503 Quotes by Philip Yancey

You are free to reject God. Make sure that you're really rejecting God, not some caricature of God that the church has shown you. But I, one, respect a God who not only allows us to reject Him but includes the arguments we can use against Him in the Bible. I respect that.

Eugene Peterson points out that "the root meaning in Hebrew of salvation is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined and cramped." God wants to set free, to make it possible for us to live open and loving lives with God and our neighbors. "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free," wrote the psalmist.

I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.

The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.

I have more appreciation for why the Bible avoids fuzzy psychologisms and says simply to the stealer, "Steal no more," and to the tempted, "Flee temptation." The Bible challenges us to look upward, not inward, for counsel at moments of crisis.

Much of the misgiving that Muslims feel for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom, always a risky enterprise. I've heard some say they would rather rear their children in a closely guarded Islamic society than in the United States, where freedom so often leads to decadence.

Love deems this world worth rescuing.

I wrote a book on grace, and grace is a free gift, but to receive the gift you have to have your hands open. And a lot of people don't have their hands open, there's something they're grasping because there's a lot of things to grasp in a prosperous country.

Jesus announced a great reversal of values in His Sermon on the Mount, elevating not the rich or attractive, but rather the poor, the persecuted, and those who mourn.