if you haven’t yet read The Shack by William P. Young, you might want to look away now.

This hugely successful book is the story of Mack (Mackenzie) Philips, whose daughter, Missy, is abducted and killed during a family vacation. In the opening chapters, you discover that Missy’s body was never found. However, the police did find evidence in an abandoned shack to prove that she had been brutally murdered by a notorious serial killer.

Living in the shadow of this Great Sadness, Mack one day receives a strange note, apparently from God, inviting him to return to this shack for a meeting.

What should you do when you come to the door of a house, or cabin in this case, where God might be? Should you knock? Presumably God already knew that Mack was there. Maybe he ought to simply walk in and introduce himself, but that seemed equally absurd. And how should he address him? Should he call him Father, or Almighty One, or perhaps Mr. God, and would it be best if he fell down and worshipped, not that he was really in the mood.

As he tried to establish some inner mental balance, the anger that he thought had so recently died inside him began to emerge. No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door. Mack decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman.

So far, so good. The story moves powerfully between the traumatic reality of human sorrow and contingent existence, on the one hand, and the suspicion of a higher being, on the other, who can pull these broken pieces into some kind of meaningful whole. Personally, I loved the element of surprise. Who would have thought that, having knocked on heaven’s door, Mack would find himself standing face to face with ‘God’ in the form of an African-American woman?

That’s good storytelling.

If only Young had not tried so hard. The problem, you see, is that no sooner has Mack stepped into the notorious Shack, we find ourselves sitting down listening to a long and tedious extrapolation of vaguely traditional Christian doctrine. And believe me, it is hard going!

In my mind, I find myself turning each page, wishing that Mack would get up, run out of the Shack, down the hill and back into the ‘real life’; back to the deeply touching story that was helping me understand so much about who I was and what it means to be a father in love with his children.

Of course, I might be on my own here but the problem with The Shack is that, at a certain point, it stops being playful.

Bear with me for a moment, step back a little and consider what we tend to do when we reach life’s limits: we play. Play activity offers us a safe ‘resting place’, away from the work-a-day world, in which to explore what we find most challenging in our lives. Childhood stories of witches, pirates, wicked step-mothers, dragons and unhelpful elves are all ‘rehearsals’ that help us face our fears and understand the complex – sometimes dangerous – real worlds we are born into. Even ‘church’ has sometimes been understood as a playground: a safe space in which we dress up, dream of a better world, tell stories and draw upon powerful symbols – all in an attempt to ‘make sense’ of life, death and everything in-between.

As a story unfolds, I am pulled into Mack’s tragic loss. I find myself, in my imagination, standing alongside him and frantically searching for Missy; and, when I realise she is not coming back, just as frantically searching for the God who could possibly allow this shit.

And then it happens. The light comes on. The curtain comes down. The magic spell is broken.

It is like my mother walking into the living room during a film, turning off the tv and telling me it’s time for dinner.

Game over.

David Willows is Director of External Relations at the International School of Brussels.  

David’s blog, Fragments: A storytelling approach to life and work, can be found here.