Recently some family members were talking up The Shack by William P. Young. No one recommended the current #4 Amazon seller to me. I had to overhear about it.

I admit to having prissy thoughts when I did. I thought about other popular Christian books, such as Francine Rivers’ The Last Sin-Eater and Redeeming Love, which have had passionate followings. The former I remember only as a quick read, and the latter I recall as a kind of Christian soft-porn that tempts the reader to voyeuristically dwell on its sanctioned (and plentiful) sex scenes.

A sympathetic colleague shared an extra copy of The Shack with me so I could catch up on what the rest of the Christian world has been reading. And I have to say, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit since.

The Shack is the story of Mack, who, broken in the wake of the freak murder of his youngest daughter by a serial killer, has limped along under what the novel calls “The Great Sadness.” His relationships with his family and with God have been crippled by the weight of guilt and grief.

Mack receives a note from God in his mailbox, which invites him back to the scene of the murder, a small shack in the wilderness, to spend a weekend together. He lies to his wife about it and heads out in his friend’s truck, ready to confront the murderer or God—whomever shows up. The story is made up largely of the conversation between Mack and the tripartite Godhead (with a side conversation with Lady Wisdom).

The novel seems to prompt the kind of giggly jokes that come from (and here I sit, in a fragile wine glass of a house, chucking rocks) over-determined and self-consciously poetic prose. There’s one memorable bit, for instance, that compares a lump on the protagonist’s head to a humpback whale breaching through the wild waves of the protagonist’s thinning hair.  That image is immediately followed by a comparison of the protagonist’s sorry appearance to a sailor in Moby Dick. These images, while betraying a lovely habit of reading by the author, are regrettable.

Several of the motifs of God-portrayal over the last two decades in film appear here, such as anti-traditional perspective and the multi-cultural nod. The novel gives us the whole trinity: God is a black woman who goes by “Papa,” an Asian woman who goes by “Sarayu,” and a Jewish man whose name is probably apparent (Jesus).

The purpose of Mack’s weekend with God is largely conversational. They share a therapeutic discussion meant to get Mack through the grieving process, answer his questions about the goodness of God in the face of horrific suffering, and re-establish a relationship with God as the grounds of Mack’s flourishing as a human being.

At times, it’s hard for the novel to escape sounding like a theology textbook in what appears to be slightly coded, everyday speech. It does try to escape, though, by setting the conversations in episodes of biblically-reminiscent action: Mack learns to walk on water with Jesus, gardens with the Holy Spirit, sees a vision of his daughter with Lady Wisdom, and encounters his dead father with God the Father. We go through the list of questions posed by just about every believer: Why did God make mosquitoes? Why do bad things happen to innocent children? Does God do bad things to some people to help the spiritual life of other people? Why does God punish sin?  How can God love everyone in the whole world? What is humanness for?  How does heaven work?

Judging from the Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and its National Book Award Finalist companion book, Home, American readers are ready for some theology, even some sermons. Sermons can be comforting. Getting trustworthy thought from trustworthy figures is a rarity and the familiarity of authoritative speech is restful, somehow. But getting a sermon–or several–straight from God’s mouth, well, that takes things to a different level. Apparently, a more popular level, since The Shack is some 584 spots higher in the Amazon selling ranks than Home, even though it has had two more months to cool off in the public taste.

The Shack seems to function for many readers as a response to a theological ethic made famous in the Left Behind series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. It offers a God who rescues, revitalizes and heals rather than one that judges and destroys. It offers an individually focused God-in-the-details, in stark contrast to the cosmic judge of The Glorious Appearing, the final installment in the Left Behind books.

In the Left Behind series, Jesus has come for his followers and taken them away in the rapture, leaving behind for seven years those who have not received salvation. Those years are dramatic: the judgment of God rains down on the world as the anti-Christ comes and deceives the un-raptured. The books are famous for their plot-driven, page-turning action.

What isn’t as present in the Left Behind books is God, up close and personal. God takes the Christians away and leaves everybody else in the mess. We don’t get to see him very often. When Jesus does finally return, he speaks almost exclusively from the Script(ure). The Left Behind Jesus is a failure of imagination. Wrongly portraying him would be a kind of blasphemy, but without any imaginative leaps, there is no way of being right in the first place.

In The Shack, though, God is just as tough to identify with. This God at least comes into the novel’s mess to heal it. The drama is personal, the contact is personal, and the message is personal. The book’s theology is all about the nature of relationships. When God answers questions about evil in the world, he does it as he embraces Mack, cooking for him, sympathizing, and addressing things in ways he can hear and understand.

This is God as interested in the minutiae rather than the cosmic. God’s love is specific–often saying in the novel, “I am particularly fond of [so-and-so].” God, we are told through their conversations, doesn’t punish sin—sin punishes sin. For the author of The Shack, the sin that was committed in the Garden of Eden was the sin of independence, the rejection of a dependent relationship with God.

The Shack is a solace and a hope, an argument that God is always with us, and that he is about making all things new. However, the novel has its own theological dangers. While Left Behind at least made some attempt to address the global scope of God’s interest in humans, The Shack filters all its theology through the individual. The Shack shows us, at times, an insulated, regional spirituality, which doesn’t try to answer the global questions beyond those of Mack’s personal tragedy. An over-indulgence of this kind of focus can lead to the other end of the self-massaging spectrum from the vindication complex, one equally destructive to Christian mission.

Unlike Mack, my youngest daughter was not brutally murdered by a serial killer. But we’ve all got problems. I wouldn’t mind a weekend at the shack myself, God, in case you’re wondering. I have a few questions of my own.

Tiffany Eberle Kriner is Assistant Professor of English at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.