Having read almost all of Philip Yancey's 15 books, I feel like I know
him.  He loves to read, and enjoys jogging to clear his head.  That's a man
after my own heart.  
        He grew up in a conservative church in the south, from which he rebelled.
I grew up in a conservative church in Kansas, from which I rebelled.  He
likes to read the works of authors C.S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Frederick
Buechner and Kathleen Norris.  So do I.  
        Most important, Yancey is not afraid to share his doubts. He takes for
granted that a relationship between an invisible God and visible humans
will always involve an element of doubt. Quoting Frederick Buechner, Yancey
says, "If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me."  I
like a man who admits his doubts.
        In his newest book, "Reaching for the Invisible God," (Zondervan
Publishing House, 2000), Yancey asks the question, "Can you really know a
God that largely remains invisible?" 
        After 20 years of campus ministry, I have talked with enough students to
be convinced that everyone has an image of God distorted in some way.  We
must, of course, since God transcends our ability to imagine.
        Yancey wonders in his new book if knowing an invisible God has something
in common with knowing a living, breathing person.  I can get to know other
people through watching, listening and touching.  "Yet there always remains
a part of you inaccessible to me, the person inside your body, the real
'you,'" says Yancey.
        Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most brilliant scientists, can move
only one finger of one hand, and yet through his computer Hawking can
address scientific gatherings.  We must rely on people's bodies to convey
to us their minds.
        And that brings up an interesting theological question.  If God has no
body, how can we perceive him?  Yancey says, "At the heart of the Christian
story lies the promise of direct correspondence with the unseen world, a
link so profound as to be likened to a new birth, and key to life beyond
organic death."
        The Bible calls faith "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what
we do not see."  In fact throughout the Bible there is an account of
another reality operating simultaneous to, but usually hidden from, the
material reality of earth.  Sometimes the invisible world "borrows" the
visible world, as with the burning bush that Moses saw with his physical eyes.
        According to the Bible, the greatest distinction between human beings is
not race or intelligence or anything of that sort.  It is a distinction
based on communication with the unseen world.  The "children of light" have
that ability.  Yancey writes, "One day we will achieve a complete, rather
than partial correspondence with that world."
        Of course, in many ways I know that my relationship with God does not
parallel my relationship with human beings.  I first get to know a person's
name; something of their personality attracts me; I discover we have common
interests; I may reveal deep secrets, taking risks and making commitments.
I fight and argue and then reconcile.  Those stages apply to my
relationship to God as well.
        But God is infinite, intangible and invisible.  Quoting an ancient
Orthodox writer, Yancey writes, "God cannot be grasped by the mind.  If he
could be grasped, he would not be God."  Yancey adds: "We are profoundly
different, God and I, which explains why friendship is not the primary
model used in the Bible to describe our relationship.  Worship is."
        After more than 20 years of marriage, I am starting to understand why the
Bible often turns to love and marriage for pictures of the relationship God
wants with us.  My wife so often looks past my limits and graces me with
her love and attention.  I wonder if I could have learned to love God had I
not learned, through her, to love.
        Still, Yancey insists that we are flawed human beings who prove
inconstant
in our love contract with God as well as with our human partners. After 30
years of marriage and more than 30 years of struggling to follow God,
Yancey admits that some things grow harder and more complex. 
        He writes, "I am still plodding that same path  -- for more years even
than I have been married, God too lives inside me, his absence a kind of
presence, changing me, orienting me, reminding me of my true identity." 

Reprinted with permission from the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, Copyright
2000.