American Christian author (1949- )
We travel ... about four international trips a year and it's funny, when I go around the world I kind of divide the church up into three stages: the honeymoon, the divorce stage, and the 25-year marriage stage. So you go to Europe and they're pretty much in the divorce stage. Now there's still the shell of churches but tourists, not worshippers. You go to a place like Brazil, where we were, or the Philippines, China and you see the church in the honeymoon stage -- It's all new, they're excited, it's thrilling, it sounds like good news. The United States I put more in the 25-year anniversary stage where we've been here, few people get all that excited about going to church. It operates more like a corporation, an institution than a live vibrant movement. Lots of exceptions of course to each of those, but that's kind of the general feeling that I get. It's fun for me, actually, to go into places like Brazil and Argentina and in this case where there's a lot of evident life and partly because of the Latin personality you get strong feedback. It's a joyous place to visit.
PHILIP YANCEY
"Interview: Philip Yancey on U.S. Christianity, Faith That Matters", Christian Post, Oct. 2, 2010
Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?
I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?
Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew
Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.
PHILIP YANCEY
attributed, Jesus Now: Unveiling the Present-Day Ministry of Christ
It took time for the church to come to terms with the ignominy of the cross. Church fathers forbade its depiction in art until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine.... Now, though, the symbol is everywhere: artists beat gold into the shape of the Roman execution device, baseball players cross themselves before batting, and candy confectioners even make chocolate crosses for the faithful to eat during Holy Week. Strange as it may seem, Christianity has become a religion of the cross--the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, in modern terms.
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew
Jesus is the best clue we have as to what God is like and He is consistently gracious and merciful, especially to those who are failures. He is harsh to uptight, judgmental people, but merciful and gracious to the failures. He seems to draw out the smallest kernel of faith in each person that He's with. So, I presume that that's the way God is going to judge humanity.
PHILIP YANCEY
"The High Calling of Journalism: A Candid Interview with Philip Yancey", The High Calling, Jan. 18, 2011
God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
Having spent time around "sinners" and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus.
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?
If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?
Prayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
The people who related to God best--Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah--treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person.
PHILIP YANCEY
Disappointment With God
As I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew
Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
If I just think of the churches in my little town here because I've been to every one of them, there are 27, there aren't that many where you walk in and say wow, people are excited about their faith. A lot of them, it's just what you do on Sunday at 10:00 or 11:00 and that's not true in other countries. In some other countries, it's still a very lively, vibrant experience.
PHILIP YANCEY
"Interview: Philip Yancey on U.S. Christianity, Faith That Matters", Christian Post, Oct. 2, 2010
Interestingly, a lot of people who are in the public eye are introverts. Probably not politicians, but a lot of actors and comedians say they are introverts. The strain for me is not standing in front of a microphone and talking. I have learned to do that, although it was not easy at first. The strain for me is chatting. That is such a draining and difficult thing. An introvert doesn't mind in-depth conversations with people he cares about. But, when I'm speaking to a couple thousand people, then I have a book signing, I have thirty-second conversations with people I'll never see again. That's what's really hard for me, because some of the people obviously need more than thirty seconds.
PHILIP YANCEY
"The High Calling of Journalism: A Candid Interview with Philip Yancey", The High Calling, Jan. 18, 2011
I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
PHILIP YANCEY
Finding God in Unexpected Places
Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.
PHILIP YANCEY
What's So Amazing About Grace?