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Reaching for the Invisible God. Philip Yancey. (Zondervan, 2000, 301pp.) (Review by John Bergen, reprinted from MARP's quarterly newsletter, Pages. John and Martha Bergen are MARP members from La Riviere, Manitoba. The Bergens serve several months each year in SOOP service.)
It is refreshing, though perhaps somewhat daunting, for us as Mennonites, to see no lesser a man of God than Philip Yancey, confess to all kinds of doubts, and to be confronted by deep theological questions for which he finds no easy answers.
"Many people who reject God are not rejecting God but a caricature of him presented by the church" must be for us a troubling statement for all of us, for all churches.
"How can we obey without certainty, when plagued by doubts? I have concluded that faith requires obedience without full knowledge." This is a refreshing thought -- I do not need answers for all my questions and problems, yet I can believe. Yancey answers for himself: "I learn to trust God with my doubts and struggles by getting to know Jesus."
Yancey's hundreds of illustrations assist all his readers in their quest for a deeper more mature faith in the very midst of our fears and doubts. His quote from Thomas Merton: "If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found." Or Yancey's own question, "If God did all this (referring to Creation), why did he not make himself more obvious?" These are among the many thoughts Yancey presents that we dare not dismiss too lightly.
Yancey would appear to move with ease through the six different parts of the book. "Our Longing for God," "Contact with the Invisible," and "Growth Stages Along the Way" are three of the six. |