For over forty years, Philip Yancey has written about faith. You don’t a career that lasts that long and has been so successful without intense personal motivation. Throughout his writing, Yancey has shared parts of his story. Now, in Where the Light Fell, he offers a reflective and powerful memoir of his formative years that provides the framework for his forty-year career. It’s an incredible story and I’m honored that Philip took the time to talk to me about the book and muse about how fundamentalism has changed and how it’s remained the same. There are a lot of readers and listeners who are discovering that the faith of their parents can’t be their own—but how are they to throw out what’s toxic and keep Jesus? Yancey, through his own life, offers a path through.
The Interview | Philip Yancey
This interview excerpt is lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full interview at the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Josh Olds: What made it the right time for you to tell this story?
Philip Yancey: I’ve waited a long time. Most of my books are the same style. I call them a personal pilgrimage essay. This is different because it’s a story and I had to work very hard. It’s so easy for me to slip into commentary and analysis. And that’s not a good memoir. a memoir is the story that drags you along, much like a novel. And so I’ve been studying. I read a whole bunch of memoirs, just trying to figure out how it works. And there were family complications as well. So I was in no hurry to write it.
Also, I had this life-threatening automobile accident, where I was in a Ford Explorer here on a mountain in Colorado, and flipped over five different times and ended up with a broken neck and they weren’t sure I would live. As I faced that, I asked myself, What have I not been able to do yet that I that I really feel I was put on earth to do. And this was at the top of the list. In fact, it was almost alone at the top of the list. So I said, Okay, I’ve got to take it seriously. I’ve got to I got to start doing this. I was continuing to write other books at the time, but I would interview and take notes and research and just make sure I got the story right.
I describe it as a prequel, because as you said, when you read this you understood why I wrote the things that I did. And I’m sure people who have read my other books may think, Oh, he had an easy existence. He just kind of, you know, took his little Sunday School Bible teaching
classes and then gradually went to a Bible college and then sat down and write all these things that other people should believe. No, no, it was it was faith earned through difficultly—hardly won. But I came down on the side of grace.
Josh Olds: Near the end of the book, you write about being an adult and going back to all of your childhood places, even meeting with some of the figures from your childhood. Having had your distance from that world, what was it like to go back into it and experience it as an adult?
Philip Yancey: Yeah, I hadn’t been in an environment like that for 35 years. And the first thing that struck me was, these people aren’t as large as I thought they were. I was a kid when I went to the church. And, and now they’re middle aged, they’re kind of paunchy. And then when the pastor got up, the pastor who so often talked about hell and punishment and sin, one phrase went through my mind. The name of the church is Faith Baptist Church. And I thought, Oh, Faith, where is thy sting? Because I remember being under that cloud of fear every time I would walk into church, and I didn’t feel it anymore.
I wasn’t attracted to it. It wasn’t appealing to me. And I wasn’t scared anymore. I’ve learned to know a God of grace and love. The God who Jesus portrays as a loving Father who goes out every night and scans the horizon wonder...