Writer: Chris Ahrens Illustration: Annika Nelson Paul Young’s book The Shack has been praised as a masterpiece and condemned as heresy but never ignored. The main objection comes from some Biblical literalists who object to Young’s playful portrayal of the Trinity. Still, most anyone looking should be able to uncover the heart of God in this fiction.

    There’s another shack that Paul likes to speak about, that dilapidated hovel within each of us that we try to cover over with everything from toothpaste to Botox. Like many of us, Paul was ashamed of his shack and ignored it until it threatened to destroy him. When he finally decided to look visit his run down soul [shack], it took all his courage to do the necessary work to fix it. Of course he had outside help (Let he who has ears understand).

    After an eleven-year visit, Paul Young emerged from the shack as a friendly guide to the rest of us pilgrims, challenging us to look back and see that the place we grew up in can be wonderful, if given proper maintenance. And, come to find out, it’s not the beachfront mansion, but our humble shack where the Son of Man, who had no place to lay his head, feels most at home.

What makes a house grand, it ain’t the roof or the doors . . .
—Tom Waits
The House Where Nobody Lives

Risen Magazine: Do you feel that pain is necessary to give birth to something good?
Paul Young: It’s like when your leg’s been in a cast for a few months. When you take the cast off there’s some pain involved. I think for a lot of us, the pain that’s been inflicted on us is going to require some pain to come out. It’s not that God requires pain to mature a person, but He will use whatever colors we bring to Him.

RM: You’ve talked about adultery in your past. Now that you’re famous isn’t adultery more likely than before? I mean, what do you do if you’re alone and some beautiful woman throws you her hotel room key?
PY: Oh, that’s easy; I take it down to the front desk and turn it in. [Laughs] Part of that question assumes you don’t know that I was in the shack for eleven years. My shack’s built out of some abandonment issues, some cultural inability to connect and sexual abuse as a child. Then, growing up with all the addictive behaviors that come from that. The process of coming to healing, those eleven years, I squeeze into a weekend for the main character in the book. Those eleven years set me free. I have no illusions about self-centered independent choices and the damage it does to me, and the people I care about. Also, I have walked into an understanding of the embrace of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is so precious to me, and I’m not about to give that away for a room key.
    I understand grace and I have freedom in my life. I have everything in this life that matters to me. By the time that I came out of the shack, I didn’t ever need to speak in front of anybody again. I didn’t need to write anybody. I didn’t need to do a great work for God. I live by the grace of one day at a time. As long as I do that I’m fine. Everything else is an imagination. A room key is an imagination of something that can give you something to fill the emptiness inside. I’m sorry, but I’ve got a God who loves me. I’ve got a wife who adores me. I’ve got children where I’m in the center of their great affection, and I’ve got grandchildren, which is like outasight! I’m a healed person not a coping person.

RM: Why do you think so many good church people trade the peace of God for adultery?
PY: A lot of times we try to control the environment around us, rather than open our eyes to the uncertainty of faith, cuz faith grows in uncertainty. Another piece of that answer is that we invest in the façade that’s outside the shack. The shack is the inside, the heart, the soul of a person that has been damaged and ruined and has been abused. The choices, the secrets, the lies, the addictions are all those things inside the shack. We are so ashamed of that that we build a façade and we hope that God will give us either a blue or a red pill, so that we don’t have to deal with the stuff in the shack, not realizing that it is what’s firing our motivations. That façade is what we want people and even God to believe in. If we lose that all we’re left with is the shack, the shame. When a situation comes up and that person offers you an alternative to your shame, it’s an imagination of unconditional love, which is so much of what adultery or infatuation is. It’s a way to love yourself through that person. We see this person, we see this reflection of our own need, but it’s ultima