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Twenty years ago a friend of mine asked me what my favourite Christian book was, and I replied that it was Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? (I remember because he asked me: “What’s so amazing about Yancey?”)
This week I re-read it. It was an interesting experience.
This week I re-read it. It was an interesting experience.
What struck me most was how little of the book was actually about grace. There was a zinger of a chapter retelling the parables, and another on the maths of grace. But most of the book was about the legalism, hypocrisy and judgmentalism of conservative American Christians.
I’d picked it up again because I wanted to reflect on the grace of God. But as it turned out, it was mostly a critique of fundamentalism—which is fine, but it isn’t what the title suggested it would be about, nor (oddly) what I’d remembered it being about.
Another surprise was how little has changed between Clintown and Trumpville when it comes to the relationship between many American evangelicals and politics. Almost all of Yancey’s criticisms still apply a generation later, and his successors are still writing books about them.
As I thought about it, an irony occurred to me. Yancey’s book points out (rightly) how conservatism underplays the message of grace through unforgiveness and legalism. But by focusing so much on our failures relative to God’s grace, his book seems to underplay it too.
Perhaps that’s just my circumstances. I’m English in 2020 and I don’t share his social or political context. But even so, it talked a lot less about God and his abundant goodness than I’d expected (and hoped). I went looking for a bath, and got a series of pokes in the ribs.
Having said all that, I will always be grateful to Yancey for writing it. It’s full of great quotations and insights. When I was 20 and had hardly read any Christian books, God used it to open my eyes to his love. You can’t put a price on that.
