Toward the end of my Dad’s life, I asked him if he had reached the age he then was without trusting Christ — and assuming that he still had the same approach to life — would he be at all attracted by the face that Christianity shows the world.

He said, “probably not.” He said he might respond if he had a Christian friend who patiently shared his faith over time, but doubted that he would give the church a chance. I felt the same way. That’s why I wanted to read this book.

Yancey grew up in a fundamentalist, racist, legalistic church. As he grew, so did his disillusionment. But he never quite abandoned his faith. He credits the 13 people featured in this book with showing him the difference between the church where he was raised and the good news of the Gospel.

The 13 are a mixed bag. Writers, pastors, doctors, a priest and perhaps most unexpected, Mahatma Gandhi. Yancey tells his story interwoven with the stories of these 12 men and one woman. He challenges me and makes me a bit uncomfortable, which is good. I discovered several insights that help me view my faith from a new direction, but I also had some issues.

In the opening chapter on Martin Luther King, Jr., Yancey says, “Indeed, we are all in peril if the flawed messenger invalidates the message.” This is a theme he comes back to time and again. I’m not sure to what extent I agree. I know we are all sinners, so I have no problem with the statement at face value. And people who are egregious sinners can change, by God’s grace and become messengers of that grace. But is someone actively involved in repeated sin, especially a sin that affects others, a viable messenger? King was an adulterer right up until his death.

Gandhi brings up an even deeper question. Yancey credits him with patterning his philosophy after that of Jesus. Yet Gandhi rejected Jesus as God and became a Buddhist. He was right in many things, but he was wrong on the one thing that ultimately matters. So is he a worthy example of Jesus’ philosophy?

That’s the biggest challenge of the book for me, and I’m not sure what I think. As Yancey says, the Bible is full of flawed men who spread God’s message. But the Bible also says to flee immorality.

Anyway, here are some quotes I found interesting.

From his chapter on G.K. Chesterton: “A good and loving God would naturally want his creatures to experience delight, joy and personal fulfillment. Christians start from that assumption and then look for ways to explain the origin of suffering. But should not atheists have an equal obligation to explain the origin of pleasure in a world of randomness and meaninglessness?”

When asked for an essay by the London Times on the topic “What’s Wrong with the world?, Chesterton replied, “Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,

From the chapter on Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky: “ No one can fulfill the law of Christ. God cannot ask so much and be satisfied with so little. We are made for that which is too big for us. It is for this very reason, he concludes, that he must believe in an afterlife. Without such a belief, our futile struggle to fulfill the law of Christ would have no point. It is our very longing, our failure, our sense of incompleteness that forces us to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.”

On Gandhi: “Once, a woman in his village brought her son and asked him to tell the child to stop eating sugar because it was bad for him. She said the child would not listen to her, but he would listen to Gandhi. ‘Bring the boy back in a week, and I will tell him,’ said Gandhi. A week later the woman returned with her son. Gandhi took the boy in his arms and told him not to eat any sugar, then bid them both good-bye. The mother lingered behind and asked, ‘Bapu, why did you have to wait a week? Could you not have told him last week?’ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Last week I myself was eating sugar.’” [So Gandhi anyway, thought the messenger could invalidate the message.]

On Annie Dillard: “Often I have almost died in church in the effort to keep from laughing out loud. What’s so funny? The gap between what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do. The relationship between the incongruity of who we are and who we’re trying to move with our prayers. It’s a sort of dancing bear act … In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle His own laughter.”

Dillard on writing: “Everyone feels like a fraud … Separate yourself from your work. A book you made isn’t you any more than is a chair you made, or a soup. It’s just something you made once. If you ever want to make another one, it, too, will just be another hat in the ring, another widow’s mite, another broken offering which God has long understood is the best we humans can do — we’re forgiven in advance.”

On Henri Nouwen: “Nouwen once defined the task of a spiritual director: ‘You’re in a big room with a six-inch-wide balance beam in the center. Now the balance beam is only twelve inches off the fully carpeted floor. Most of us act as if we were blindfolded and trying to walk on that balance beam; we’re afraid we’ll fall off. But we don’t realize we’re only twelve inches off the floor. The spiritual director is someone who can push you off that balance beam and say, ‘See? It’s okay. God still loves you.’”