About Philip
Growing up in a strict, fundamentalist church in the southern USA, a young Philip Yancey tended to view God as “a scowling Supercop, searching for anyone who might be having a good time—in order to squash them.” Yancey jokes today about being in recovery from a toxic church. “Of course, there were good qualities too. If a neighbor’s house burned down, the congregation would rally around and show charity—if, that is, the house belonged to a white person. I grew up confused by the contradictions. We heard about love and grace, but I didn’t experience much. And we were taught that God answers prayers, miraculously, but my father died of polio just after my first birthday, despite many prayers for his healing.”
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him. “I felt I had been lied to. For instance, what I learned from a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or Black Like Me contradicted the racism I encountered in church. I went through a period of reacting against everything I was taught, and even discarding my faith. I began my journey back mainly by encountering a world very different than I had been taught, an expansive world of beauty and goodness. Along the way I realized that God had been misrepresented to me. Cautiously, warily, I returned, circling around the faith to see if it might be true.”
Ever since, Yancey has explored the most basic questions and deepest mysteries of the Christian faith, guiding millions of readers with him. Early on he crafted best-selling books such as Disappointment with God and Where is God When it Hurts? while also editing The Student Bible. He coauthored three books with the renowned surgeon Dr. Paul Brand. “No one has influenced me more,” he says. “We had quite a trade: I gave words to his faith, and in the process he gave faith to my words.” In time, he has explored central matters of the Christian faith, penning award-winning titles such as The Jesus I Never Knew, What’s So Amazing About Grace? and Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? His books have garnered 13 Gold Medallion Awards from Christian publishers and booksellers. He currently has more than 17 million books in print, published in over 50 languages worldwide. In his memoir, Where the Light Fell, Yancey recalls his lifelong journey from strict fundamentalism to a life dedicated to a search for grace and meaning, thus providing a type of prequel to all his other books.
Yancey worked as a journalist in Chicago for some twenty years, editing the youth magazine Campus Life while also writing for a wide variety of magazines. In the process he interviewed diverse people enriched by their personal faith, such as President Jimmy Carter, Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller, and Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement. In 1992 he and his wife Janet, a social worker and hospice chaplain, moved to the foothills of Colorado, and his writing took a more personal, introspective turn.
“I write books for myself,” he says. “I’m a pilgrim, recovering from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. Writing became for me a way of deconstructing and reconstructing faith. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living exploring the issues that most interest me.
“I tend to go back to the Bible as a model, because I don’t know a more honest book. I can’t think of any argument against God that isn’t already included in the Bible. To those who struggle with my books, I reply, ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be reading them.’ Yet some people do need the kinds of books I write. They’ve been burned by the church, or they’re upset about certain aspects of Christianity. I understand that feeling of disappointment, even betrayal. I feel called to speak to those living in the borderlands of faith.”
Hi Philip! I am a Christian and have been helped by many of your books. For the 6 months I have been wrestling a great deal with nihilism. Life can just feel so meaningless, and the world is filled with so much pain, I can’t understand why God made people at all. What’s the point of our earthly life?! It just seems like the bad far outweighs any good that can come of this short life.
I have recently read and resonate w/ Tolstoy (Anna Karenina) . I also resonate with the writer of Ecclesiastes. I am hoping you have some resources (that you have written or read) that deal with these hard realities but push me more toward hope and purpose.
Let me know. Thanks so much for your service to the hurting.
I know that acedia well. I’ve written a bit about it in 2 books: A Skeptic’s Guide to Faith and Disappointment with God–as well as in the memoir just published, Where the Light Fell. Simone Weil is one who understands…
Philip,
I am a huge fan and have read nearly
all of your books-multiple times! I grew up as a Pastor’s kid in a pretty strictly religious home. My experiences with the church, and personal hardships association with the PK life left me quite bitter and disillusioned. It certainly left me with feelings of disappointment with God! It really resonated with me when you spoke about disappointment with God being associated with the difference between the Jesus you learned about growing up in Sunday School and then the ‘Jesus You Never Knew’. As a Mother now, I am very cognizant of trying to avoid my children growing up with that image of Jesus and the gospel that I grew up with. Would you ever consider a children’s book or devotional?
Thank you for the encouragement. I’ve had some discussion about youth and children’s books. Still thinking about it…
Hello Philip, I’m Brazilian. My name is Ephraim. I was recently bombarded with advertisements, all over social networks, for a book of yours “The Question That Never Goes Away”. After seeing him so much in advertisements I started to ask myself, what question would that be?
I got the book through an app and started reading it. And it’s really very interesting. The issue of suffering and where is God in it. I send this message, as I think it is a very relevant issue, and I would like to suggest it as a theme to be worked on by the group of young people I am part of. But, I lack arguments, and mainly ideas on how to suggest this. And also work on the subject.
I would like to know if the brother would have any more books to recommend me, or any tips on passages that would be a good starting point to study more about the subject