Philip Yancey always challenges me with his writing. He is the writer I want to be when I grow up. I have recently started his newest book Vanishing Grace : Whatever Happened to the Good News?. As usual, Yancey does not disappoint.
I learned about the book from an interview in Christianity Today. Philip Yancey has written over a dozen best selling books and one of those is What’s So Amazing about Grace? I found the first question of the interview fascinating.
Why did you choose to revisit the subject of grace?
I know why the interviewer made the inquiry. You want “new” material from an author. Why plow the same ground? But I think that question is a mirror to one of the big problems in the Christian community. We never get past our daily need to revisit grace and the Good News of the Gospel. Martin Luther said that “you should preach the Gospel to yourself daily.” Why? Because you and I forget the depth and the power of grace everyday.
Yancey’s response was thought provoking.
Sociologist and researcher Amy Sherman has said that Christians tend to have three models for interacting with society: fortification, accommodation, and domination. To put that in layman’s terms: We hunker down amongst ourselves, water down our witness, or beat down our opponents. For many reasons, those aren’t New Testament models.
So what should we be? We need to create pioneer settlements that show the world a different, grace-based way of living.
That is brilliant both in diagnosis and prescriptive cure. Can you imaging the power of truly grace-based living in this wounded and desperately thirsty culture?
His next observation parallels the message that I have awkwardly been trying to communicate in my decade plus of writing.
We hear nowadays about Christian groups losing university recognition or public prayers and Christmas displays being banned. We feel on the defensive and that we’re the outliers. But much of Christian history has been lived this way, like it was during the Roman Empire, when a small number of Christians modeled another way to live. In a culture like ours, we need to demonstrate first how faith in Christ makes a difference in how we live.
Simply put, when we encounter people resistant to our message we must show them grace and the source of that grace, Jesus. I wrote about how this ragamuffin band of Jesus followers went from cultural curiosity to world changing movement in my book When Bad Christians Happen to Good People. One key component was selfless service.
Remember that the early Christians lived in a pagan culture that featured infanticide and gladiator combat. The early church’s revolutionary view of the value of life was sacrificially demonstrated during the two great plagues that devastated the Empire in the second and third centuries. While pagans avoided any contact with the sick and even cast them into the streets while still alive, Christians nursed and cared for the sick even though it cost some their lives. The selfless service of the early church won many converts to the fold.
Against all odds and with no cultural advantage the early followers of Christ made a difference. Yancey concluded his interview with this thought.
We’re tempted to rely on passing laws and winning arguments, but in the end, they’re not the greatest powers. The greatest power is what Jesus did. He died and rose again. That’s where it all started. The more we act like Jesus, not beating people down but showing a better way to live, the more outsiders will look back and say, “Those Christians are different.”
There is a better way to live. Lord Jesus, give us the grace to show it.
