What's So Amazing About Grace?

By: Philip Yancey

Libby audiobook 3 hours

Narrated by the author

Published: 2003

Genre: Christianity

I loved this book until I got to the very end . . . and found out it was abridged! I do not generally check out abridgements, preferring the author's full text. I've just looked at the description and it clearly says, "Edition - Unabridged." Grrr.

I've now checked out the revised edition which is ten hours long . . . So I'll blog that at the end of this once I've finished.

This book is fascinating and fantastic. God's grace is truly too often overlooked or ignored. Some of his stories were hard to hear (a prostitute selling time with her two-year-old daughter . . . ) but others were quite familiar. He told stories about his own mother and grandmother, without acknowledging the relationship (I only know because I've read his memoir). 

I didn't jot down any notes or quotes, but perhaps I'll capture some when I listen to the full-length version.

<Above posted 1.8.26. Below added 1.26.26.>

The full length book has so very much more in it (no surprise) but I almost appreciate the more concise version. This ten hour audiobook got much more into history, politics, sociology, etc.

In the section on homosexuality, I really appreciate that Yancey led with a story about a friend. I am curious to read Mel White's Stranger at the Gate, but I have too many books on my list right now! I love the irony (and also it makes me sad) that members of the Metropolitan Community Church (an LGBTQ church that believes in Jesus) was singing "Jesus Loves Me" at angry Christian protesters. 

Yancey goes on to say "Why do Christians hate so much?" Too often, Christians lash out in anger and even hatred toward others who do not believe as they (we) do. Yancey mentioned that in interviews with Bill Clinton, Clinton shared some of the angry, hateful letters he had received from Evangelicals. Listening to this made me wonder how do these same Christians view Trump? He lies, cheats, brags, and does so many unethical things! (That's coming from me, not Yancey.)

Yancey refers to the opposite of grace as "ungrace." I think that's too kind of him. 

There was a section when he talked about unclean animals and the whole dream sequence Peter has in Acts 10. His sermon "What does God have against lobster?" led to the conclusion "No oddballs allowed" for many churches. (Fit in or leave.) This is an example of ungrace.

I started to try to copy a section but just marked it as part 3, chapter 15 with the time. Yancey was talking about his school's legalistic approach to things like hair length, clothing, cigarettes, drinking, etc.

"Strict legalism pulls in the bounds of deviance. We might sneak off to a bowling alley but would never think of touching liquor, or horrors! Drugs. Though I can find nothing in the Bible against cigarettes, I am glad that Fundamentalism scared me away from them even before the Surgeon General mounted a bully pulpit. In short, I have little resentment against these particular rules but much resentment against the way they were presented. I had the constant, pounding sense that following an external code of behavior was the way to please God. More, to make God love me. It has taken me years to distill the gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it. Sadly, many of my friends gave up on the effort, never getting to Jesus because the pettiness of church blocked the way."

There is so much more to this. I like that Yancey is nuanced and thoughtful in considering the topics he writes about. I love his focus on grace and how Christians are sometimes not very Christlike in showing grace. He is a wonderful author and I really like this book.