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.”
To contact Philip,
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email Joannie: pyasst@aol.com
Hi!
I’m sure a blog comment isn’t the best way to contact you, but I saw that you’d been recently answering them, so I thought I’d give it a go! I have been around chronic sickness my whole life – and recently began writing about what it looks like to love people with chronic sicknesses, day in and day out as we Watchers are hurting too. My blog is called Calledtowatch.com, and as I prepared to make it ‘live’, I read your book “Where is God when it hurts?” which had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while.
I admit I began it rather cynically (in fact, without the first few paragraphs on ‘Watching’, I don’t know if I would have made it through the ‘pain is actually good’ part). I’d read too many ‘responses’ to suffering which merely seem to say: ‘sickness is a product of the Fall, and God will heal it one day’. Of course that is true, but also rather clinical. It only scratches the surface – because we don’t want to know so much ‘why’, I think, but ‘what now?’ How do we live in light of this?
I very much enjoyed your book, and was utterly floored by one of the first sentences (“we can only Watch”) – which represents the essence of my entire collection of work and thought! To think that someone else had thought it too, separately, at a different time and country. Such an encouragement. I had secretly been afraid that perhaps what I was reflecting and writing and praying about would not be helpful to anyone besides myself.
I just wanted to thank you for your book, to let you know I listed it in the ‘resources’ section of my website, and to explain that although what you wrote is at times exactly what I wrote I didn’t know that until after! Writing (especially about such a sensitive topic) is hard and I deeply appreciate the time and effort and struggle you put into it.
You are doing very important work, Emily, and I’m delighted to hear that we’ve come to some similar conclusions. You are on the front lines; I sit in an office in isolation and write. My partnership with Dr. Paul Brand was transformative for me. We wrote more in a book called The Gift of Pain. Thank you so much for taking the time to write. –Philip
I have started to read through your book on prayer. However, it does not look as though it will address a question I am interested in. A penny for your thoughts: In thinking about prayer, it seems out of balance. If we receive all good things from God, it is hard to see what God receives from us. What would you say God receives from us? Thank You,
Pleasure. Several times the Epistles urge us to bring God pleasure. I see it as parallel to what a parent feels when a child learns to walk, or choose well, or loves. Our human pleasure is a mere glimpse of what God must feel. –Philip
In receiving all good things from God, we are greatly benefited. If I choose well, and God is pleased, how is God benefited?
Like an oracle, Mr. Yancey only seems to give you one kick at the can. This is where the start of a good conversation goes to die. If you are interested in a chorus of thank you’s, this is your spot.
Philip,
I have read and now am re-reading with my 19 yr. old daughter, “Disappointment with God”. (which has helped us both tremendously). Then late last year, I randomly picked up a copy of “The Jesus I Never Knew” since I knew the author! I (like you) grew up in a large well-known, evangelical church and have worked all my adult life overcoming some of the many obstacles of faith related misconceptions. This book has renewed my affection for Jesus the Man. The chapter on the Beatitudes was one of the most moving descriptions of what I have always viewed as a rather “unrealistic” portion of scripture. Thank you for your poignant, refreshing writing. It is much needed in our Christian world today.
Thank you, Jeremy. Obviously you’ve given the subject a lot of thought, and I’m glad you passed along some of your conclusions. –Philip
Mr. Yancey,
This ‘thank you’ note is long overdue. Maybe I can explain the context of my gratitude.
For over 20 years, my wife, family, and I attended a wonderful evangelical church here in the South. In recent years, though, it embraced more and more of what I term ‘evangelical culture’ and sadly became quite intolerant both in teaching and in practice. Instead of being open to study and discourse, members were tacitly expected to fall in line with the slogans and dismissive one-liners of mainstream evangelicalism. One issue, in particular, brought things to a head. It was clear there could never be discussion on the topic, so, with a heavy heart, we left the church. Two years later, the results of that decision in daily life still cause us emotional pain.
Rather than simply shrug my shoulders, however, I decided to study the topic in depth – and that is when I came across your experiences and writings. I could empathize with the path you’ve trod through the years, and many of your words resonated strongly with me. Your courage in confronting difficult subjects, and, when necessary, standing against Christian populism, encouraged me during the difficult task of researching and then writing and publishing a book (something I’d not done before). Yes, it’s possible to be an evangelical Christian without embracing today’s evangelical culture. Yes, it’s right to challenge and critique and question and even doubt aspects of our faith, because it leads us closer to Christ. Yes, God is like Jesus, so we can strive to uncover ‘What would Jesus do?”.
So, thank you for bridging, in an inspiring way, the gap we’ve created between Christ and real life. Thank you for providing encouragement to those like me who secretly need reassurance when following conviction and taking positions that lose many friends. It’s one thing to outwardly portray stoicism; it’s quite another to face daily the doubts and second guessing. Thank you for unwittingly giving me the perseverance to write and publish a book and to demonstrate to my family that it’s not OK to sit back and do nothing.
You cannot know how much encouragement I take from this note. Gratefully, Philip
For the first time in my 40 uears as a Christian, I am able to give Christian books to non-Christians. I had all but given up on Christianity when I first encountered your books. Thank you for expressing things which have always made me feel awkwardand never a “real” Christians.
Mary-Ann McKerchar