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.”
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HI!
I am a 42 year old mother who was raised in the church. I have just started reading your book on Prayer. Lately I have been seeking a concrete example of God being present today. It seems to me that all the books, all the sermons I read and hear are just different excuses for why we cannot see or feel God. We can’t handle it, he is speaking through silence, we need more faith, etc…What if you pray for more faith and he doesn’t deliver? I try to see God as my Father but as a mother I cannot understand why (if God is to be seen as our Heavenly Father) he would allow his children to suffer. Say what you will, but there is no concrete example against the fact that he is allowing his children to suffer. So a child with cancer suffers and dies to bring glory to God? I don’t buy it. It seems like God created us to sit back and watch us suffer. Like it is a game to Him. He knew the suffering that would happen and he still created us. Why? Any reasoning anyone gives for this is that we just have to wait until we die and then God will reveal himself. I cannot get past all of this for some reason. I do not find comfort in a God that hides. I need a sign that cannot be explained away. I pray and cry out to God with no response. Why? I do not want excuses…If he loves me why won’t he just answer in a way that will change me? And I don’t want to hear that he is answering through nature or something like that…
I have written books with titles like Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God, Reaching for the Invisible God and The Question That Never Goes Away. I don’t minimize the question you raise; I’ve spent much of my career raising it myself. I won’t add to the formula answers. You’re right: this world is broken, badly. For whatever reason, God has chosen to let natural laws predominate–laws that encompass much good (the body’s healing properties, our immunological systems, etc.) and much bad. My best clue to how God views this world comes from Jesus, who always responded with comfort and healing, and who himself was subject to the same consequences of a broken world. We live on an invaded planet, and trust that God plans restoration someday. “On earth as it is in heaven”–I pray for that, and work for it. Beyond that, what can I say?
Dear Phillip,
Many years ago I read a wonderful article in Campus Life magazine about the “solo” experience of the Vanguard program at Honey Rock Camp. I wonder if you wrote that? Thanks very much.
I did. I went on a special program that brought together juvenile delinquents and federal prisoners, arranged by Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship. A great experience! It whetted my appetite for moving to Colorado and hiking the mountains here.
Dear Philip,
Thank you for writing books that have more than not challenged my perspectives, and if not, have spoken assuring words to bolster my faith.
I’ve just finished reading ‘What’s so amazing about grace?’, and what struck me (on top of the main points of the book), was your liberal reference of notable catholics in your analogies. Yours was one of the few books I’ve read so far in christian literature, that has freely placed catholics alongside protestants in God’s kingdom.
Having been brought up in a brethren church that had a penchant for embracing legalism, my sheltered beliefs were only challenged after I graduated, moved back home, and started worshiping at a different church. 2 years later, I met someone who was a catholic, which sparked off a new found interest in reading about church history, and understanding the theological differences that catholics hold.
It hasn’t been an easy journey, trying to navigate waters that have proven to be easily aggrieved, sorting through our differences, and wondering if we would ever be able to come together as one to worship the God we both love but view through different coloured lenses. Delving into church history that led to the reformation has made me feel desperately sad at how christians through the ages have allowed politics, power play, and fear, divide what Christ united.
Your references to catholics made me wonder what your perspectives are, on where catholics stand in the christian faith, and on whether differences can be reconciled? Can both work together hand in hand? And how intimately?
A group called Evangelicals and Catholics Together has been working on this for years (the magazine First Things covers them well). As you note, I have learned from and been nourished by many Catholic writers. The beautiful thing about books is that they contain ideas unadorned with ritual and other trappings, and can be received on their merits. There are some things about Catholic culture and doctrine that seem strange to me (celibacy of priests, Assumption and Perpetual Virginity of Mary, papal infallibility, etc.), but then there are equally strange things in the Protestant tradition! We have so much in common, mainly the entire Protestant Bible (of course, Catholics accept a few extra books in addition). For years Luther thought he could bring reform to the church from within; in many ways, the reforms he felt strongly about did occur. The saddest result of the Reformation was the splintering and disunity that resulted; Martin Marty estimates 45,000 Christian denominations and sects in the world. That makes the questions in your final paragraph more daunting than ever.
Dear Philip. Your books have inspired me greatly, especially those on suffering. I am a middle-aged South African with a severe brain disability, but also a science degree (physics and computer programming). I have seen the worst of church and political hypocrisy and the way so many of us hate those who are different. I can say that suffering taught me my greatest lesson: Empathy! And later, I learned not just empathy for people and animals (I always adored animals), but I think we were meant to learn empathy for Jesus too! By experiencing a little bit of what He went through, I think it can really teach us something. For me, a prostitute is no longer a “filthy thing”, but a broken little girl forced to grow up the hard way. There are many of them in the crumbling part of town where I live. I make friends with them, chat, and occasionally buy a hungry lady a pie or a can of juice, or even just fetch them a drink of water. At the group home where I stay, people say I pick up diseases from these ladies, because I developed a mystery physical illness some years ago, complete with black skin sores and blocked urinary tract! Thankfully, that situation is somewhat better now, but oh, how people love to gossip. Well, Jesus was accused of being mad, and of having a demon too, so He knows how it feels! I wish I could be as forgiving as Him… At least I have tasted society’s hatred too, so I know a little bit of how He felt.
I’m sorry it took a disability to teach you empathy–but in the long run, which is more important? May God use your renewed spirit to help others on the same path. And, remember, we serve an audience of One, so don’t let the backbiters get to you. –Philip
Amen to that! You know what? If that was what I was meant to learn, it was all worth it! 🙂
Please come and speak in South Africa, if you can find the time, Philip. We are a nation that is still horribly divided along racial, economic, and criminal lines. Its not just about black verses white, but also greed, inequality, poverty, violence, rape, and local people blaming foreign African shop owners for taking jobs away from locals. The dream of Nelson Mandela is still only halfway fulfilled. We desperately need people to speak some spiritual sanity here. If you can’t come, then please pray for us.
I’ve been there on speaking trips 3 times, and couldn’t agree more. You’ve avoided catastrophe, but unleashed a lot of bats out of hell. Indeed I will pray, and may show up again sometime!
Philip
Hi Philip,
I just wanted to say thank you for your wonderful book: ‘Disappointment with God’. I felt the need to read it again (I’d read it before some time ago) and it was a tremendous encouragement. It occurred to me recently that authors can be like mentors to us – a thought that you have also expressed, and I’m grateful to God for you being one of mine through your brave, compassionate and honest writing.
Jason