Quotes from Philip Yancey

Does the Christian emphasis on love, grace, and forgiveness have any relevance outside quarreling families or church encounter groups? In a world where force matters most, a lofty ideal like forgiveness may seem as insubstantial as vapor.

It has taken me years to distill the Gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it. Sadly, many of my friends gave up on the effort, never getting to Jesus because the pettiness of the church blocked the way.

Because of Jesus, I can never say about a person, "She must be suffering because of some sin she committed"; Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.

From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven. The Jesus I Never Knew (244 — 45)

Unlike the scary movies and sermons from my youth, not one of them focuses on personal salvation as a way of escaping hell in the afterlife. Rather, they present how the good news about eternity should transform this life. The Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.

The message of this book has the power to reform the church, one relationship at a time.

I have found consolation, for example, in C. S. Lewis's depiction in The Great Divorce of hell as a place that people choose, and continue to choose even when they end up there. As Milton's Satan put it, Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

For me, at least, guidance only becomes evident when I look backward, months and years later. Then the circuitous process falls into place and the hand of God seems clear. But at the moment of decision I feel mainly confusion and uncertainty. Indeed, almost all the guidance in my life has been subtle and indirect.

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.

Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.

Obviously, 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.

We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.