Philip Yancey and the Jesus he never knew

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Philip Yancey's The Jesus I never knew, published for the first time in 1995 by Zondervan Harper Collins in Michigan, received the compliment from Billy Graham, "There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more." 

What this writer's strength appears to be is his no-nonsense, take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards the truth and the pursuit thereof.  He strips away all notions of the Jesus that is merely the lamb and never the lion, or to be more accurate, the man holding the whip and blazoning the marketplace down to rid the temple of moneymakers who had no place to turn something holy into something commercial.  It appears Yancey has rubbed off on me.  

Leo Tolstoy, one of the two most famous Russian writers, Dostoevsky being the second, is quoted as having said, "The test of observance of Christ's teachings is our consciousness of our failure to attain an ideal perfection.  The degree to which we draw near this perfection cannot be seen; all we can see is the extent of our deviation."  

God placed on my heart this day to practise grace.  In every situation, instead of giving my opinion, trying to control the situation, and criticizing someone's hypocrisy, all in the pursuit of "perfection", God's message of grace was in my heart, yet falling short of His perfect will to practise grace, He gently reminded me that His grace is sufficient for me also.  

A burden lifted from my soul as God revealed to me the perfection of man in the world is not the perfection God seeks, and it is not man's approval that counts eternally, but God's.  It is God in heaven that Jesus sought to please, and was therefore able to endure the hardships of disappointment with his disciples, betrayal, mockery, physical suffering, and ultimately, a cruel and gruesome death.  He sought to follow His Father and thus made it to Him.  There is no greater gift than that.  

However, I believe there are many millions of people in this world that believe by naive ignorance that they will go to heaven when they die, simply because that is where dead people go.  God's reality has withered down into a Santa Claus figure in December, bunnies in April, and an otherwise "Higher Power" or the big, friendly, wise old man who peers over the clouds and looks down to see what we are all up to, and sure, He will reach down to earth if He decides to do so, but there are many catastrophes He's missed, they'll say, as I once did.

Despite the level of awareness towards spirituality, the question of God, Who He really is, what He really expects, and how you really get to heaven, have become pushed under the carpet, as though it is all old hat.  Or old-fashioned.  Invalid.  When in fact, it is still the most important question, in my opinion, worth asking: What am I here for?  Because the answer determines our eventual outcome, and even though we often don't like to think that far, the answer puts our lives in perspective - God's perspective.

Philip Yancey has pointed the way for many readers.  His reputation in Christian circles is remarkable, and having read through half his book by this stage, I have very little doubt that He will help me kick a few bad habits in my thinking and help me to not just stand on God's path but to move forward and upward in it, in Jesus' name.     




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