By Jana Cranmer
February 11, 2008

Popular Christian author and journalist Philip Yancey, who visited PLNU last week, has written 20 books that have sold more than 15 million copies in the last three decades. Yancey writes honest accounts of his personal battles with doubt, pain and legalism in an effort to better understand the grace and healing offered through the gospel accounts. In addition to writing books, Yancey serves as editor-at-large for Christianity Today.

The Point Weekly: Your bestselling book is What’s So Amazing About Grace?. What life experiences made you passionate enough about grace to write a full book on the topic?
Philip Yancey: I was raised in a toxic family, a toxic church, a toxic subculture, toxic region—deep in the south—and my journey toward faith is a process of detoxing, and I think we live in a toxic world, a world of revenge, of getting even. And grace cuts right through it and says, ‘You’re not loved because of what you do. You’re loved because God is love. The fact that God loves good people—this is not news. But the fact that God loves bad people—that is good news, and we have to be reminded of it. “

PW: What drives you to write?
PY: There are a lot of great writers out there, but there aren’t any who have lived my life, who see things through my eyes. The more specific and detailed and compellingly I can write about my own experience, the more it strikes a universal chord.

PW: What compels you to write about pain and doubt in such depth?
PY: I go back to those themes because I became a Christian by doubting, by doubting the things the church was trying to shove down my throat. I value doubt a lot more than evangelical subculture tends to. I want to reach people who are actively disappointed. Those people need a voice. You go to a Christian bookstore and there are ‘Christian secrets to a happy life’ and ‘How to find success’ books, but when I read the Bible, doubt is a prominent theme, and not everybody makes it. I honor doubt, and I think God honors doubt.

PW: How has the car accident that nearly ended your life in 2006
impacted your understanding of the problem of pain?
PY: The Bible doesn’t give much guidance about the ‘why’ issues, yet it does give a strong emphasis on ‘now what?’ You can spend the rest of your lives asking ‘why?’ and we don’t get any answers, but we do have a very strong promise that even out of terrible tragedies good can come. That is the Christian story, based on the cross. What looked like the greatest defeat of the world turned into the salvation of the world.

PW: Which books have been your greatest accomplishments?
PY: The books of mine that I like best are not the ones that sell the best. Two stand out to me: Soul Survivor, a book about the people I admire the most that changed me, and the most personal book I’ve written: Reaching for the Invisible God. It is very honest about my own doubts and struggles currently as a Christian.

PW: What life experiences have had the greatest impact on your writing?
PY: I look back on my toxic background, and it is almost as if at a certain point in my life God smiled, and said, ‘OK, Philip, I’ve shown you the worst the church has to offer, now I’m going to show you the best.’ [I wrote Fearfully and Wonderfully Made with] Dr. Brand, who worked in India with leprosy victims—there’s not a finer human being. I became convinced of that statement Jesus made: ‘You don’t gain your life by acquiring, by grabbing. You gain your life by giving it away in service to others.’ Brand and I were together 10 years writing a book, and I’ve never known such a fulfilled, enriched person. My career as a journalist convinced me of the truth I was writing about theoretically.