Vanishing Grace Quotes

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast, get too angry quickly; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom, and lie too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“How differently would the world view Christians if we focused on our own failings rather than on society’s? As I read the New Testament I am struck by how little attention it gives to the faults of the surrounding culture. Jesus and Paul say nothing about violent gladiator games or infanticide, both common practices among the Romans. In a telling passage, the apostle Paul responds fiercely to a report of incest in the Corinthian church. He urges strong action against those involved but quickly clarifies, “not at all meaning the people of this world. . . . What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Frederick Buechner writes, “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies forcibly dragged Catholics into Protestant churches. Priests in the American West sometimes chained Indians to church pews to enforce church attendance. After many such episodes in Christendom it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Much of the current hostility against Christians evokes the memory of such examples. The blending of church and state may work for a time but it inevitably provokes a backlash, such as that seen in secular Europe today.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“the issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the “weapons of grace,” which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Herein lies the most solemn challenge facing Christians who want to communicate their faith: if we do not live in a way that draws others to the faith rather than repels them, none of our words will matter.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the first book to the last the Bible tells of wayward children and the tortuous lengths to which God will go to bring them home. Indeed, the entire biblical drama ends with a huge family reunion in the book of Revelation.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Shouldn’t we be presenting an alternative to the prevailing culture rather than simply mimicking it? What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Faith is not simply a private matter, or something we practice once a week at church. Rather, it should have a contagious effect on the broader world. Jesus used these images to illustrate his kingdom: a sprinkle of yeast causing the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt preserving a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden growing into a great tree in which birds of the air come to nest.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, “Well isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“The Quakers have a saying: “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me. Those conversations are what led to the title of this book. Although God’s grace is as amazing as ever, in my divided country it seems in vanishing supply.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“I’m convinced that human beings instinctively seek two things. We long for meaning, a sense that our life somehow matters to the world around us. And we long for community, a sense of being loved.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“I do not know if that theory is correct, but I do know that singling out one behavior as “sin” and emphasizing it over others provides a convenient way of dodging our own need for grace. High-minded moralism and shrill pronouncements of judgment may help fundraising, but they undermine a gospel of grace.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“The essence of Christian faith has come to us in story form, the story of a God who will go to any lengths to get his family back. The Bible tells of flawed people -- people just like me -- who make shockingly bad choices and yet still find themselves pursued by God. As they receive grace and forgiveness, naturally they want to give it to others, and a thread of hope and transformation weaves its way throughout the Bible's accounts.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“The church is, above all, a place to receive grace: it brings forgiven people together with the aim of equipping us to dispense grace to others.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Grace dispensers give out of their own bounty, in gratitude (a word with the same root as grace) for what we have received from God. We serve others not with some hidden scheme of making converts, rather to contribute to the common good, to help humans flourish as God intended.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“We, Jesus’ followers, are the agents assigned to carry out God’s will on earth. Too easily we expect God to do something for us when instead God wants to do it through us.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Stanley Hauerwas, named “America’s best theologian” by Time magazine, summed up the problem: “I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“We respond to healing grace by giving it away.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“A pilgrim is a fellow-traveler on the spiritual journey, not a professional guide.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Christians obscured the good news by their efforts to restore morality to the broader culture?”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Stanley Hauerwas, named “America’s best theologian” by Time magazine, summed up the problem: “I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world.” When a poll of college students asked,”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“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?”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“How differently will I relate to the uncommitted if I view them not as evil or unsaved but rather as lost.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“• You don’t listen to me. • You judge me. • Your faith confuses me. • You talk about what’s wrong instead of making it right. Reviewing these complaints, it occurs to me that Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments, or proclaim lofty words that don’t translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love — ​and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God’s grace goes unheard.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“we live as though life has meaning, as if love, beauty, truth, justice, and morality are not just arbitrary concepts but somehow real.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?

“Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.”
― Philip Yancey, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?