In the last few years, I’ve learned that when you talk ‘religion’ with friends or colleagues, 90 percent of the time, you run the risk of offending someone. Yes, faith is a very prickly subject. It’s also highly personal and private. To be perfectly honest, my own faith tends to be ambiguous and ambivalent in turns. So why recommend a Christian author’s works to friends and family members?

Well, for the simple reason that Philip Yancey’s writings aren’t just religious, they’re philosophical. They’re there to get you thinking. In his books, Yancey doesn’t tell you what or how to think; he offers you ideas and leaves the thinking (and believing) up to you. He treats the subject with ample delicacy but maintains integrity when tackling it. His books also offer a fresh perspective to what you already know, or think you know.

About the Author:

Philip Yancey (born 1949) is an award-winning evangelical Christian author. With over 14 million books sold worldwide, he’s one of the most read Christian authors today. He’s won a number of book awards including the Gold Medallion Book Award and the ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) Christian Book of the Year award.

When Yancey was just about a year old, his father succumbed to polio after members of their strict, fundamentalist church convinced his dad to go off life support. They believed that his faith in God would heal him. His father’s death combined with his experience of witnessing contradictions between what the church taught and what it practiced, contributed to Yancey’s loss of faith. It would a take a miraculous moment in Bible College for him to experience a form of metanoia (spiritual conversion).

Since then, Yancey has been tackling some of the most basic and hardest questions and issues on Christianity. He’s penned thought-provoking Christian books like What’s So Amazing about Grace (1997), The Jesus I Never Knew (1995), Disappointment with God (1988), and Reaching for an Invisible God (2000). Yancey has also contributed works to publications like Reader’s Digest, National Wildlife, Publishers Weekly, Eternity, Moody Monthly, Chicago Tribune Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post.

Website: www.philipyancey.com

 Favorite Work: Disappointment with God (1988)

Other Recommended Books from this Author: Where is God When it Hurts? (1977), The Jesus I Never Knew (1995), What’s So Amazing About Grace (1997)

Image: Christianpost.com