“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”

Mack’s friend Willie offers these reflections in the Foreword, laying the groundwork for the novel’s themes relating to suffering and relationship. He also notes the importance of perspective. In his estimation of the difficulty outsiders might have understanding the grace portrayed in Mack’s situation, he anticipates some of the responses that The Shack has received.

“It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.”

This quote comes from the expository narration (presumably written by Willie) of Mack’s difficult emotional journey while dealing with Missy’s disappearance. It speaks to the difficulties of walking through a period of life like “the Great Sadness,” in which grief often mingles with self-blame.

“There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn’t mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.”

This reflection comes from the opening of Chapter 5, and in its immediate context it points to Mack’s decision to go to the shack in the hope that the mysterious note might actually be an invitation from God. The idea that God would send such an invitation, or that an experience like the one at the shack could happen, might strike many as irrational, even though nothing about it contradicts the laws of logic. This same dynamic, the novel suggests, also applies to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which Chapter 5 later introduces.