{"product_id":"soul-survivor-isbn-9781578568185","title":"Soul Survivor","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of America's leading Christian thinkers interweaves the story of his own struggle to reclaim his beliefs with inspiring portraits of people who have succeeded in the pursuit of an authentic faith. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eSoul Survivor, \u003c\/i\u003ePhilip Yancey charts his spiritual pilgrimage  through the influence of key individuals: \"These are the people who ushered me into  the Kingdom. In many ways, they are why I remain a Christian today, and I want to  introduce them to other spiritual seekers.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Yancey interweaves his own journey with  fascinating stories of those who modeled for him a life-enhancing rather than a life-constricting  faith: Dr. Paul Brand, G. K. Chesterton, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, C. Everett  Koop, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henri Nouwen, John Donne, Mahatma Gandi, Shusaku  Endo, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert COles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReaders will find these inspiring portraits  both nurture and challenge for their own understanding of authentic faith. Yancey  fans will devour these new glimpses of how he has held onto faith while acknowledging  with utter honesty its inherent difficulties. New Yancey readers will be drawn in  by the theme of faith versus religion and drawn along a compelling narrative of signposts  on a spiritual journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSoul Survivor\u003c\/i\u003e offers illuminating and critically important  insights into true Christianity, which will enrich the lives of veteran believers  and cautious seekers alike.\"It would seem the height of immodesty to praise a book that devotes an entire chapter  to praising me. Let me therefore merely recommend it to anyone interested in a relaxed  and conversational account of how an assortment of odd fish were variously caught  up in and transformed by the Christian Gospel.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Frederick Buechner, author of \u003ci\u003eThe  Sacred Journey,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Hungering Dark and The Eyes of the Heart\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I love, and am grateful  for, every marvelous book Mr. Yancey writes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Anne Lamott\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ePhilip Yancey\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist and writer who writes a featured column in \u003ci\u003eChristianity  Today\u003c\/i\u003e. The author of more than a dozen books, including \u003ci\u003eReaching for the Invisible  God \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWhat's So Amazing About Grace?\u003c\/i\u003e, his last ten books have sold more than 4.5  million copies. He is the recipient of a \u003ci\u003eChristianity Today\u003c\/i\u003e Book of the Year Award,  two ECPA Book of the Year Awards, and eleven Gold Medallions.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Recovering from Church Abuse\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes in a waiting room or on an airplane   I strike up conversations with strangers, during the course of which they learn that   I write books on spiritual themes. Eyebrows arch, barriers spring up, and often I   hear yet another horror story about church. My seatmates must expect me to defend   the church, because they always act surprised when I respond, \"Oh, it's even worse   than that. Let me tell you my story.\" I have spent most of my life in recovery from   the church.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One church I attended during formative years in Georgia of the 1960s   presented a hermetically sealed view of the world. A sign out front proudly proclaimed   our identity with words radiating from a many-pointed star: \"New Testament, Blood-bought,   Born-again, Premillennial, Dispensational, fundamental . . .\" Our little group of   two hundred people had a corner on the truth, God's truth, and everyone who disagreed   with us was surely teetering on the edge of hell. Since my family lived in a mobile   home on church property, I could never escape the enveloping cloud that blocked my   vision and marked the borders of my world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Later, I came to realize that the church   had mixed in lies with truth. For example, the pastor preached blatant racism from   the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis.   They function well as servants--\"Just look at how colored waiters in restaurants   can weave among the tables, swiveling their hips, carrying trays\"--but never as leaders.   Armed with such doctrines, I reported for my very first job, a summer internship   at the prestigious Communicable Disease Center near Atlanta, and met my supervisor,   Dr. James Cherry, a Ph.D. in biochemistry and a black man. Something did not add   up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After high school I attended a Bible college in a neighboring state. More progressive   than my home church, the school had admitted one black student, whom, to stay on   the safe side, they assigned to a roommate from Puerto Rico. This school believed   in rules, many rules, sixty-six pages' worth in fact, which we students had to study   and agree to abide by. The faculty and staff took pains to trace each one of these   rules to a biblical principle, which involved a degree of creativity since some of   the rules (such as those legislating length of hair on men and skirts on women) changed   from year to year. As a college senior, engaged, I could spend only the dinner hour,   5:40 p.m. until 7 p.m., with the woman who is now my wife. Once, we got caught holding   hands and were put \"on restriction,\" forbidden to see each other or speak for two   weeks. Outside somewhere in the great world beyond, other students were demonstrating   against the war in Vietnam, marching for civil rights on a bridge near Selma, Alabama,   and gathering to celebrate love and peace in Woodstock, New York. Meanwhile we were   preoccupied, mastering supralapsarianism and measuring skirts and hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shortly   after the turn of the millennium, in the spring of 2000, I experienced a fast-motion   recapitulation of my life. The first day, I served on a panel at a conference in   South Carolina addressing the topic \"Faith and Physics.\" Though I have no expertise   in physics, I got chosen along with a representative from Harvard Divinity School   because I write openly about matters of faith. The panel was lopsided on the science   end, for it included two Nobel prize-winning physicists and the director of the Fermilab   nuclear accelerator near Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One of the Nobel laureates began by saying he   had no use for religion, and in fact thought it harmful and superstitious. \"Ten percent   of Americans claim to have been abducted by aliens, half are creationists, and half   read horoscopes each day,\" he said. \"Why should it surprise us if a majority believe   in God?\" Raised Orthodox Jewish, he was now a confirmed atheist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The other scientists   had kinder words for religion but said that they restricted their field of view to   what can be observed and verified, which by definition excluded most matters of faith.   When my turn came to speak, I acknowledged the mistakes the church had made and thanked   them for not burning us Christians at the stake now that the tables had turned. I   also thanked them for rigorous honesty about their own nontheistic point of view.   I read from Chet Raymo, an astronomer and science writer who has calculated the odds   of our universe resulting, as he believes it did, from sheer chance:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If, one second   after the Big Bang, the ratio of the density of the universe to its expansion rate   had differed from its assumed value by only one part in 1015 (that's 1 followed by   fifteen zeros), the universe would have either quickly collapsed upon itself or ballooned   so rapidly that stars and galaxies could not have condensed from the primal matter   . . . The coin was flipped into the air 1015 times, and it came down on its edge   but once. If all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth were possible   universes--that is, universes consistent with the laws of physics as we know them--and   only one of those grains of sand were a universe that allowed for the existence of   intelligent life, then that one grain of sand is the universe we inhabit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After   the panel two more Nobel laureates, another in physics and one in chemistry, joined   the discussion, along with some thoughtful Christians. One of the physicists asked   to see the quote by Raymo, whom he knew as a personal friend. He pondered a moment,   thinking out loud, \"Ten to the fifteenth power, ten to the fifteenth . . . let's   see there are 1022 stars in the universe--yeah, I can buy that. I'll take those odds.\"   We then moved on to the critique of religion. Yes, it has done harm, but consider   the good it has accomplished as well. The scientific method itself grew out of Judaism   and Christianity, which presented the world as a product of a rational Creator and   thus comprehensible and subject to verification. So did education, medicine, democracy,   charitable work, and justice issues such as the abolition of slavery. The atheistic   physicists freely acknowledged that they had no real basis for their ethics, and   that many of their colleagues had served Nazi and Communist regimes without a twinge   of conscience. We had a fascinating interchange, that rare experience of true dialogue   resulting from different perspectives on the universe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A day later, my wife and   I got up early and drove a hundred miles to the thirtieth reunion of our Bible college   class. There, we listened to classmates describe the last three decades of their   lives. One told of being delivered from arthritis after ten years when she finally   dealt with unconfessed sin in her life. Another extolled the advantage of sleeping   on magnets. Several were suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, and others from   severe depression. One couple had recently put their teenage daughter in a mental   institution. These did not seem to be healthy people, and I felt sadness and compassion   as I heard their stories.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Paradoxically, in narrating their lives my classmates   kept resurrecting phrases we had learned at Bible college: \"God is giving me the   victory . . . I can do all things through Christ . . . All things work together for   good . . . I'm walking in triumph.\" I left that reunion with my head spinning. I   kept wondering how the skeptical scientists would have reacted had they sat in on   the class reunion. I imagine they would have pointed out a disconnect between the   observable lives and the spiritual overlay applied to them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The very next morning,   a Sunday, we arose early again and drove two hundred miles to Atlanta in order to   attend the \"burial\" of the fundamentalist church I grew up in, the one with the many-pointed   star. After moving to escape a changing neighborhood, the church found itself once   again surrounded by African-Americans, and attendance had dwindled. In a sweet irony,   it was now selling its building to an African-American congregation. I slipped into   the very last service of that church, which had been advertised as a reunion open   to all who had ever attended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I recognized acquaintances from my past, an unsettling   time warp in which I found my teenage friends now paunchy, balding, and middle-aged.   The pastor, who had served the same congregation for forty years, emphasized the   church motto, \"Contending for the faith.\" \"I have fought the fight,\" he said. \"I   have finished the course.\" He seemed smaller than I remembered, his posture less   erect, and his flaming red hair had turned white. Several times he thanked the congregation   for the Oldsmobile they had given him as a love gift: \"Not bad for a poor little   pastor,\" he kept saying. During the expanded service, a procession of people stood   and testified how they had met God through this church. Listening to them, I imagined   a procession of those not present, people like my brother, who had turned away from   God in large part because of this church. I now viewed its contentious spirit with   pity, whereas in adolescence it had pressed life and faith out of me. The church   had now lost any power over me; its stinger held no more venom. But I kept reminding   myself that I had nearly abandoned the Christian faith in reaction against this church,   and I felt deep sympathy for those who had.","brand":"WaterBrook","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300388983013,"sku":"NP9781578568185","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781578568185.jpg?v=1767737000","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/soul-survivor-isbn-9781578568185","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}