Quotes from Philip Yancey

Virtually every passage on suffering in the New Testament deflects the emphasis from cause to response. Although we cannot grasp the master plan of the universe, which allows for so much evil and pain (the Why? question), we can nevertheless respond in two important ways. First, we can find meaning in the midst of suffering. Second, we can offer real and practical help to those in need.

Jesus did not eliminate evil; he revealed a God willing, at immense cost, to forgive it and to heal its damage.

Homeless people bear God's image too.

Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.

The only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies.

The apostle Paul had much to say about the immorality of individual church members, but little to say about the immorality of pagan Rome. He did not rail against the abuses in Rome—slavery, idolatry, gladiator games, political oppression, greed—even though such abuses surely offended Christians of that day every bit as much as our deteriorating society offends Christians today.

Jesus was not crucified for being a good citizen, for being just a little nicer than everyone else. The powers of his day correctly saw him and his followers as subversives because they took orders from a higher power than Rome or Jerusalem. What would a subversive church look like in the modern United States?

God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.

only love can summon a response of love, which is the one thing God wants from us and the reason he created us.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.7-22 REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Are we concentrating more on the kingdom of this world than on the kingdom that is not of this world?

The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political issues that it plays by the rules of power, which are rules of ungrace