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.”
Sorry, Bill, but that story rings no bells for me. I did a word search on “a man in a hut” and turned up nothing. I wish I could help. –Philip
Having spent 33 days in a hospital was something I needed to be able to visit people in the hospital. There was a time when a 76 year old man told me the doctors told him he had a 25% chance of living. I visited him each day trying to listen and encourage him. I walked into the waiting room where he was just before surgery and spoke with him. Nobody was saying a word and looked hopeless. I spoke with him and he was very anxious. I told him to let the doctors do the surgery and to trust God for the outcome. He immediately calmed down. His family was shocked I said that. The nurses told me they were waiting for him to calm down. As I left they thanked me. The next time I saw him he cried. Before that time people saw him as grump but after that time he was a changed man. He became grateful. He lived for almost 15 years.
Wise words!
I would be curious to know what (if anything) you make of the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. In some of your books you’ve written perceptively about the lingering impact of Christianity on our post-Christian culture through organizations like Amnesty International and Alcoholics Anonymous. Is Peterson something similar? I don’t know what to make of him myself. He’s obviously not a Christian (it’s not even clear he believes in God) but he clearly takes the Bible seriously, and it’s refreshing to see that from someone in the elite. Is he a ‘noble pagan’ like the Church Fathers viewed Plato and Aristotle?
I don’t know enough to comment very lucidly. I’ve seen interviews in which he broke down in tears speaking of Jesus, and another in which he paused quite some time before answering that, No, he did not believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. I liken him to one of the philosophers Paul addressed so wisely in Acts 17–only, of course, Peterson is already familiar with the Christian story. He builds on a wide Christian base, and I’m sure he knows that. Reminds me of Tom Holland’s book Dominion, which credits Christianity for most of the good things in Western Civilization, while not buying into the underlying story.