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.”
Stay with the sunset. It’s more powerful than any rumor I could come up with.
–Philip
Are you calvinist?
I don’t know how to answer that. I admire some things about John Calvin, strongly object to others (e.g., his treatment of dissenters), and have real questions about some of his doctrines, such as Limited Atonement. Certainly I’m not a doctrinaire Calvinist.
My wife and I have slowly been working our way thru all of your books. We read them together, and then discuss
them. We both come from a Pentecostal/charismatic background, but we don’t really classify ourselves as such, as
we have doubts about some of their doctrine. My concern is this: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.”
But what is ‘the truth.” With hundreds of different denominations within the Christian faith, how do we really know
what “truth” is? Even Peter, the apostle, said, “Some of the things Paul says confuses me.” Recently, we attended a series
of lectures from a Rabbi. I have to admit. We admired his faith. Judaism is so cut and dry. This is what the Torah says, and
that settles it. But Christianity is completely the opposite. There are so many various doctrinal beliefs, one has to wonder
what Jesus meant when He said, “I am the truth.” I come from an insurance and banking backround. My whole life has
centered around insurance and banking contracts. Everything was spelled out in black and white. No misunderstanding
what the contract says. I often find myself wondering why the Bible isn’t like that. Why so many interpretations what it
says? Why so many different doctrines and beliefs? In a world spinning out of control, people have little absolutes to hand on
to anymore. If the Bible has so many varying interpretations, how can we feel that it is my anchor of my soul? How can I
believe it is the absolute truth? I believe the Bible is the truth. And I feel the same about Jesus. John 3:16 and the born-again
experience. One has to be born-again. But the rest of the Bible sometimes leaves me wondering what the truth really is; or perhaps what certain doctrinal beliefs have to say. I wonder if God planned it that way on purpose, so we, His children, would
keep digging?
I understand what you’re saying, Tom, and I’ve had a similar frustration at times. It helps me to consider alternatives. For example, various branches of Islam have an absolute and clear interpretation of the Koran (think Saudi Arabia), and the net result is that it leaves little room for freedom. They actually have morality police patrolling with clubs to punish the disobedient. You’re right about Judaism too: the scribes codified their Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) into 613 commands–yet this was the very legalism Jesus railed against in Luke 11 and Matthew 23. The problem with cut-and-dried is that it tends to produce a self-satisfied morality: OK, I’ve kept all these laws, so I’m better than other people. Jesus introduced a new way, making the commands more personal–“I am the truth”–and at once simpler and more demanding (“Love God, love your neighbor as yourself”). Those are much more open-ended. Brennan Manning says that 183 times someone asked Jesus a direct question and only 3 times did he give a direct answer. As a Protestant, I believe you’re right that God wants us to keep digging, and in doing so to emphasize the universals (love being at the top) more than any set of dogmatic beliefs. It’s an ongoing search, and I prefer it that way to the times in church history (think pre-Vatican 2) when the church tells you exactly what to believe and what books are contraband.