Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Along with Chesterton, I’ve had to take my place among those who acknowledge that we are what is wrong with the world. What is my snobbishness toward my childhood church, for instance, but an inverted form of the harsh judgment it showed me?”
“Evil’s greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when, in fact, religion accounts for its source: every good and enjoyable thing is the invention of a Creator who lavished gifts on the world.”
“Rather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world.”
“Always, no matter the circumstances, we have the assurance of “Immanuel,” which simply means “God with us.”
“As a counterbalance to the list of seven deadly sins, the church in the Middle Ages came up with a list of seven works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick, ransom the captive, bury the dead.”
“Change came from below, as it usually does, rather than being imposed from above.”
topics: change
“we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” And “he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
“Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson performed a rather bizarre experiment on ants that may supplement Paul’s illustration (Rom 6:1-14). After noticing that it took ants a few days to recognize one of their crumpled nestmates as having died, he determined that ants identified death by clues of smell, not visually. As the ant’s body began to decompose, other ants would infallibly carry it out of the nest to a refuse pile. After many tries, Wilson narrowed down the precise chemical clue to oleic acid. If the ants smelled oleic acid, they would carry out the corpse; any other smell, they ignored. Their instinct was so strong that if Wilson daubed oleic acid on bits of paper, other ants would dutifully carry the paper to the ant cemetery. In a final twist, Wilson painted oleic acid on the bodies of living ants. Sure enough, their nestmates seized them and marched them, their legs and antennae wriggling in protest, out to the ant cemetery. Thus deposited, the indignant 'living dead' cleaned themselves off before returning to the nest. If they did not remove every trace of the oleic acid, the nestmates would promptly seize them again and return them to the cemetery. They had to be certifiably alive, judged solely by smell, before being accepted back into the nest. I think of that image, 'dead' ants acting very much alive, when I read Paul’s first illustration in Romans 6. Sin may be dead, but it stubbornly wriggles back to life.”
topics: death-to-sin
“Eugene Peterson hace un contraste entre Agustín y Pelagio, dos teólogos del siglo IV opuestos entre sí. Pelagio era educado, cortés, convincente y le caía bien a todo el mundo. Agustín había derrochado su juventud en la inmoralidad, tenía una extraña relación con su madre y se conseguía muchos enemigos. Sin embargo, hizo de la gracia su punto de partida y las cosas le salieron bien, mientras que Pelagio comenzaba por el esfuerzo humano y se descarriaba.”
“A pilgrim is a fellow-traveler on the spiritual journey, not a professional guide.”
“I do not know if that theory is correct, but I do know that singling out one behavior as “sin” and emphasizing it over others provides a convenient way of dodging our own need for grace. High-minded moralism and shrill pronouncements of judgment may help fundraising, but they undermine a gospel of grace.”
“Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.”
“We respond to healing grace by giving it away.”
“Moreover, conservative Christians have come to accept that Jesus’ gospel applies to the whole person and not just the soul. Didn’t Jesus inaugurate his own ministry with a declaration of good news for the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, and the blind?”
“Christians obscured the good news by their efforts to restore morality to the broader culture?”
“Stanley Hauerwas, named “America’s best theologian” by Time magazine, summed up the problem: “I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world.” When a poll of college students asked,”
“How differently will I relate to the uncommitted if I view them not as evil or unsaved but rather as lost.”
“Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.”
“• You don’t listen to me. • You judge me. • Your faith confuses me. • You talk about what’s wrong instead of making it right. Reviewing these complaints, it occurs to me that Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments, or proclaim lofty words that don’t translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love — and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God’s grace goes unheard.”
“We have not, it seems, the power to abstain from worship. Instead, we swallow the sweet poison, substituting lesser gods for God.”
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Philip Yancey is an American Christian author. Fourteen million of his books have been sold worldwide, making him one of the best-selling evangelical Christian authors. Two of his books have won the ECPA's Christian Book of the Year Award: The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996, What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998. He is published by Zondervan Publishing.
Yancey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. When Yancey was one year old, his father, stricken with polio, died after his church elders suggested he go off life support in faith that God would heal him. This was one of the reasons he had lost his faith at one point of time. Yancey earned his MA with highest honors from the graduate school of Wheaton College. His two graduate degrees in Communications and English were earned from Wheaton College Graduate School and the University of Chicago.
Yancey moved to Chicago, Illinois, and in 1971 joined the staff of Campus Life magazine--a sister publication of Christianity Today directed towards high school and college students--where he served as editor for eight years. Yancey was for many years an editor for Christianity Today and wrote articles for Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Eternity, Moody Monthly, and National Wildlife, among others. He now lives in Colorado, working as a columnist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He is a member of the editorial board of Books and Culture, another magazine affiliated with Christianity Today, and travels around the world for speaking engagements.