Don Follis 11/16/2001 religion column:
"Christian writer finds mentors who help answer his deepest doubts"
Author Philip Yancey fits most
comfortably with evangelicals. Still, he
says he often feels like the most liberal person among conservatives
and
sometimes the most conservative among liberals. He's not afraid
to ask,
"Why doesn't faith work?"
I feel at home with Yancey
and safe asking how I fit together my religious
past with my spiritual present. In his most recent book, "Soul
Survivor --
How My faith Survived the Church" (Doubleday, 2001), Yancey pierces
into my
doubting heart, as he tries to come to grips with his own deepest questions.
"If I had to define my own
theme," Yancey writes, "it would be that of a
person who absorbed some of the worst the church has to offer, yet
still
landed in the loving arms of God."
To help him explain how
his faith has survived, Yancey explores the lives
of 13 "flawed, not perfect people." "If I were invited
to a convention
full of skeptics, or representatives of another religion, and asked
to
explain my faith, these are the companions I would want along," Yancey
explains.
Yancey travels with prophets
and writers and thinkers. One of his
mentors, Mahatma Gandhi, decided against the Christian faith. But all
of
Yancey's mentors "were permanently changed by their contact with Jesus."
Yancey is a personal friend with some of his guides. Others he
knows only
indirectly, through the writing they left behind. "Those furthest
from
orthodox Christianity -- Gandhi, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Endo -- have
best
helped me understand my own faith, by shining light on it from an angle
I
had not considered," Yancey writes.
Yancey profiles Martin Luther
King Jr. in the first and perhaps most
revealing chapter. He calls the chapter "A long night's journey
into day."
Raised in an all-white racist church in Atlanta in the 1960s,
Yancey
attended an all white school. Yancey writes that "in 1966, when
I
graduated from that school, no black student had ever set foot on campus."
Over the years Yancey came
to greatly admire King's life and work. "Even
the large Baptist church I attended in my childhood learned to repent,"
Yancey writes. Yancey believes that anyone, white or black, that
grew up
in the South in the 1960s bears scars. Some scars are physical
and some
are spiritual. "I have visited King's old church in Atlanta,
Ebenezer
Baptist, and sat in tears as I saw through new eyes the moral center
of the
black community that gave them strength to fight against bigots like
me."
Two surgeons are among Yancey's
mentors. Yancey writes about Dr. Paul
Brand, an orthopedist, and his decades of selfless service in India.
Yancey traveled to India and saw how Brand performed surgery in the
leprosy
colonies. Brand lived simply, taking only the wage of an average
worker in
India.
At the end of his life Brand
told Yancey, "Because of where I practiced
medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that
as I look
back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were
patients
bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring."
The other physician Yancey
profiles is Dr. C. Everett Koop. Yancey writes
how throughout his lifetime Koop, a pediatric surgeon and then Surgeon
General, has remained a man of principal with an unwavering belief
in the
absolute sovereignty of God.
London journalist G.K. Chesterton
always encourages Yancey. Yancey once
thought the last thing he would ever become was a "Christian writer."
Yancey grew up in a church and then attended a small Bible college
that
"tended to punish, rather than reward, intellectual curiosity."
But then
Yancey found the writings of Chesterton, especially his book "Orthodoxy,"
and Yancey says his intellectual world came to life.
Yancey loves Chesterton's
refreshing honesty, such as the time when the
London Times asked several writers for essays on the topic "What's
Wrong
with the World." Chesterton's reply was the shortest and most
to the
point: "Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton."
As Yancey takes you in his
confidence, you'll read about psychiatrist Dr.
Robert Coles and his great love for children. You'll ponder the
honesty of
John Donne's ministry in London when the Great Plague swept through
the
city during the early 1600s. You'll be introduced to writers
Annie
Dillard, Frederick Buechner and Shusaku Endo. Finally, you'll
read about
the deep struggles of Catholic priest Henri Nouwen.
Yancey's book is a great
one for doubters and strugglers, like me, who
have spent their life battling to stay on the narrow road.
Don Follis is an Urbana minister. Reprinted with permission from
the
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, copyright 2001.