God, Hell and ‘The Shack’
In this final segment of my interview with William P Young about his top-selling book The Shack
Paul and I hash out things like:
- Why The Shack character Mack doesn’t seem too phased in God’s presence.
- Whether God will punish us for our sins.
- How much of God we can know through the Old Testament, and through Jesus.
- The nature of hell.
There is more discussion of hell, universalism and whether Paul believes everyone will get to heaven one day in the full interview transcript published in Open House Volume 2. But I’m sure this will give you much to think about.
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Q: What do you believe about heaven, hell and God’s judgement of people?
January 7, 2011
David Pascoe
Astounding that 4m people have read The Shack. I was a bit unsure of how much to take literally from the book and thought quite a lot about what to take away. Seeing how well he speaks makes me realise he did think quite deeply about his book.
Sheridan Voysey
Actually, the last figure I hears was 11 million copies sold, and that’s probably now out of date. It’s been quite a phenomenon. Paul’s certainly thought deeply about every aspect of the book. It is still an alegory though.
Mis4Margaret
Ive known Paul since the latter 70’s and he is the most gifted writer thinker beyond his years .I didnt know he hadnt written a book until last year 2010 when one of my co workers showed me. I am absolutely amazed. He also if those dont know participated on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with Regis Philbin in 1990 something and won. That was that last I knew. And here he is.
Sheridan Voysey
I didn’t know about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire part of the story! The rest of Paul’s story, however, is most moving – as you’d now know.