Philip Yancey, editor at large and columnist for
Christianity Today, follows up his back-to-back bestselling books,
What's So Amazing About Grace and
The Jesus I Never Knew, with
The Bible Jesus Read, an exploration of the significance of the Old Testament to today's Christian.
Given previous book titles--Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God, and The Gift of Pain--one might jokingly suggest that in the Old Testament Yancey has found his true home. He acknowledges that in studying key sections of the Hebrew Bible (he concentrates on Job, Deuteronomy, The Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and the Prophets) he found himself confronted by the core questions that haunt his Christian faith: Do I matter? Does God care? Why doesn't God act? As always, Yancey explores these central human questions with a style that is marked by directness, humor, and honesty. He writes not as theologian or mystic but as a questioning seeker. Rather than providing simple answers--he in fact says that "by no means did Jesus resolve the problem of pain"--he instead affirms the words of Thomas Merton, which he quotes in his Introduction: "There is ... nothing comfortable about the Bible--until we manage to get so used to it that we make it comfortable for ourselves."
Even as he finds the Old Testament a "companion for my pilgrimage," so is Yancey a companion for his readers, precisely through his willingness to ask --and his courage not to answer--all the hard questions. --Doug Thorpe
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