhood here, he is showing God the Father as a compassionate person of the Trinity.

Many follow Challies here in discussing Young’s attempt at revealing God as a female. Claiming that Young is teaching Goddess worship or worse. Challies himself Pidgeon-holes himself by saying that because God has revealed himself in the masculine in Scripture then Young has no right to allow God to reveal himself as a fat black woman in The Shack. Even though Papa admits, “I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.” (93) Later Papa reveals himself to Mack as a male figure. (218-219) Papa does this because Mack is about to go through a particularly hard time and Papa wanted to reveal himself in a way that would comfort Mack the most. This is not Goddess worship at all, this is God revealing himself in a special way to someone who needs him.

To Challies “one of the most disturbing aspects of The Shack is the behavior of Mack when he is in the presence of God.” His complaint was that Mack does not act as awe struck as Isaiah (Isaiah 6), Moses (Exodus 3:6). Although it is true that these people had a distant, even scary, encounter with God… does not the Gospel allow us to enter the presence of the Father through Jesus? Not to mention, The Shack is not about the awesome power of God. The Shack is about God comforting and teaching one of his children. Mack may not be in awe of God, but it is because of Mack’s anger towards God. There are numerous Christians in this world this very day who are angry with God. Whether or not that is right is besides the point. Young does not claim that Mack’s attitude is right – in fact – the very nature of this book is to claim that Mack’s attitude towards God is unjustified.

Challies ends this section asking, “Should God allow in His presence the very sins for which He sent His Son to die? Would a man stand before the Creator of the Universe and curse? What kind of God is the God of The Shack?” Which only indicates that Challies did not understand the point of The Shack and seemingly does not understand propitiation or sin.