Well I have to agree with you here, except for one thing, I haven’t read the “Shack” yet, but I am writing a book (fiction) which will easily draw the same kind of fire which the “Shack” has. So my comments may be a little one-sided, but I do have some insight.
God did not give us a bunch of mathematical formulas which always work the same way each time. He is a God of relationship and relationships with humans are fuzzy and inexact. Now God certainly doesn’t change in essentials, but He is endlessly creative and always has been, when He told His simple stories (parables) and taught the disciples He was starting a process which didn’t end with the crucifixion or the resurrection. The disciples kept learning from Him (through His Spirit) for the rest of their lives. There are several places in the gospels where the writer says the disciples remembered that Jesus had said this later after the resurrection. There is even the prospect (and I know some theologians will hate this one) that God speaks different lessons to different individuals at different times with the same passages. Yeah my God is that big (even bigger) and yours is too. He is infinitely creative, there may be people who need the particular emphasis of the “Shack” to deal with some very personal problems, of course God knows this, and the human theologian doesn’t.

After all, the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well would have produced reams and reams of well reasoned criticism from the theologians of the day ( yeah, those pesky pharisees again). So whether I like a book or not, if God was instrumental in the writing of it, it will help someone somewhere according to His plan and not ours.

As an example, I would like to site the firestorm of criticism which followed Madame Guyon’s book about the Song of Solomon, She served time in the Bastille for her simple and I think pious efforts to bring people into a deeper relationship with the Lord. More than a few of the early protestant leaders were deeply influenced by her writings. The roman catholic theologians had them burned (except for Fenelon who remained her friend).

So how do we evaluate this story, the “Shack”, well you know maybe we shouldn’t, but we should approach the Lord in humility and listen to what He has to say about it, and stop listening to men who may not have a heart for the Lord at all.

As far as correction goes, someone correcting me should cause me to seek the Lord about it and to take it seriously if it is truly from Him, but as you well know there is no shortage of busybodies and naysayers in the church who should rightly be ignored. We don’t allow infants to drive cars do we. No we don’t. So we shouldn’t allow the spiritually immature to affect us when they are off base. We should have the spiritual sense and humility to check with the “Boss” about it.

So I appreciate how candid you are in saying that you like the book, perhaps it helped you in ways you haven’t noticed yet. And I don’t think you owe the theologians anything for liking it, much less an apology, if they really are spiritual they will get over it.