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 am amazed by the way Christians are judged and condemned. It is rampant. It really does seem that to many, a person is evil and hateful if they believe that marriage should be reserved for a man & a woman. Why is one view tolerated and the other not? Yes, being a Christian IS hard.
Hi Phil
We meet a few years ago at a CS Lewis conference.
I teach philosophy in Chicago. I am still speechless in the face of evil. My baby son died in my hands years ago. And your work has helped me through it. Thank you.
I have a question. You said:
“When I speak to college students, I challenge them to find a single argument against God in the older agnostics (Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, David Hume) or the newer ones (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) that is not already included in books like Psalms, Job, Habakkuk, and Lamentations.”
Would you please expand on this or tell me where I can find the direct or indirect Biblical answers to this?
Thanks brother
Khaldoun
Please respond to khaldoun.sweis@gmail.com
I’m not sure how to respond. If you read, say, Job, Psalms, Habakkuk, the complaints against God and criticism of how creation works are stark and obvious. Theodicy, argument from design, violence, suffering of the innocent, oddities of creation–they’re all set out in vivid detail. –Philip
Philip,
I ‘ve had a few challenges– came to know Christ, personally as an adult, husband in prison, later he died of alcoholism, mental illness in my family, yet steadfast in my own life to earn a doctorate and am now associate professor emeritus at a large regional university. Your books are a great help for my spiritual growth, but I must say, I’ve never been angry with God and never questioned God as Father and his Son as my Savior. But, here is my question, I’ve always struggled with relationships especially long term friendships. Is this a spiritual problem? If we are right with God, we are right with our neighbor, isn’t that what I should count one? Can you recommend reading that will help with right relationships with others?
I can see why you’re a little relationship-shy, Carol, in view of the brief background you mention. It sounds like you’re doing great, frankly. I’ve found that small groups at church can–or, to be honest, cannot–be a good place to look for compatible friends. To me, what you mention is more a personality issue than a spiritual issue. Let me recommend some reading: The Road Less Traveled, by Scott Peck; books by Brene Brown; the book Lean In, on the power of introverts, and almost anything by Henri Nouwen. That’s a lot to handle, I know. The fact that you care, and that you hunger for relationship–these are signs of health.