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’ve often thought that the worst part of a recurring “sin”–say, an addiction to pornography, very common these days–is not so much the sin itself as the feeling that follows, that one is cast aside, disqualified for use by God. You sound really depressed, a condition that cries for in-person help, from friends or a trained counselor. A book is a poor substitute, I know, but I would recommend Henri Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love (written when he was in a similar state) or most anything by Brennan Manning, who battled this issue all his life. Intellectually, you probably know that God loves you and you have worth. Emotionally…that’s a challenge, I know. As for ambivalence about meeting Jesus, try making a list of all the people Jesus encounters in the Gospels: the more “unworthy,” outcast, moral failure someone was, the more tenderly Jesus treated them. –Philip
This message, from the other side of the equator, from a country with problems of its own, was truly a “grace note” to me.
Philip
Dear Mr. Yancey, I have read almost all of your books. I have read “Whats so Amazing about Grace” maybe 6 times, and took 1 year to teach it in a Sunday school class. I wanted to send you a book by my second favorite writer Calvin Miller but can’t find your address. I always wanted to thank you and Calvin for sharing yourself with me, but I was too late with Calvin,and didn’t want to be too late with you. Thank you so very much.
On the way via email…
Hi Dr. Yancey
We are just about the same age, which I was amazed to see. You seem so much wiser than I am. I am re-reading Disappointment with God and just had a question. What ever happened to Richard? Is he still at the same place he was when you originally wrote the book? Anyway, I really enjoy your books and your devotional is one of two that I read every day, along with my Bible. Keep up the good work. God Bless.