After 'The Jesus I Never Knew' this is probably Yancey's second best book. (In case you don't know this popular writer, he's Editor-at-large for the evangelical magazine Christianity Today).

Grace, says C.S.Lewis, is Christianity's unique contribution among world religions. 'Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... and grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less,' is Yancey's best attempt to define a marvelous but elusive concept (p.70).

This book is a polemic against 'ungrace' - particularly the North American Fundamentalist/legalistic variety. It is a wonderful collection of anecdotes, quotes and stories - from Yancey's personal experiences of grace/ungrace, and from films, movies and other media - and a powerful diatribe against the ungrace involved in the last three evangelical Christian paradigm shifts - Bible belt legalism, racism, and homophobia.

For me the two highlights of the book - worth the $12-99 I paid for it at Open Book bookshop - are chapter 13 - 'Grace-healed eyes' , the sad story of his homosexual friend Mel White's collision with Fundamentalist bigotry, and Babette's Feast: A Story, which drives home the truth that grace costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.

What's So Amazing About Grace opens with the sad story of a prostitute who came to a counselor for help. 'At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. "Church!" she cried. "Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse!"'

President Bill Clinton's equally sad comment (said before the Starr/Lewinsky episode) : 'I've been in politics long enough to expect criticism and hostility... But I was unprepared for the _hatred_ (Yancey's emphasis) I get from Christians. Why do Christians hate so much?' (p.226)

A good test as to whether your church is grace- or ungrace-filled might be Tony Compolo's provocative/prophetic ploy when speaking at Christian colleges. '"The United Nations reports that over ten thousand people starve to death each day, and most of you don't give a sh-- . However, what is even more tragic is that most of you are more concerned about the fact that I have said a bad word than you are about the ten thousand people dying today." The responses prove his point: in nearly every case Tony got a letter from the chaplain or president of the college protesting his foul language. The letters never mentioned world hunger.' (p.201) (My test: ask an evangelical congregation to vote on the question 'Does God love the Devil?')

To be picky for a moment: Yancey is a better writer than he is a biblical scholar. His evangelical cliche 'The Book of' (Romans, Second Corinthians etc.) is not the way scholars write. Some of his biblical references could have been more carefully considered within their socio-cultural context. And I would have liked a discussion of Abuse and Grace: how does an abused person relate to significant others in terms of grace - differentiating between the abuser and subsequent persons where 'transference' occurs, and between the person and the abusive deed...

Some good quotes:

# 'The great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there' (H. Richard Neibuhr) (p. 13-14)

# Mark Twain used to talk about people who were 'good in the worst sense of the word' (p.31)

# Theologian Karl Barth, after writing thousands of pages in his Church Dogmatics, arrived at this simple definition of God: 'the One who loves.' (p.55)

# W.H.Auden's version of the old maxim 'Hurt people hurt people': 'I and the public know / What all school children learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return' (p.86)

# Humorist Erma Bombeck's prayer: 'Lord, if you can't make me thin, then make my friends look fat' (p.87)

# Henri Nouwen defines forgiveness as 'love practiced among people who love poorly' (p.92) ...As the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said, the only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise, we remain trapped in "the predicament of irreversibility" (p.99)

# Coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church (G.K.Chesterton) (p.248)

I belong to a reading group; last Friday night's discussion on this book was quite memorable. We go to asking, for example, why, in our church, people who declare their homosexual orientation inevitably have to leave. (But it's one thing to curse the darkness, another to light a candle. Hopefully Yancey will provoke some positive responses as well). It's a good book. Go out and buy it.

Philip Yancey, 'What's So Amazing About Grace?' (Zondervan / HarperCollins, 1997)

Rowland Croucher,
October 1998