Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi has indeed changed my outlook on life, through beautiful fiction.

But don’t take my word for it: “This is a story that will make you believe in God,” Pi notes; the Los Angeles Times Book Review says on the book’s cover, “A story to make you believe in the soul-searching power of fiction”; the lone reader goodbadi adds, “Pretty sharp poke at religion.”

Indeed, this story does just what I think makes a sweet read also great: in its own entity it enacts exactly that which it demolishes by its self enactment, in this case religion.

Pi tells a fabulous tale, one that his skeptics at the end of the novel embrace as True over an alternative explanation. At the same time, throughout the book Pi professes the beauty of his three religions–Judaism, Islam, and Christianity–all of which he accepts as relevant and True. This is exactly what the readers of this book must do, too: even though we ultimately know that nothing in Martel’s novel actually happened, we find it necessary to choose what story or stories–if any–we believe.

The bigger idea, then, is that choosing a religion is a mere selecting of a beautiful tale (or, as in Pi’s case, several tales) to be accepted as True whether or not factual reality is accommodating. Many ardent believers, for example, include Genesis 6:4 in their “True” religious stories: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God went to the daughters of the human beings and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” Does this mythologically bizarre story’s presence in sacred text make it true or True, story or Story?

Martel makes his pretty sharp poke at religion by showing appreciation for story–and then leaving it at that. Factual reality is not necessary that which is True. Lower-case story does not beat out Story, whether or not the Story really happened.

In Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack, a certain Mack suffers what must be a parent’s worst nightmare, gets angry at God, and then is invited to meet with God for a weekend rendezvous where he experiences grace and love and finds the ability to forgive. Judging from a quick look at theshackbook.com‘s community of people sharing “(((hugs)))” from “Papa,” and the testimonial back-cover praise from Michael W. Smith and Wynonna Judd, the book’s popularity seems to derive from an emotional ache in many people, their need for fully unconditional love and communion.

The book is, in fact, a touching and emotional work of fiction, albeit belabored, with poor character development and writing that has me craving some John Ruskin to reestablish my literary self respect. (And certainly some of the presented ideas don’t hold water, in my view. The premise that God is about relationship, not intervention, leaves me wondering why God would allow the nightmare to happen but then would set up Mack’s encounter–an intervention if ever there was one. Nor can I see Jesus telling Mack, “Seriously, my life was not meant to be an example to copy.”)

Perhaps the most helpful part of the book for me is when the Holy Spirit says that her “very essence is a verb. I am more attuned to verbs than nouns.” For example, she says, consider the words “responsibility and expectation [which were] nouns with movement and experience buried inside of them; the ability to respond and expectancy.” Never mind that “expectancy” shares nounship with the two words in question; her point is that “expectant experience” is fluid and emergent, whereas the noun “expectation” is legalistic and laden with performance expectations.

Says she, the Spirit, “Religion must use law to empower itself and control the people who they need in order to survive,” which to me sounds a lot like Nietzsche or someone who wrote that religion came about when weak people, lacking physical prowess, claimed priestly authority in order to survive. But authority, rules, and expectations don’t play into the picture, in Young’s “Papa’s” eyes–just fluid relationships.

The book–and I think this would be the thesis–posits God as loving and forgiving and as grace endowing as all get out, hellbent on relationship with the rest of us (“I will travel any road to find you,” Jesus tells Mack). Young pictures this sort of characterization in creative, interesting, and dazzling descriptions of natural beauty and brilliantly colored, supernatural light shows coupled with friendly theological discussion. It’s shacking up at its best, with a most freeing divine consciousness.

I’ve written previously about a different Mack, one whose faith-redeeming experience consists of meeting not God but the devil. Each Mack’s story is a narrative as told to the narrator, a literary shoring up of the work’s fictional status that allows the narrator–and the author–to be personally unaccountable for any fallacies. That said, a note on the back cover of Young’s book suggests to me that this literary creating of a highly personal, warm, and (in some ways) interested God is not expected to be considered as mere fiction: “[Young] suffered great loss as a child and young adult, and now enjoys the ‘wastefulness of grace’….” Should I read this book as an interesting novel, or as a spiritual guidepost, or as the fruit of extensive trauma therapy? Or all three?

The dismissal of personal spiritual experience is not my aim, but I wouldn’t mind discounting inaccurate expectations regarding getting warm and fuzzy with God (as if I possess the expertise to do any of these things!). Unfortunately, The Shack seems to set up such a system of expectation–but even as it does so, it maybe inadvertently disallows even that system. In the book, after Jesus says that he is loved by people “from every system that exists,” Mack asks, “Does that mean that all roads will lead to heaven?” Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere.”

“Warm and fuzzy,” in my book, is one such road–which should be replaced with a spirituality of “ambiguous expecting.”