503 Quotes by Philip Yancey

When I don’t know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

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?

The gospel presents both high ideals and all-encompassing grace. Very often, however, the church tilts one direction or the other. Either it lowers the ideals, adjusting moral standards downward, softening Jesus’ strong commands, rationalizing behavior; or else it pulls in the boundaries of grace, declaring some sins worse than others, some sinners beyond the pale. Few churches stay faithful both to the high ideals of gospel and its bottomless grace.

Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.

My slowness to act is a sign of mercy, not of weakness.

We are inconsistent, said Mother Teresa, to care about violence, and to care about hungry children in places like India and Africa, and yet not care about the millions who are killed by the deliberate choice of their own mothers.

The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you’ve already got it all figured out.

Grace is for the desperate, the needy, the broken, those who cannot make it on their own. Grace is for all of.

When the church has occasion to set the rules for all society, it often veers toward the extremism.