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.”
Thank you for your most straightforward response, Dmitri. You are not alone. Even the great saints complain about God’s non-response, the “dark night of the soul.” And, of course, the Bible echoes your response in many places: Psalms, Lamentations, Job, Habakkuk… You’re an honest seeker, and I applaud that.
I do know where Cape Town is, and it’s one of the most beautiful spots in the world.
Philip
Your book on Prayer.
Mr. Yancey
It whole heartedly does make a difference! I just finished reading your book on prayer and am so grateful you wrote it. It has taught me so much about how to look at other people and to think of things outside of me and my control. I am truly learning how now to have conversations with Him on a daily basis now. I am very grateful as well for your accident as the epilogue held the 4 questions that I immediately sent to the 6 people in my life I love the most. It took me a while to finish the book as am I not only a slow reader; I also like to read books like this and then reflect on parts of them before continuing ; so as not to trivialize any one point. This helped me to say several prayers during the reading not only for people in my life but for many of the people whose stories of pain, heartbreak and sorrow you shared in the book itself. I prayer thanks for you and your gift and am glad that you hear His whisper.
Mr. Yancey,
I’m Brazilian and I don’t know if you’re aware of the problems we’re facing these days in our country. Besides politics, we’re everyday closer to a hate speech that really scares me.
Last year, on São Paulo’s Gay Parade, we had a scandalous protest from the LGBT community. A transsexual was hanging on cross, dressed as Jesus and a sign over the cross where we could read: “Enough with Homofobia” . The reaction from Christian community you must imagine. For weeks, social media were all over it. Some reacted mercifully with peaceful speech while others were hateful with a condemner speech.
Very recently, a popular christian leader and singer posted on her instagram what she called a “#HolyIndignation”. The reason was a store’s propaganda where we could see a clear apology to Gender Ideology. She even mentioned Target Stores on US. The reaction you must also imagine. People started commenting her photo with most hateful words. This fact has become a “Trend Topic” on Twitter Worldwide, remaining on second place for a while. So these are harsh days.
I told all this because I want to ask you: How to react? How to position? I understand that God’s grace and love is unconditional and this must be part of the gospel we preach. I’m no better than any other sinner because I’m a sinner as well. I want to be more like Jesus, I want to react as He would. He didn’t sin, He loved sinners, but I still wonder what would be His words and action before all this.
ps.: I’m sorry for any mistake on my writing. Speaking English is so much more easy than writing! Hope you understand.
You communicate very well in English! I shouldn’t comment specifically as I, in another country, know few of the details, though I’m aware of the turmoil in Brazil. For me, there are two principles to keep in mind. One is in 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul says, “What business is it of ours to judge those outside the church?” The other is simply to follow Jesus and see how he treated notorious sinners and moral outcasts. “I did not come to condemn but to save,” he said. You can’t very well save someone with a spirit of condemnation. That’s the topic of my book “Vanishing Grace,” which may not yet be published in Brazil. Jesus came for the sick, not the well, for the sinners, not the righteous. Of course we’re all sick, we’re all sinners, and your last paragraph expresses it well.
Dear Mr. Yancey,
Thank you for writing. “Disappointment with God”, “Where Is God when It Hurts?”, “The Jesus I Never Knew”, to name some, are brilliant titles as I most probably would not be so interested in reading them in the first place if they were not so titled. Your writing, at the very least, extends sympathy to the likes of me. It seems that your “pilgrimage” somehow inspired me to embark on mine, somewhat.
Thanks for introducing me to Shusaku Endo. I’ve just finished reading Scandal, am cherishing it, looking forward to reading his other books, while anticipating Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence. I’ve been curious about Buechner too. Went to a book store in Singapore, where I found most of your books, but couldn’t find any of Buechner’s. As for C.S. Lewis, aside from perhaps The Screwtape Letters which I enjoyed and was insightful, I couldn’t seem to get through his superbly “high” language, especially his non fiction works. The way you write about his thoughts gets rid of that linguistic barrier. So thanks for that. It seems that you and the writers mentioned have something subtle in common. You’re all reaching out to a specific kind of audience, perhaps, and I sort of identify with that audience.
Anyway, I was wondering if in the future you would write something about mental illness. I’ve recently been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, an illness not considered an illness by everyone but me, the psychologist, and a friend. People who say they care about me don’t understand the condition and what really bothers me is that they don’t even try to. I myself am having trouble looking at my own condition and relating it to God’s love. Strangely enough, your mentioning of the disorder in one of your books (Prayer, if I’m not mistaken) was what prompted me to look into mental illness in the first place. Since then, I’ve been through a confusing, but very revealing, journey which will be too long to write about in this already long “comment”. It’s just that I, and probably million others like me, seem to need the perspective of someone like you on this much stigmatized predicament (especially in a culture where I live in). Marsha Linehan, a fellow sufferer/expert on mental health who is Catholic, once remarked that the likes of us are in “hell”, so to speak and we need all the help we can get to get out.
I’ll stop here before I rant further.
Again, thank you for reaching out to “misfits” (“the least of these”, I’d say) like me, Mr. Yancey.
An Indonesian Fan,
Nara