Healing Through Films
The Shack 2017
What The Shack Taught Me About Forgiveness
When I first watched the Christian-based film The Shack, I didn’t expect it to open a doorway in my soul. The story follows a father whose young daughter goes missing during a family vacation, presumably abducted and murdered. What follows is not just a narrative about grief, but a profound spiritual journey into forgiveness, healing, and understanding the nature of God.
As someone who has carried deep emotional wounds and unresolved pain, the father’s story struck a nerve in me. Watching him blame himself for what happened, hold onto rage toward the man who took his daughter, and shut down emotionally felt painfully familiar. I, too, have held resentment toward people who hurt me—some intentionally, some through absence or emotional neglect. Forgiveness always felt impossible, like letting someone off the hook when they didn’t deserve it.
But The Shack challenged that belief.
When the father is invited into a divine encounter—with representations of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit—he begins to see that his view of justice, pain, and healing is limited. Through heart-wrenching conversations and moments of raw vulnerability, he learns that forgiveness is not excusing the wrong. It’s releasing the power that the pain holds over your life. It’s choosing to stop carrying what was never yours to fix.
One of the most powerful scenes for me is when the father admits he cannot forgive the man who hurt his daughter. Jesus doesn’t demand that he feel differently but gently walks with him through that pain. He’s given space to grieve and to rage—but also to see that his refusal to forgive is keeping him bound to the very trauma he wants freedom from.
That moment hit me like a flood.
I had always assumed that if I forgave, I was betraying myself—diminishing what had been done to me. But this film reminded me that forgiveness doesn’t diminish the wound; it acknowledges it fully. It simply says: “I will no longer let this wound define me.” That shift changed everything for me.
The storytelling in The Shack is soft yet deeply emotional. It doesn’t push theology. It invites conversation. It portrays God in a nurturing, nonjudgmental light—challenging traditional views in ways that might make some uncomfortable but deeply comforted me. The idea that God meets us where we are, even in our anger and heartbreak, brought a kind of peace I didn’t expect to find in a film.
Technically, the film is beautifully shot. Nature plays a strong symbolic role—lakes, forests, gardens—all elements that speak to me as someone on a healing journey. But more than aesthetics, what lingered was the feeling. The quiet realizations. The sacred pauses. The way the film gave permission to wrestle with God without shame.
Since watching The Shack, my understanding of forgiveness has evolved. I no longer see it as a one-time decision, but as a process—a spiritual practice, even. There are still moments when the old pain rises. But now, instead of stuffing it down or retaliating in my heart, I breathe and remember: God has already chosen me. I don’t need to hold on to what broke me to prove I was hurt. I can release it because healing is a holy act.
If you’re grieving, angry, or walking through pain that has hardened your heart, I encourage you to watch The Shack—not just as a film, but as a companion on your journey. You may not walk away with all the answers, but you may walk away with the beginning of peace.
One moment that stayed with me was when the character of God, portrayed as a nurturing woman named “Papa,” tells the father, “You’re not stuck because you can’t. You’re stuck because you won’t.” That line struck deep. It exposed something I didn’t want to admit that I had clung to my pain as a form of identity. I didn’t know who I was without the ache. Forgiveness felt like erasing the past—but it wasn’t. It was stepping into a new chapter, one where I didn’t have to keep reliving it.
The brilliance of The Shack lies in how gently it asks hard questions:
· Why do bad things happen?
· Where is God in the middle of tragedy?
· How do we reconcile faith with suffering?
Rather than giving tidy answers, it offers something more valuable permission to wrestle. Permission to feel angry at God, to shout, to fall apart, and still be held. For me, that was the beginning of trusting again—not just in God, but in the idea that life could be soft again after so much hardness.
I watched the film alone, but I didn’t feel alone. That, I think, is what makes The Shack more than a movie. It’s a mirror. It reflected my grief back to me in a way that was both uncomfortable and healing. It reminded me that grief is not a weakness—it’s a sacred kind of love with nowhere to go. And that forgiveness, real forgiveness, doesn’t mean forgetting—it means freeing myself from being tethered to someone else’s darkness.
Since watching the film, I’ve returned to it more than once. Each time, I notice something new. A line, a look, a silence. Each time, it peels back another layer of pain I hadn’t even named yet. And with every viewing, I become a little more open. A little more whole.
The Shack didn’t take away my pain. But it gave me language for it. It helped me believe that forgiveness wasn’t a betrayal of my hurt, but a declaration that I am more than what happened to me. I may still be healing, but I no longer believe healing is impossible. And that shift—however small—is sacred.
Watching The Shack helped me realize that cinema, at its best, is not just a mirror—it’s a guide. It doesn’t just show us who we are, but who we could become. It invites us to consider that healing is not linear, and that forgiveness is not weakness, but wisdom. The visual storytelling, the lingering silences, the symbolic journey—all of it worked together to slow me down emotionally; to let me feel the weight of things I’d buried for years.
In many ways, The Shack functions like spiritual art. Just as a poem or a painting can move something in us that words can’t quite reach, this film stirred something sacred. And I believe that’s what film, at its core, is capable of. Not just entertainment—but transformation.
It didn’t fix everything for me. But it offered a language for things I couldn’t name. A space where grief was valid. A place where forgiveness didn’t feel like surrender, but like strength. I carry that with me still.
In a world that often rushes us past our pain, The Shack dares to pause. It dares to hold space for grief and grace to exist side by side. That’s what makes cinema powerful—not just in what it shows, but in what it allows us to feel, release, and finally, understand.
That’s the kind of storytelling I want more of. The kind that doesn’t just end when the credits roll—but lingers, transforms, and reminds us that healing is possible.