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.”
I’m so grateful to Philip Yancey for helping me understand modern Christianity better. I was born and raised Catholic before joining the Protestant church after a spiritual awakening. I always feel like I’m five steps behind everyone else. I am constantly baffled by opinions I hear Christians say and by the state of the church vis-à-vis a suffering world. Jesus tells me to love others, to seek out the marginal, to not be a respecter of persons, and to seek His will because this is not our home and we have to make a difference while we can. He doesn’t tell me to point fingers or join a country club church or sentimentalize or politicize or trivialize this great Gospel. Jesus has my faith well in hand but Philip Yancey has helped me keep my sanity. He is asking the questions I’m asking inside and- hallelujah! ~ supplying me with answers that actually make sense. What a relief.
Gulp–I’m blushing. And so appreciative that you took the time to write and remind me why I go to work each day
–Philip
Dear Philip,
My ladies small group have voted to read “Disappointment With God” this fall – a unanimous vote, which may tell you that we are all struggling with this issue! Among us we have chronic and invisible illnesses (such as terminal cancer, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue to name a few), broken families, unemployed spouses, wayward children, difficult marriages, alcoholism, financial struggles, etc.
I have been looking for a study guide to go along with this book – tried Amazon and Christianbook.com as well as your site here, but I gather there isn’t one. So I am wondering if there is some kind of a generic guide you can point us to, questions to ask while we read the weekly chapters and for discussion when we meet? This is the first Philip Yancey book most of us have read so we are excited to explore this “new” author and his writings, and hopefully gain some clarification on this topic. The reviews and samples of your books I have read are very encouraging! Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
Thank you so much and may God continue to bless you and your writing!
Heather
A new edition will be published this fall which includes discussion questions. I hope that helps. –Philip
I want you to know how much your journey through your writings has impacted my life. Our paths have crossed over the years but I have never had the privilege of meeting you. I attended CIU from ’99-’03 and first saw your book “The Jesus I never knew” on the nightstand in the alumni center when my parents came up for a visit one weekend. I think you spoke at a conference one week but I was unable to attend. Anyway, I have wanted to contact you for a long time and just tell you the impact your writings have had on my life. I grew up in the South as well and resonate with many of the things your share around race and healing from church contexts. More than anything though, I have grown immensely from your work on the issue of pain and feeling ‘disappointed’ by God. I grew up with a dad who was very academic minded and I was never a good student, in fact, “What’s so Amazing about Grace” which I read after my first semester at CIU, made we want to read again and hope that God could find something meaningful for me to do in this life, in spite of feeling like a broken soul, with little potential. I am still struggling on this journey of life and brokenness but have been spurred on to keep laying down my burdens one day at a time. Thank you for your ministry.