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 like to think of Mark 14:50/51, and that after the disciples fled a young man of dubious sexuality was still there defending Jesus. Jesus would not have had this response, had he been condemning the young man.
But the bigger question is how do we effectively pass on the grace and the prerequisite knowledge of Jesus, to people caught in sexual confusion/slavery. and how to overcome the identity and economic problems that lead them there.
Your note moves me deeply. I’m humbled by your comments, and hope that Buechner’s writings do make their way to Singapore; just last week I spoke at a writers’ conference in his honor. I know a little about Borderline Personality, which in the US is recognized as a most challenging category. This must be a burden to you, and yet you write so clearly and insightfully. Thank you for your words.
Goodness, you replied. Thanks for taking the time, Mr. Yancey. I’m so excited I can’t wait to tell the friend I aforementioned about this, since she’s a big fan of yours and the one who introduced me to your books. I daresay you’ve been like a distant pastor to us. I wish we had known you were coming to Jakarta. My, I’m putting you on a pedestal, aren’t I? Nevertheless, that’s how I feel.
Thanks for your kind words. I guess the kind of sympathy contained in your reply is something I don’t hear much from people around me; too few ears, too many mouths, including my own, to be fair.
Anyway, is there any book or any person or anything that discusses mental illness from a biblical/Christian perspective that you can recommend? I ask since I only managed to find a few of such resources, of which only a few I find to be helpful. Having read psychological views with my very limited understanding capabilities, sometimes I still wonder whether it’s an illness to be cured/managed or a diabolical influence to be resisted.
This haunts me from time to time, especially the second paragraph of the following quotation.
“This weekend, we learned of the death of Rick and Kay Warren’s son Matthew. Those of us who know the Warrens know how they have anguished over their son’s illness, seeking to keep a low profile even as Rick penned the best-selling devotional, “The Purpose Driven Life.” This weekend, Matthew took his own life – putting the issue of mental illness front and center again.
Matthew had the best medical care available, a loving church that cared for him and his family, and parents who loved and prayed for him. Yet, that could not keep Matthew with us.” – Ed Stetzer
(quoted from http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/07/my-take-how-churches-can-respond-to-mental-illness/ )
Dear Mr. Yancey:
I’m a writer from Spain. I publish weekly in some important christian media in Spanish and English in Europe, and I’m starting a path in which I’ve been as influenced by you as much as you tell you’ve been influenced by Buechner. The last weeks has been kind a nightmare full of choices, challenges and doubts. I was tempted to stop writing and look for another job to provide to my family, because, you know, sometimes is not just enough that you feel your job as writer is useless, it’s also the Spain’s political and economical crisis; it’s look threatening poverty into the eyes. But suddenly I arrived to Chapter 7 in yours “Vanishing Grace” and God struck me lovingly with your words. And today I woke up and I found your “Why I write” post. I’ve been challenged again but not by pain or fear, but by God himself to continue writing, resting in Him for my needs and my family’s, and, in the same way, growing on writing to be like old prophets pointing to God with words. Lastly knowing that my good deeds doesn’t matter, neither in writing or not writing. It’s all about God’s grace reaching us by unsuspected ways sometimes. The hope that God puts in me it’s that I can repeat to others, in my culture, the enormous blessing you have been to me today.
So, thank you so much, Mr. Yancey. Barely have words to explain it.
Noa