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 going to try to put the short version down of all that’s in my heart . . . I’m reading through Vanishing Grace for a second time right now, and I keep thinking, “this is what I want!”, sometimes with tears. (I was raised in the evangelical tradition and figured out early on how the system works — and how to work it too.) Another book of yours that’s a favorite is Soul Survivor — it’s made me hungry to keep learning and reading.
But What’s So Amazing About Grace is the book that changed my life. I really mean that. I walked into a public library about 15 years ago, with about 45 minutes to burn until it was time to pick my daughter up from school. There was your book, on a sparsely populated shelf. I’d heard about it, so I decided to check it out. A few minutes later, tears were streaming down my face and I was trying to hold back the sobs as I finished your description of Babette’s Feast and said to myself, Can this really be true? It seems too good to be true.
Fast forward a couple years later to a Christian publishing conference I was attending in San Diego, where you were present to speak about writing. Of course, I was present and took notes! And then, as I waited with the crowd for lunch, I turned around and there you were, right behind me. Uh … I now know that the word that describes me best at that moment is “starstruck.” We exchanged hellos and pleasantries, but I didn’t quite know what else to say. Actually, I really wanted to say, “YOUR BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE!” but somehow that didn’t seem appropriate. All I could think of was, “I think I’ve read some of your books.” Yes, I said those words. Gah. I’m still cringing all these years later!! And maybe even blushing a little too. My family still teases me about this. 🙂
I couldn’t find another way to contact you other than this comment section, but here I am, a decade-plus later, finally saying thank you for letting God use you so mightily in my life. Maybe someday I’ll get to thank you in person — properly this time! The message of God’s grace still amazes me, and I pray that my life reveals His grace to others the way you have shared it with me. God’s blessings to you!
You’ve more than made up for that tongue-tied meeting, Heidi. Writing is hard work, done in isolation, and the only feedback I get comes from something I worked on months or years ago. Yet that hope, that what I’m working on today will connect with someone like you out there someday–that’s the hope that keeps me going. Thank you for the boost, a true “grace note” in my life today.
Philip
Mr. Yancey: Thank you for all the writing you have done and your willingness to share your own struggles and doubts with those of us who read your books. I have read several and have appreciated them, especially “The Jesus I Never Knew” and “What’s so amazing about grace?” Both have helped me in my thinking and my preaching. I have just started reading “Prayer” and confess to a kind of disappointment, for two reasons. One, your fundamentalist upbringing (so was mine) seems to shine through in your “must/should/have to” language. We have to confess. We must feel helpless. “. . . we must trust God with what God already knows.” This seems so contrary to your book on grace and, actually, to other comments you make in “Prayer.” I don’t think we have to anything other than open to God. We get to confess, knowing we will be loved and forgiven. When we do feel helpless, God cares, but God is no less present or any less caring, or less interested in our prayers when there are some things we think we can do. We don’t have to be totally open and honest with God but we CAN be. It is safe to be that open and honest. That is the grace. The other thing I find troubling is that you almost mock, certainly belittle, the practice of prayer of other religions. That, I suggest, is uncalled for. Their prayer is no less sincere than ours and no less welcome in God’s ears. We would do better to learn from them rather than belittle them, suggesting we know and are better. I hope you keep on writing. I look forward to reading more of what you have to say and teach.
These are most helpful comments, and I learn from them. You make a good point about my pedantic language, and I’ll need to watch that. My goal was to make prayer less of a chore,or an obligation, and evidently for you at least I accomplished the opposite. And I need to review the book to see what you mean about my comments on prayers of other religions. Surely I did not mean to mock them, and am sorry if it came across to you that way. I have not heard that criticism before, so I “must” (accurate, in this case) look into that.
Philip