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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Hi, Mr. Yancey-
My husband has been unemployed for 16 months. We’re thankful for a solid church body who lets us be us. If we’re sad, we’re allowed to express it. If we had a breakthrough, we celebrate.
We sold our house. We moved in with my Mom. And now it appears it would be best if we moved into a rental. There are a lot of losses.
I was feeling particularly ashamed today and navigating it in prayer. I picked up your “Prayer: Does it make any difference?” book and found solace in these timely words: “As adults, we like to pay our own way, live in our own houses, make our own decisions, relay on no outside help. We look down upon those who live off welfare or charity. Faced with an unexpected challenge, we seek out “self help” books. All the while we are systematically sealing off the heart attitude most desirable to God and most descriptive of our true state in the universe. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus told his disciples, a plain fact that we conspire to deny.
I was washed with comfort. The world tells me to be ashamed. My husband has a stellar resume but God has kept us in unemployment to form Christ in us. It’s hard, but it’s beautiful.
Thank you for your book. It comforted me during such sorrow today. It turned my eyes to God’s goodness. I’m thankful.
What a beautiful spirit you show! It’s one thing to write these words, and quite another to live them out. You lift my faith today. Bless you, and the millions like you facing similar challenges during this crisis. –Philip
Fourteeners
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Dear Sir,
My name is Lionel Chan, I live in semi rural Australia. I used to attend a local Church. I never found a way that I could remain “loyal” to my Chinese heritage, and be Christian at the same time, it seemed to be asking me to say “Who are you to me mother” to my cultural heritage, and to the indigenous Spirit of this Land. Even as the Christianity here is thoroughly European in images, tradition, rhythm (Christmas and Easter in Summer and Autumn makes no sense, symbolically or corporeally) and sensibility.
I found a copy of your “The Jesus I Never Knew” at a local book giveaway recently, I felt the need to find a way to thank you for writing it. I have not solved my conundrum, in many ways what you wrote confirmed many of my feelings that prevented my properly joining the community. What it has done however is to help me understand my host culture and community much better, the specific inheritances of what it means to be “White” that is never openly discussed, and those Westernised like myself absorb without awareness. So much anguish, and emphasis on refrain from both control (praiseworthy) and guidance (a bit problematic). It all makes a lot more sense now.
I feel now a pull to come back to attending the local Church, even if only to reconnect with local community and participate in local charity work to which I feel a calling as well.
My gratitude sir.
Yours Faithfully,
Lionel Chan
I love this letter, Lionel. You show such a spirit of humble openness and authenticity. I pray that you’ll find what you’re looking for. I know that God will honor your charity work.
Dear Mr Yancey,
Thank you for your gracious reply.
Since leaving the local Church, we did some work focusing on solidifying our Chinese roots. How Chinese traditional ways contrast distinctly with the Western is how it recognises empathy driven parenting absent discipline and obedience to Sacred Authority, whatever the intention, ends up creating miserable narcissists that refuse to recognise inherited duties. Too much love and not enough Love perhaps, the latter which includes a bit more Yang and Rigour as part of it.
Both the East and the West in recent times, under the influence of mechanisation, strayed too far on the side of guidance without love perhaps, even if the colonial mechanised dominance of the West arose out of the conditions of overdoing love without guidance/restraint/obedience. How to get the integrated and tempered balance once again seems to be the question of the hour, and your book again has been most helpful for us in nutting this out.
God Bless,
Lionel
Dear Mr. Yancey,
I just wanted to write and thank you for “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” I bought the book about 20 years ago, but I never read it until now. I have finished Part 1: How Sweet The Sound. I was overwhelmed with tears and moved to prayer. I can’t wait to finish the book. I have been a Christian for at least 35 years in a church that has historically placed a very strong emphasis on the doctrines of grace. Yet, grace never came alive in my heart like it did today. I had to express my gratitude (there’s that word again).
Praise, Honor and Glory to God.