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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It has been a number of years since I read your book The Jesus I Never Knew, but I recently picked it up again and used it to describe the incarnation (salt-water aquarium) for a Christian Worldview Course that my wife and I are doing for people. That illustration always stuck with me and I just wanted to say thank-you for being a faithful follower of Christ and for doing what He created you to do.
Hi Philip, we live in South Africa. We love your books and DVDs and use your Grace Notes each morning to start our day. I am happy to have found your website and have signed up to receive your mailings. I was reading through some of your Q&As and noticed the following from you:
I would point to how Jesus dealt with people who were moral failures … Jesus chose one such woman, a woman who had five failed marriages in her resume, as his first missionary.
We dealt with this story in church yesterday and I feel I have to “defend” the Samaritan woman at the well. There is nothing in John’s account to suggest she was an amoral woman. Jesus says nothing to her about sin, as he did with the woman caught in adultery, he merely reveals her life story to show his particular divine insight. She was respected enough by her community that they listened to her account about Jesus and let her lead them to him. The fact that she had been married five times may have just been that in those days young girls were married off to much older men, who may have died. In this case, she would then have been married off to someone else, without whom she would have been a completely unprotected, economically destitute woman. The men may well have divorced her (women could almost never divorce their husbands) due to her being barren. So all her previous marriages say nothing about her moral character and in fact may all have been very happy and successful. The fact that she lived with a man who was not her husband could again have a simple explanation. Roman law did not allow the marriage of previous slaves and free-borns, so common-law marriage was rife. Men also took concubines when they were already married and she may have been forced to agree to this for this to have the protection of a man and family. This woman was theologically and politically astute, challenging Jesus as to where the centre of worship was, aware of the conflict between Samaritans and Jews. She had amazing spiritual insight and was keen to evangelise her community. I see no sign of a moral failure and feel this feisty woman has been given very unfair bad press by the church.
Thank you for this, Sally. I may well have misinterpreted what was going on. Traditionally, the fact that she was drawing water at noon, the hottest time of the day, is seen as a sign that she’s viewed as a bit of an outcast by the women of the community, though that’s rather presumptive. Jesus does seem to bore in a bit by his comment that the man she now has is not her husband, so that may also be a clue too. Yet the cultural patterns you mention are certainly true. Women had it tough in those days! I’m sorry if my references gave the wrong impression. Mainly, I love the acknowledgment of “thirst” that Jesus draws from her–if only we all admitted that thirst so readily. –Philip
Mr. Yancey,
When I first read your book “What’s So Amazing About Grace” in high school, it felt heretical to super-conservative evangelical me! I worried it was blasphemous and put it down and was afraid to read it again for a long while. But isn’t it funny how God works? Years later, when I first started to really struggled with the church I attended and with a season of doubt in the pursuit of my Ph.D., I found it again – and God used it to keep me hanging on. I’m 35 now and since that time, I have followed all your works. You write often about those writers and thinkers who have mentored you along spiritually; you have become one of those mentors for me as I make my own way along as a writer and a scholar. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you properly or tell you that. I often wish I could have met you in person to say thank you; but I do believe that one day, in the light and joy of the redeemed world we are all longing for, I will. Until then, I keep you and yours in my prayers: may you persevere the race marked out for us! Bless you, and thanks!
I persevere in very large part because of comments like yours. Thank you. –Philip
The Miraculous Making of a Pastor
I started out as a Jew; not a very Orthodox one, but Bar Mitzvahed and Confirmed all the same. From the time of my Confirmation at 15 until age 64, I kept only a vague and unlearned concept of God. Rarely attending any synagogue or church and then mainly to accompany a friend or out of curiosity.
Then one day, taking a flight on a small regional jet, we encountered the worst turbulence I had experienced in 60 years of flying. The kind where the flight attendants are attached to the roof of the plane. Suddenly, I remembered – word for word – the Twenty-Third Psalm. If I had ever memorized it, it would have been at least fifty years ago.
Curious. But I dismissed it as an oddity. But it wasn’t. From that time until today, I was exposed to some many “coincidences” that I had to marvel and wonder at what was happening. Understand that as a trained police investigator, and general skeptic, I knew there was no such thing as coincidence; there was always SOME explanation until proven, and very rarely proven otherwise.
Some examples. I went onto a security assessment in Houston. The man in charge is a police sergeant who for “no apparent reason” began to recount his story of miraculous recovery from terminal cancer. I met someone who took me to a Quaker Meeting. I went out of curiosity yet was clearly affected by the strong presence of the Holy Spirit (not knowing Who it was until much later). Before one Meeting, I “happened” to notice a book on a packed bookshelf titled
“What’s So Amazing About Grace.” My eyes and heart were opened to Christ, but only partly.
For the very first time, I began to read the New Testament. Remember, Jews vehemently ignore it. But it began to reach me in incredible ways. I began to study seriously.
One day as I sat at my desk, I found myself sobbing for quite a long time. “For no reason.” I called out to Jesus to help me, to forgive all the sins in my long life. I called a friend I knew to be a strong Christian and asked what was happening. He chuckled and said “You’ve just been saved.” I knew at that point I had much work to do. The Lord clearly reached out to motivate me to catch up on my long ignorance and vague beliefs. My study, discussion and work intensified.
A few days later as I was out for my morning walk on my hill, I saw in the early dawn light (!) a cell phone in the gutter. Turning it on, I found a number to call. Doing so I reached a woman who told me it was her daughter’s phone. I offered to meet at a local coffee shop and return it.
Thus we met, merely as a matter of courtesy, with no expectations, no points of reference. We paused to have a cup of coffee when I learned she was widowed the same year my spiritual quest had begun. Her name is Kristin, which of course means follower of Christ. We met again in a few days, and talked for hours.
After few more meetings, she invited me to attend her church of three years – an Independent Baptist Fundamental church. Of course, I said. Another first. As I sat and listened to the Word I was struck, convicted and in tears. I was baptized into that church two weeks later. And Kristin and I were married a month later. We both knew then, and still know, that God brought us together, and it was not a “coincidence.”
The pastor led me to Heartland Baptist Bible College, where I enrolled in the Practical Bible Training extension program. I complete the one-year, graduate level thirty hours in four months with no grade lower than an “A.”
As I became more immersed in doctrine and theology, I found that my long-time experience in teaching was a gift from God, and should be applied in church. I also found that this church was holding back my growth and began searching for a new one. Once I found one, the pastor remarked that he “saw me teaching” and created a new Sunday School class to teach, which I did for more than a year.
I yearned for more, not knowing what ‘more” meant. I met a pastor who also was a former law enforcement officer and who was leading a newly merged church. We began to talk about discipleship, and I knew I had found the “more.” Beginning to attend his church, we talked about the forming Deacon body, and I felt called to that. But he said no. As we talked he started to say the word “preach” the same word was forming in my mind at exactly the same time. I knew this was truly the aim of all the rapid and miraculous growth, led by the Holy Spirit. I knew immediately that my relative chronological newness did not matter to God, only the call. I began to teach Sunday School and lead Wednesday night prayer and study meetings, meanwhile preparing sermons.
I finally got several opportunities to preach, and this simply confirmed the call my Pastor and I had heard. A few months along, out of the blue my Pastor said he thought I should be ordained, and take on an outreach program for the church. Both of these milestones have just occurred.
This story does not recall the literally hundreds of “God-incidents” that fill the last very few years, but the sense of the Lord’s miraculous and powerful actions is clear. To take this poor sinner, absent from God for so long, and to change his life into one of service, one of repentance, one of pastoring is almost beyond belief. Sherlock Holmes once said that when you rule out the impossible, you are left with the merely improbable. Improbable but true. And indeed, with God nothing is impossible….
All I can say is “Wow”! I’m impressed by your openness. You may not have felt that receptive at various stages, but you stayed open and “tuned in” to God’s promptings in your life. I’m so glad that you took the time to spell out your story in such detail. I know it will encourage and inspire others. And I have the strong sense that there are more chapters to come! –Philip
Have you read any of N.T. Wright’s books? Several years back I began reading them and they changed much of what I believe not only about eschatology but Scripture as a whole. I was raised much the way you were and heard constantly that a Chrisitan’s hope was to saved and go to heaven. But that’s not even Scriptural, at least not the emphasis of Scripture. Our ultimate goal is to be resurrected and live in God’s Kingdom on earth (remember the Lord’s prayer – “Thy kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven.” I was just wondering what your thinking is on this?
I have indeed read N. T. Wright, and have the highest respect for his scholarship as well as his gentle spirit. In general I agree with his approach, though it does raise some major questions, such as: What about when the sun burns out in a few billion years and planet Earth becomes unlivable–how does that square with eternity. I’ll let God worry about that one, however. –Philip