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.”
Thank you very much. I will share your response with the group. God bless you!
I’m sure many people can relate to some of your anecdotes. Sigh, the church is composed of people. I met some of the characters you describe in my inner-city Chicago church, and some more in Deep South churches. As I often say, If I were God, I wouldn’t have turned over the mission to the likes of us. Then again, it’s very good for the universe that I’m not God. Thanks for the detailed description, and for not giving up on Christ’s Body, deformed as it is.
Philip
Dear. Phillip
Hello, this is Hee-Soo from South korea.
I am sending you this e-mail because there are several questions popped up while reading your book.
“What is forgiveness?” I thought no favor can get from our own efforts to attain salvation, but I frequently search about “The
method to attain salvation.”
I asked my church missionary serveral times with the questions such as “What is forgiveness? Should I just believe? Is that all i can do?” but i couldn’t get any satisfactory answer or answer which solve my curiosity. Most of them said, “Forgiveness is disappearance of sin. Just understand like that.”
While reading your book called ‘What’s so amazing about grace?’ , I found their answers was full of contradictions.
I am really curious about forgiveness.
To understand the definition of forgiveness, does the reference of your book, which is called ‘Forgive and Forget’ written by
Lewis Smedes has the answer to my question? Can you please recommend a book about forgiveness?
Following is the few questions.
1. Does forgiveness means God reconciliation with us by forgetting our sin?
2. In our church we sing a song called ‘Our sin cleans out with the precious blood of Jesus’. Does that mean the disappearance of sins?
3. To attain salvation, should we trust the gospeland repent? Is that all i can do?
If the conclusion of commandments is love, then is forgiveness the conclusion of salvaton?
Sometimes, I feel I am serious legalist, especially, when I become slave of small plans and lists. Maybe it’s caused by some incidents which had big impacts on my life.
Merely, I have ambiguous obedience which you have mentioned. I also go to church but many Christians including me , seem like they have misunderstood the words in the Bible.
As the Bible said, ‘ Therefore, I tell you her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little,’ I want to understand original meaning of it and want to live like that.
I owe the grace of God to your book.
Thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Hee-Soo
Mr. Yancey,
I want to thank you for the frankness and honesty with which you write. I have grown up in church and Christian schools and have experienced and witnessed both tremendous grace and painful ungrace from Christians, though I most strongly associate church and Christians with the latter. There are two particular ways in which I owe you a debt of gratitude. The first is for your words in What’s So Amazing About Grace. When I read What’s So Amazing About Grace, it feels like I’m listening to a gifted story teller, with the occasional commentary or explanation following a story. When I get caught up in the language and the complexity of the Bible, when I find myself leaning towards the legalism of the southern churches and schools I’ve attended, when I feel I cannot make sense of it all and feel discouraged, I often times find myself returning to your book. Each time, I rediscover a love for the Bible, and the merciful Father who has gone to such great lengths to bring us into a relationship with Him. Secondly, your refusal to excuse the shortcomings of the church, while still showing grace and love for her, redirects me when I feel so fed up with the church. I find it much easier to feel (and show) true love and grace for people who are judgmental and unkind outside of the church than for those who are judgmental and unkind within the church. Yet your writing points me back to a better response, loving the church even while disagreeing with her at times.
My most sincere thanks,
Rachel
If I received only this response after writing that book, it would have been worthwhile. You embolden and inspire me to keep at it.
–Philip