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9b4c50f
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Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no opportunity for faith either.
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Philip Yancey |
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8686be0
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In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.
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politics
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Philip Yancey |
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f1e7a00
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God. Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more --no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries and divinity schools, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less --no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an in..
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Philip Yancey |
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7962f3b
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God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world. (In ..
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faith
christian-living
grace
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Philip Yancey |
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e1b7f39
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Faith in God offers no insurance against tragedy. Nor does it offer insurance against feelings of doubt and betrayal. If anything, being a Christian complicates the issue. If you believe in a world of pure chance, what difference does it make whether a bus from Yuba City or one from Salina crashes? But if you believe in a world ruled by a powerful God who loves you tenderly, then it makes an awful difference.
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Philip Yancey |
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ae30e14
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Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies..
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Philip Yancey |
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0157243
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Many churches offer more entertainment than worship, more uniformity than diversity, more exclusivity than outreach, more law than grace.
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Philip Yancey |
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e66054b
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J. Robertson McQuilkin...was once approached by an elderly lady facing the trials of old age. Her body was in decline, her beauty being replaced by thinning hair, wrinkles and skin discoloration. She could no longer do the things she once could, and she felt herself to be a burden on others. "Robertson, why does God let us get old and weak? Why must I hurt so?" she asked. After a few moments' thought McQuilkin replied, "I think God has plan..
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Philip Yancey |
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0906d50
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As a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.
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Philip Yancey |
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a948270
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the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.
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Philip Yancey |
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ebd2774
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No one who meets Jesus ever stays the same.
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Philip Yancey |
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8b5e496
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The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus.
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Philip Yancey |
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6735200
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Is God somehow responsible for the suffering of this world? In this indirect way, yes. But giving a child a pair of ice skates, knowing that he may fall, is a very different matter from knocking him down on the ice.
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Philip Yancey |
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4c04dea
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To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn't the church encourage poverty and mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus' teaching?
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Philip Yancey |
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fa8dcd0
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It was not pastoral teaching, or small group fellowship, or worship services, or books of theology -- rather, they mentioned suffering. "People said they grew more during seasons of loss, pain, and crisis than they did at any other time." We discover the hidden value of suffering only by suffering -- not as part of God's original or ultimate plan for us, but as a redemptive transformation that takes place in the midst of trial."
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Philip Yancey |
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0284cbe
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Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt.
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Philip Yancey |
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8f45c42
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That, at least, is the vision of the church in the New Testament: a colony of heaven in a hostile world. Dwight L. Moody said, "Of one hundred men, one will read the Bible; the ninety-nine will read the Christian."
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Philip Yancey |
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5c1856a
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For us who are Christians, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof positive that love is stronger than hate, that life is stronger than death, that light is stronger than darkness, that laughter and joy, and compassion and gentleness and truth, all these are so much stronger than their ghastly counterparts.
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Philip Yancey |
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8aa9744
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Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn't believe what they believe.
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Philip Yancey |
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4541038
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Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet?...He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan...the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a fai..
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faith
god
good-versus-evil
job
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Philip Yancey |
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2c1f669
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I believe Christians walk a mental tightrope and are in constant danger of falling in one of two directions. On this subject, errors in thinking can have tragic results. The first error comes when we attribute all suffering to God, seeing it as his punishment for human mistakes; the second error does just the opposite, assuming that life with God will never include suffering.
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Philip Yancey |
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bc96c36
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We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the "real" world and the unseen world as the "unreal" world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite."
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Philip Yancey |
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c2e206d
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Jesus declared that we should have one distinguishing mark: not political correctness or moral superiority, but love.
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Philip Yancey |
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4da10fa
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Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony." The presence of so many in church on a wintry night proved his point. "You can protest against the evil in the world only if you believe in a good God," Volf also said. "Otherwise the protest doesn't make sense."
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Philip Yancey |
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016f9f7
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Jesus tended to honor the losers of this world, not the winners. Our modern culture extravagantly rewards beauty, athletic skill, wealth, and artistic achievement, qualities which seemed to impress Jesus not at all.
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Philip Yancey |
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1e68f81
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Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.
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Philip Yancey |
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4a3d277
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Be careful," warned Nietzsche, "lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon." I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist..
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Philip Yancey |
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9f2f990
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Faith is not simply a private matter, or something we practice once a week at church. Rather, it should have a contagious effect on the broader world. Jesus used these images to illustrate his kingdom: a sprinkle of yeast causing the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt preserving a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden growing into a great tree in which birds of the air come to nest.
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Philip Yancey |
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46d0778
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Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.
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Philip Yancey |
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44bb7c2
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The late Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical American author, wrote: "For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the beatitudes. But--often with tears in their eyes--they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, be posted anywhere."
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Philip Yancey |
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05224fb
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Absolute ideals and absolute grace: after learning that dual message from Russian novelists, I returned to Jesus and found that it suffuses his teaching throughout the Gospels and especially in the Sermon on the Mount.
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Philip Yancey |
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1dd944e
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True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.
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Philip Yancey |
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c5d7d1c
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On a trip to Russia I bought one of those Matryoshka "nested dolls" that break apart at the waist to reveal smaller and smaller dolls inside...it occurred to me to me later that each of us, like the nested dolls, contains multiple selves, making us a mysterious combination of good and evil, wisdom and folly, reason and instinct... (pp.80)"
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grace
mystery
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Philip Yancey |
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74a647d
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The down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome. How did Jesus, the only perfect person in history, manage to attract the notoriously imperfect? And what keeps us from following in his steps today?
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Philip Yancey |
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255d84b
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I have mentioned that no one offers the name of a philosopher when I ask the question, "Who helped you most?" Most often they answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried. In short, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer's terms and not their own."
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Philip Yancey |
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ed5c900
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Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.
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Philip Yancey |
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227897d
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We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church." His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for lo..
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Philip Yancey |
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c394c91
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Herein lies the most solemn challenge facing Christians who want to communicate their faith: if we do not live in a way that draws others to the faith rather than repels them, none of our words will matter.
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Philip Yancey |
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3bcf191
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a sick person is not a sick person, but rather a person of worth and value who happens to have some bodily parts that are not functioning well.
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Philip Yancey |
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149bbd5
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Shouldn't we be presenting an alternative to the prevailing culture rather than simply mimicking it? What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?
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Philip Yancey |
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b3f2717
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grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less. It means that I, even I who deserve the opposite, am invited to take my place at the table in God's family.
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Philip Yancey |
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e3c1b20
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The gospel presents both high ideals and all-encompassing grace. Very often, however, the church tilts one direction or the other. Either it lowers the ideals, adjusting moral standards downward, softening Jesus' strong commands, rationalizing behavior; or else it pulls in the boundaries of grace, declaring some sins worse than others, some sinners beyond the pale. Few churches stay faithful both to the high ideals of gospel and its bottoml..
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Philip Yancey |
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df66584
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Followers of Jesus stake their claim on the firm belief that God will one day heal the planet of pain and death. Until that day arrives, the case against God must rely on incomplete evidence. We cannot really reconcile our pain-wracked world with a loving God because what we experience now is not the same as what God intends. Jesus himself prayed that God's will "be done, on earth as it is in heaven," a prayer that will not be fully answere..
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suffering
spirituality
why
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Philip Yancey |
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d061a2e
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Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over "all the kingdoms of the world," and who died a martyr at the hands of a powerful state. In the words of Miroslav Volf, "Imposition stands starkly at odds with the basic character of the Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving--God's self-giving..
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Philip Yancey |