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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I suppose you could say the same about our bodies. They wear out and die. But our resurrection bodies will be eternal. The same holds true for the renewed earth that Scripture talks about. Romans 8:18-25 is fairly clear on that. Eternal bodies need the eternal earth to live on. Anyway, the new city on earth won’t need the sun (Rev 21:23) since God will provide the light.
When I became a Christian at 16, your book The Jesus I Never Knew was the first Christian book I read. I remember falling farther in love with Jesus through those pages, going on and on to my lapsed mother about how amazing he was. At the time I was worshiping at a conservative Baptist church, convinced that drinking and swearing were terrible sins, and watching fearfully for the signs of the coming rapture and the real-world Nicolae Carpathia.
I have changed quite a bit since then. I drink and I swear, and read the Bible differently…. with a lot less fear, and a lot more gratitude for the generosity of God. I can’t unsee a call to justice in the scriptures that I was blind to once. I just think the gospel is a lot bigger than I used to. But one thing that has not changed is the presence of your books in my life, and their ability to challenge and encourage me in my faith.
I co-pastor of a small rural congregation alongside my husband, and preparing for a sermon recently I picked up The Jesus I Never Knew just to see what you had to say about the Wedding at Cana and I realized that now that I am coming up on my 36th birthday, it is almost 20 years since I first read it. Through all the changes in my faith and life I am still moved by it. How on earth did you do that? There are so few authors that come with me on this journey.
I write this for two reasons, I guess. One is to say, Thank you, thank you, thank you for your writing that has been such a gift to the church and to me. And the other is to ask this question of “how?” How have you managed to stay on the shelves of Christian bookstores all this time? I no longer feel like I fit in that culture, but your books still speak to me, and I hear the gospel in them as much as I did way back when.
I have just had my first article published online with CT, but as I think about writing more for the church, I see how the different parts of the church are speaking different languages. Maybe it has always been this way, but I wonder it is possible to break through those dividing lines. You seem to have managed it though and I am both grateful and amazed.
Thank you!
Grace and Peace to you,
Jen
Goodness, this is a blushingly generous comment, Jen. We must connect because we’ve traveled such similar paths. I’m impressed that you were reading me at 16, and even more impressed that we’re still companions on the journey. Like you, I feel I’m sometimes on a high-wire act, tiptoeing through the culture and subculture both. One day I hope to do a book on writing, and then I’ll try to figure out an answer to your question. Meanwhile, I’m simply grateful for the privilege of making a living by exploring what I would do anyway. –Philip
I have been blessed so many times by your books and have read them all. I have been waiting for a new one for a few years now and wonder if there is something I missed. You, Ravi Zacharias and Max Lucado are my favorite authors. You each speak to the same truth from different directions and style and I am a lifetime reader of something every day. It seems that you have spoken before about working on books you wrote with Dr. Brand so is that the next book we will be able to read? Just anxious for the next book. Thanks for your blogs in the meantime.
Blessings to you
My last two books were Vanishing Grace and The Question That Never Goes Away. I’ve been mainly working on a memoir, but sometime in 2019 (probably Fall), will release a newly redone version of my writings with Dr. Brand. Thank you for the encouragement–and keep reading!
Hi, Mr. Yancey–
I’m very grateful for your books. Currently I am reading Soul Survivor and can hardly put it down. It’s so yummy and life giving.
I was praying recently that God would put some generative, mature, joyful Jesus people in my life. Your book is helping me. I was having a hard time with questions about divorce and boundaries and autism and dementia and refugees, to name a few. A lot of Christians grew up learning that if you quoted a Bible verse, that was enough. Just let it be. Have a problem? His grace is sufficient. Struggling with anger towards divorce? Turn the other cheek.
I believe the gospel has hands and feet and a pulse and your books always, always show me that. They’re compassionate and truthful and not glib. So incarnate. Thank you. They’re actually helpful. The people you write about in Soul Survivor are real and useful l and leave redemption and love in their paths. I didn’t know their stories. I’m thrilled to know them.
Thank you for taking the time to write these books, share your own journey and bring hope to people who need to noodle over these things.
Emily Dykstra
This is a lovely “grace note” of encouragement, Emily. Soul Survivor is my personal favorite because I got to write about my heroes. You absorbed exactly what I hoped to accomplish, and thanks for letting me know. –Philip
Hi Philip,
I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on atonement. After reading your works for many years, I got the impression that you lean towards the Christus Victor interpretation. Forgive me if I am mistaken. I’m a fellow Protestant who has always held to the traditional penal/substitutionary view. However, after researching historical/alternative theories, it seems to me that atonement is far richer than I had ever imagined. The neat formula and juridical language I had been taught didn’t seem to do justice to all of the events that occurred during the Passion narrative. The Christus Victor view has an attractive richness to it but seems to leave out the juridical side that is apparent in Paul’s letters. So basically, l believe in a penal/substitutionary view while trying to incorporate parts of the Christus Victor view. I’m still trying to work this out and would love to have your thoughts on this complicated topic. Thank you so much.
One suggestion: Read The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge. It’s long and comprehensive, and helped me greatly in putting together various ways of looking at the Atonement. I can’t recommend it highly enough. –Philip