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Journal Entry 1 by biffin44 from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire United Kingdom on Thursday, June 02, 2005
 the blurb:
We speak of grace often. But do we understand it? More important, do we truly believe in it... and do our lives proclaim it as powerfully as our words?
In 'What's so amazing about grace?' the best-selling author of 'The Jesus I never knew' gives us a probing and impassioned look at grace: what it looks like... what it doesn't look like... and why only Christians can and must reveal the grace the world is seaching for.
Philip Yancy offers compelling, true portraits of grace's life-changing power. He searches for the presence of grace in his own life and in the church. He asks, How can Christians contend graciously with moral issues that threaten all they hold dear?
And he challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately wants to know, What's so Amazing about Grace?
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Journal Entry 4 by potok-fan from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Wednesday, February 01, 2006
This arrived in the post today - an RABCK from biffin44. Biffin44 signed up for my Blackberry Wine ring, and in checking this bookcrosser out, I saw that many months ago B had offered this title on the bookrings forum. I wrote to see if we could arrange a trade. The only title on my virtual shelves that B wanted had unfortunately already passed into someone else's hands, but B was kind enough to send this as an RABCK anyway - THANK YOU BIFFIN44!
Although I've heard of Yancey, I've never read any of his books. I knew enough to laugh when a speaker at a Christian conference jokingly asked, "What's so amazing about Philip Yancey?"... Now I have the opportunity to find out for myself. Thanks again, B, and I'll journal my reactions after I have read this (I might start it right away, but more likely it'll be a few months).
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Journal Entry 5 by potok-fan from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Saturday, June 10, 2006
It took a while for me to get used to Yancey’s writing style, which seems to be anecdote after anecdote, piled upon other anecdotes. To be fair, he does admit this right at the beginning: I have just read a thirteen-page treatise on grace in [a religious encyclopedia], which has cured me of any desire to dissect grace and display its innards. I ... will rely more on stories than on syllogisms. (p.16)
The book makes a good case for that Christian principle which many people, both inside and outside the church, find so problematic: “Hate the sin but love the sinner”. The chapter about responding to the gay community, was as conservative in its morality as I had expected, but refreshingly, was equally condemning of those American evangelical Christians who are unloving to that community.
He writes of the mother of a gay man who was interviewed for television. “They say he’s an abomination. What do you think about that?” “Well,” the mother answered in a sweet, quavery voice, “he may be an abomination, but he’s still our pride and joy.” Yancey’s point is that this applies to everyone: In some ways we are all abominations to God – “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God – and yet somehow, against all reason, God loves us anyhow. In his last chapter, he writes (not about any specific sin, but very generally), we should hate the sins in others in the same way we hate them in ourselves: being sorry the person has done such things and hoping that somehow, sometime, somewhere, that person will be cured.
The author is relatively explicit about writing for a conservative evangelical audience. He also is writing for an American audience, and that is perhaps my biggest criticism of the book. A number of his anecdotes are from other countries (in the introduction alone he refers to England, Germany, South Africa, Japan, and the Middle East), but in places he still seems to slip into that American assumption that America is universal, that the movers and shakers of the evangelical church are American (or in America), that we in the sense of “my readers and I” is the same we as “other American Christians and I”. It’s not inappropriate – this book was published in Michigan, and printed in the USA – but I still found it grating.
Thanks, biffin44, for the chance to read this book! If you have preferences about what I do with it next (such as wild-releasing vs. controlled-releasing), please let me know within a week or so.
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Journal Entry 7 by seethroughfaith from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Haven't started this yet. It arrived at my house only today thanks to my friend- and I'm leaving for camp tomorrow (kitchen duty) so hoping to have some quiet time to start reading it here.
The whole bookcrossing thing is fun. Wondering if biffin44 is anything to do with Wycliff (Bible translators) but anyway all Christian books are always welcome here - Fun to pass on too :)
CAUGHT IN TURKU, SOUTHWEST FINLAND (FINLAND)
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Journal Entry 8 by seethroughfaith from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Thursday, July 06, 2006
I finished What's So Amazing About Grace last night and really liked it and I'm hanging onto it for now
EDIT: added to PC. Available for loan
For me one of the best (toughest) parts of the book was the section on legalism - the whole grace v works dilemma. It really isn't fair that the father kills the fattened calf for the run-away son and ignores the hard-working diligent older brother (Luke 15) it isn't fair that the workers who are hired at the end of the day get a full day's pay (ouch!) and that is the whole point of grace - it isn't fair - we don't get what we deserve we get God's mercy. This book taught be a lot about God -and something about myself - and made me do some soul-searching too. Ouch!
It was written almost ten years ago now (1997) and what is interesting to see is that things have changed a lot in the ex soviet countries. Yancey was full of optimism about the collapse of the Berlin wall and change in Russia - and that perhaps is my only criticism of the book - at time we see the communist /ex communist states through (naive - and then optimistic) American eyes. Yet his message is that christianity thrives best when it's under persecution - rather than when the church flirts with politics. I agree!
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What's So Amazing About Grace?
