What's So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey (Zondervan, 1997)

As I look back on my own pilgrimage, marked by wanderings, detours, and dead ends, I see now that what pulled me along was search my for grace ... I have barely tasted of grace myself, have rendered less than I have received, and I am in no wise, an 'expert' on grace. These are, in fact, the very reasons that impel me to write. I want to know more, to understand more, to experience more grace ... Accept then, here at the beginning, that I write as a pilgrim qualified only by my craving for grace. -- Philip Yancey

[Grace] can be dissected as a frog, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind. -- Philip Yancey

I have just read a thirteen-page treatise on grace in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, which has cured me of any desire to dissect grace and display its innards ... For this reason, I will rely more on stories than syllogisms. -- Philip Yancey

Ungrace causes cracks to fissure between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, between scientists and prisoners, and tribes and races. Left alone, cracks widen, and for the resulting chasms of ungrace there is only one remedy: the frail rope-bridge of forgiveness. -- Philip Yancey

He who cannot forgive another breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. -- George Herbert

The strongest argument in favour of grace is the alternative, a world of ungrace. The strongest argument for forgiveness is the alternative, a permanent state of unforgiveness. -- Philip Yancey

For many, romantic love is the closest experience of pure grace. -- Philip Yancey

If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of it? -- Philip Yancey

Religious faith – for all its problems, despite its maddening tendency to replicate ungrace – lives on because we sense the numinous beauty of a gift undeserved that comes at unexpected moments from Outside. Refusing to believe that our lives of guilt and shame lead to nothing but annihilation, we hope against hope for another place run by different rules. We grow hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us. -- Philip Yancey

	The quality of mercy is not strained.
	It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven ...
	And earthly power doth then show likest God's
	When mercy seasons justice.
		-- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

What is grace? Philip Yancey does not anywhere attempt to define or analyze grace. He refers to the Roman Catholic Church having destroyed grace with its surgical analysis. Maybe like cutting up a frog to see how it works! We destroy life in our quest for the meaning of life. Instead, like Jesus before him using parables, Yancey illustrates grace by example. One of the best examples is given right at the very end of the book, where Jessye Norman appears at rock concert at Wembley.

Rock groups play all day at a concert to celebrate the new found freedoms in Nelson Mandela's South Africa. An Afro-American is the grand finale, but it is not what the crowd wants. She walks on stage in traditional African dress, an opera diva, but unrecognised by this crowd. With no accompaniment, her powerful voice sings Amazing Grace.

The crowd are restless, it is starting to look ugly, but she begins to sing, very slowly, a lone voice all alone:

	Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
	    That saved a wretch like me!
	I once was lost but now am found – 
	   Was blind, but now I see. 

The crowd falls silent. By the time she is into the second verse, she has the crowd in her hands, by the time she reaches the third verse, several thousand rock fans are singing along.

What happened that night? Everyone knows the power of what is a hymn, written over two hundred years ago by a slave trader, John Newton, who was later in his life to join William Wilberforce in his fight against slavery (and according to Jessye Norman, may have been based upon an earlier slave song). A hymn that became the anthem of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movement in the US in the 1960s. Jessye Norman confesses she had no idea what happened that night, what amazing power descended on Wembley that night.

Philip Yancey believes he knows what power descended out of the darkness that night:

Jessye Norman later confessed she had no idea what power descended on Wembley Stadium that night. I think I know. The world thirsts for grace. When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.

Grace was the most important message Jesus brought to the world, a world which until then had been governed by the Law, the Law of Moses. He died on the Cross so that our sins may be forgiven, no matter how unworthy we might be.

Aware of our inbuilt resistance to grace, Jesus talked about it often. He described a world suffused with God's grace: where the sun shines on people good and bad; where birds gather seeds gratis, neither plowing nor harvesting to earn them; where untended wildflowers burst into bloom on the rocky hillsides. Like a visitor from a foreign country who notices what the natives overlook, Jesus saw grace everywhere. Yet he never analyzed or defined grace, and almost never used the word. Instead, he communicated grace through stories we know as parables.

We are all pilgrims embarked upon a very unsteady path through life. I found that very often I have signs, signs that I have learnt to follow.

I was on a train to London and met a lovely girl called called Estie. Even then I knew there was something special. We got off the train at our London terminus, but we still continued on our journey together, and it was with a sad heart I parted from her very enjoyable company. We exchanged contact details, and I was delighted to discover we were both from the same town.

I did not know whether we would ever meet again, and so it was with great pleasure I bumped into her again, one day in the street. And so it was we would bump into each other, and time would stand still as we stood chatting. Then I did not see her for many months, I thought that maybe she had returned to her home in South Africa, but luckily after a long period, we saw each other again. Since I had last seen her, she had bought a house not far from where I lived.

We then made the effort to see each other regularly. We would go out together, I would be invited around to her house for a meal, we'd share a bottle of wine, listen to music, and talk. We became very close friends who enjoyed each others company, who trusted each other. I had never been so happy. The inevitable happened, I did not fall in love, I fell hopelessly head-over-heals in love, I did not know that it was possible to fall so deeply in love.

But it was not what Estie wanted. She thought highly of me, cared for me a great deal, but only as a friend. We both found it very hard, Estie felt trapped and no longer in control. Eventually it destroyed our friendship. Estie wanted a break over Christmas, and very reluctantly I agreed. It was the most lonely and miserable Christmas and New Year I had ever spent, and I eventually fell seriously ill. I arrived back home to find Estie had returned all my Christmas presents to her.

One day I bumped into Estie, she would not speak to me, and ran away screaming. Some weeks later I bumped into her again. She was in sheer terror. The look of terror on her face will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Two friends, destroying each other. What a tragic end to a very close friendship. Why this has happened, I do not even begin to understand, and if I try to talk to Estie or ask her to meet me and talk and try to resolve whatever is wrong, she sees it as pressurising her and gets even more upset. And so we plunge deeper into mutual self-destruction.

Whilst this unfortunate little drama was unfolding and becoming ever more tragic with each passing scene, I walked past my local Parish Church of St Peter's and saw a big poster for the Alpha Course (see Alpha: Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel). I literally walked in off the streets and enrolled. I was back that evening, and to my surprise, I had not even had time to read the paperwork and had had no time to eat, found I was sitting down to a lovely supper that had been lovingly prepared by members of the church. What I learnt that night, and the following weeks, gave me much to think about. I wanted to discuss it with Estie, but she was not around, I wanted to invite her along too, but she was not speaking to me.

A month into the Alpha Course, we had a Saturday morning session, followed by a simple lunch. It was my birthday, but all I felt was a soul destroying unhappiness. I picked up a copy of What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey from the bookstall. I got back home and have never had such a bloody miserable birthday. I had hoped Estie may relent, send me a birthday card, send me a text message, call round, call. Nothing.

I sat and read Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace?. It helped. I cannot say I was a bundle of joy, but it helped. I read, I skimmed, I skipped, it helped. I had intended to go away and read it hence the skimming and skipping, but it helped. I was still reading and skimming and skipping into the early hours of the morning. A week later, I sat and wrote the beginnings of this web page (actually most of it), and continued into the early hours of the morning. I thought at the time I had written most of it, as it was already very long, too long, but as I was later to find, I had barely written half of it.

A week later I did go away (I could not face a further encounter with Estie), and spent a week, at times sitting under palm trees outside a Catholic church, slowly reading and mulling over what I was reading.

On that Saturday session, the topic was the Holy Spirit entering one, being touched by grace. Before one of the workshops, there was a prayer meeting with Nick, the course coordinator. Nick asked the Holy Spirit to enter each and every one of us. One lovely blonde girl was in tears, I felt a slight warm glow, was too in tears, or at least felt very sad, but that was the loss of Estie, a very close friend.

Two days later I was at a meeting in London with Tony Benn, one of the few politicians left of any integrity (he left Parliament after half a century to go into politics). He kindly autographed his latest book, Free at Last: Diaries 1991-2001, for my niece. He was talking about Iraq, but the talk was wide-ranging. There was not a need to attack Iraq, the weapons inspectors had not completed their work and there were peaceful alternatives that had not been explored, let alone exhausted (see Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival). He touched on South Africa. The Blacks were in a majority, they could have mounted an armed struggle, but they chose not to. The dignity of Nelson Mandela when he left Roben Bay Island, he chose forgiveness as the way forward. The dignity of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King – two men who chose the dignity of non-violence over violence.

Which brings me full circle. Estie is an Afrikaan from South Africa, raised in the Dutch Reform Church.

What is grace?

Philip Yancey deliberately chooses not to define or attempt to analyse. One has to infer it as we travel with him on what is in many ways a semi-autobiographical journey as well as a pilgrimage. But as I got halfway through on my birthday, I felt this increasingly infuriating and frustrating that in the end I had to look up grace in the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary, which is not of a great deal of use, as for almost any word it gives so many meanings as to mean almost anything, one wants, and so it was with grace. But I finally managed to extract the essence within the context Yancey was trying to convey.

Grace: The free and unmerited favour of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowing of blessings. The divine regenerating, inspiriting, and strengthening influence. Mercy, clemency; pardon, forgiveness. Phrase: by the grace of God - through God's favour [tr. L Dei gratia]; efficacious grace - a divine influence which inspires its recipient to effect some good act; fall from grace - lapse from a state of grace into sin; loosely lapse from good behaviour into disgrace.

Maybe we learn more from what grace is not: disgrace. Or what a person does: ingratiate. Or from words with the same common root: grateful, gratis. Or someone who has fallen out of favour (fallen from grace): persona non grata (literally a person without grace).

Or maybe we just follow Yancey on his pilgrimage and don't attempt a cold academic meaning but internalise the meaning with understanding. We know intuitively in our hearts but cannot explain, and in its explanation it lacks grace.

We get little hints of grace – when we admire a view, listen to music, fall in love.

I was touched by grace when I walked along the coast in Cornwall and a stunning view unfolded before my feet. I would sit for hours taking in this breathtaking view. When I listen to music by Hildegard von Bingen, who described herself as 'a feather on the breath of God', whose music and paintings were inspired by visions from God. Or when I listen to the Eric Levi Era trilogy, introduced to me by my lovely friend Estie, inspired by the Cathars who died in the Inquisition, a Catholic Crusade against heretics in France. When I sat and experienced tranquility and peace of mind under the shade of the trees in a square outside a Catholic church. When I watched a sparrow bathe in a fountain. When I met my lovely friend Estie and experienced happiness that I had never felt before, happiness that I felt I had done nothing to deserve.

But into this world intrudes ungrace. How often has God's creation been despoiled and destroyed by the greed of Man? His people servile and prostrate before Mammon, knowing their place in authoritarian structures known as big business, which are smothering the world with the evil of globalisation.

We learn our place and to know ungrace from a very early age. At school our work is handed back, not with praise, but with our mistakes highlighted in red, the colour of blood.

Like city-dwellers who no longer notice the polluted air, we breathe in the atmosphere of ungrace unawares. As early as preschool and kindergarten we are tested and evaluated before being slotted into 'advanced', 'normal', or 'slow' track ... Test papers come back with errors – not correct answers – highlighted. All this helps prepare us for the real world with it relentless ranking, a grown-up version of the playground game 'king of the hill'.

There is a strong connection between shame and guilt and lack of grace.

Lewis Smedes, professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has identified three common sources of crippling shame (see Shame and Grace): secular culture, unaccepting parents, and graceless religion.

Secular culture, or pop culture, fashion fascists, skinny supermodels, and contrary, junk food, and moronic music; parents who never approve or praise but are quick to criticise their failures; and for graceless religion we only have to look at much of the Church today, arbitrary rules but no love and forgiveness for those who fall by the wayside.

Yancey talks of churches with no warmth, ungrace. Mercy unstrained, forgiveness. Forgiveness as an unnatural act (see The Lost Art of Forgiving by Johann Christoph Arnold also Why Forgive by the same author and No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu), it is so much easier to seek justice, vengeance, the desire to get even.

But as Yancey illustrates with one family where the cycle of hatred has passed from one generation to the next like an inherited gene, neither being prepared to forgive the preceding generation, and in doing so passing their hate to the next generation.

Yancey compares the Church today with that of Christ before there was a Church. He passed his time with sinners, prostitutes, lowly workman, gentiles. In the Church of today, prostitutes, junkies, AIDS sufferers do not feel welcome. We have bigoted attitudes to homosexuals, who show the same determination as Christians being thrown to the lions, as no matter what the obstacles, the hatred, they still want to kneel before God, and hear what he can bestow, but no-one makes them feel welcome. But then the little glimmers of hope, pastors and priests, who themselves are deeply hostile to homosexuality, nevertheless welcome and administer to homosexuals, and in return feel the hostility of fellow 'Christians' who somewhere along the line have lost grace or maybe never found it.

A generation ago, churches in the Deep South, exhibited the same attitude to Blacks. Yancey himself grew up and worshiped in one such church.

When it is suggested to a prostitute that she seeks help from the Church and she shudders with horror, that she does not wish to be made to feel worse about herself than she already feels, we have to ask where has the Church gone wrong, can we even speak of Christianity if the Church lacks grace? The Church that was founded by Paul as 'the gospel of God's grace'.

Paolo Veronese found himself in trouble with the Inquisition for a painting of Jesus at a banquet (now hanging in the Academy of Fine Art in Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia). Jesus is with his disciples, in one corner a man with a bloody nose, Roman solders in another, a few stray dogs roaming around, a few drunks, midgets and blackamoors. Paolo Veronese had to explain his irreverence to the Inquisition, he defended his work by explaining these were the people Jesus dined and associated with. He escaped with his skin by changing the title of his painting to a secular rather than religious title Feast in the House of Levi. As now, the Church had somehow lost its way and somehow lost the message of our Saviour.

Rung by rung, Jesus dismantled the ladder of hierarchy that had marked the approach to God. He invited defectives, sinners, aliens, and Gentiles – the unclean! – to God's banquet table.

Yancey compares the Church of today, with the ministry of Christ, where prostitutes, far from feeling ashamed and unwanted, flocked to be at his side:

The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

In The Jesus I Never Knew Yancey goes further and speaks of Christ himself being hounded on the street if he were alive today working in the streets with beggars, prostitutes and other low life.

I started writing this review of What's So Amazing About Grace? a week after my birthday, and continued on through to the early hours of the next morning. I awoke after little sleep and turned on the radio and listened to the news followed by the Sunday morning service, which that morning was broadcast from the Chapel of King's College, London. The sermon was by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was Visiting Professor in Post-Conflict Societies at King's.

Part of the vision of a previous Dean of King’s, Sydney Evans, was to bring people from South Africa, so they could study at King's and then return to serve their country and church. Archbishop Tutu was a student at King's in the 1960s.

It was an amazing sermon, with a powerful and moving message, it reiterated what I had been reading in What's So Amazing About Grace?.

On the day of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene finds the tomb of Christ empty, and siting in his place two angels. She speaks to a man, who she mistakes for the gardener, not recognising it is Jesus. He asks does she not recognise Him, and asks to seek out His friends, His brothers, who share the same Father.

It is difficult for us to appreciate the significance of these associations. We only see Jesus associating with riffraff, slumming it a little.

Palestine of 2,000 years ago was under Roman occupation. It was one of their most troublesome provinces, there had already been several insurrections, and tensions were running high. Palestine of Christ was a highly stratified society: women and Samaritans were despised if not hated, Gentiles could not pass beyond the Temple partition except on the pain of death. Jesus chose as His friends, tax collectors for the Roman occupiers, women, Samaritans, Gentiles. He called them His brothers.

A parallel situations today would be Jews and Palestinians in Jewish occupied Palestine, or racial tension between Blacks and Whites in Apartheid South Africa.

A decade into the end of Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela, we tend to forget that during the dark days of Apartheid, with Mandela rotting in prison, Desmond Tutu was a beacon of light shining out in the darkness.

In his sermon Desmond Tutu said Jesus welcomed all: Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Palestinians, homosexuals and so-called straights, Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, even Tony Blair and George W Bush.

The morning Desmond Tutu gave his powerful and moving sermon, was Estie's birthday. If former enemies across the racial divide of Apartheid South Africa can reach reconciliation, cannot two former close friends?

Later, during the evening of Estie's birthday, I listened to highlight's of the previous week's broadcasts. One of these was taken from Monday morning and featured Tony Benn, who I had met up in London that evening. Unfortunately I missed the original broadcast. He was talking about Christianity. With him on the programme was Desmond Tutu.

Forgiveness is an unnatural act, it is far easier to seek vengeance or at the very least seek justice. But where is it to end? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Are the Jews to seek the death of 6 million Germans before the slate can be seen as wiped clean? An endless cycle that repeats itself through the centuries and down through generations.

Lewis Smede:

Vengeance is a passion to get even. It is a hot desire to give back as much pain as someone gave you ... The problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes. The chain reaction set off by every act of vengeance always takes its unhindered course. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops, never lets anyone off.

The slate is never wiped clean. The wronged want justice, the wrongdoer feels guilty. In an attempt to wipe the slate clean, the wronged and the wrongdoer swap roles and the cycle repeats. As Gandhi once observed, if everyone sought 'an eye for an eye', eventually the whole world would go blind.

Talk to people in Northern Ireland and you would think they are are referring to events of yesterday, not centuries ago. Serbs take action against Croats for atrocities committed in World War Two, against Muslims in Kosovo to prevent a recurrence of Muslim domination of centuries ago. Only forgiveness can break the chains that bind wronged and wrongdoer, the innocent and the guilty, whose roles reverse with each turn of the cycle of vengeance.

The wronged and the wrongdoer are chained together, only grace can break the chains. Forgiveness is unconditional, it is not conditional on remorse, or expressions of regret, it may be undeserved, but only forgiveness can break the chains.

Lewis Smede, author of The Art of Forgiving and Forgive and Forget, describes what has to take place to break the chains:

When you forgive someone, you slice away the wrong from the person who did it. You disengage that person from his hurtful act. You recreate him. At one moment you identify him ineradicably as the person who did you wrong. The next moment you change that identity. He is remade in your memory.

As Smede points out 'The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness'.

The cycle of ungrace can only be broken if we take the initiative and unconditionally forgive. We have to make the first move and defy what seems a natural law of retribution and fairness.

Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame and loosens the stranglehold of guilt. It accomplishes these two things through a remarkable linkage, placing the forgiver on the same side as the party who did the wrong. Through it we realise we are not as different from the wrongdoer as we would like to think.

Yancey identifies two key factors of forgiveness:

• only forgiveness alone can break the cycle of pain and blame, break the chains of ungrace
• forgiveness can loosen the stranglehold of guilt in the perpetrator

Forgiveness is not the same as a pardon, we may still seek just punishment for a wrong committed.

Desmond Tutu (see No Future Without Forgiveness and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope For Our Time) understands grace and forgiveness better than most. As Apartheid drew to an end and Nelson Mandela (see The Long Walk to Freedom) was released from Roben Island, Mandela could have called upon the Blacks to rise up and seek vengeance on the Whites. He did not, he showed grace, and appointed Desmond Tutu to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We should also not forget the role played by F W De Klerk, then Afrikaan head of state.

Nelson Mandela broke the chain of ungrace when he emerged from twenty-six years of imprisonment with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation, not revenge. F W De Klerk himself, elected from the smallest and most strictly Calvinistic of the South African churches, felt what he later described as 'a sense of calling'. He told his congregation that God was calling him to save all the people of South Africa, even though he knew that would mean rejection by his own people.

There was an understandable desire for justice, retribution, instead the path of forgiveness and reconciliation was chosen. The rules were simple: the perpetrators had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and their victims were given the opportunity to forgive. Many of the atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de Broek told of how he and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth, then burnt the body. Eight years later they went back, took the father, and forced his wife to watch as he was incinerated. She was in court to hear this confession and was asked by the judge what she wanted. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial, van de Broek agreed. She then added a further request, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.” Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing Amazing Grace as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn, he had fainted, overwhelmed. [see Rumor #88 'Love made van de Broek faint' in Rumors of Another World]

Justice was not done in South Africa that day, nor in the entire country during months of agonizing procedures by the TRC. Something beyond justice took place. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” said Paul. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu understood that when evil is done, one response alone can overcome the evil. Revenge perpetuates the evil. Justice punishes it. Evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further. And that is the pattern of otherworldly grace that Jesus showed in his life and death.

We only have to look around the world to see what the alternative could have have been in South Africa if grace had not prevailed. Two examples should suffice.

Nato bombed Serbia so the rest of the world knew Nato meant business. The result, as predicted, ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Muslim population. Nato had no further interest in Kosovo and Muslim fundamentalism was on the rise as Kosovo degenerated into abject poverty, not helped by the fact that the CIA had shipped in Al-quieda to help the Muslims. At best an armed truce. No attempts at reconciliation or forgiveness. No surprise then that a few years later the Muslims carry out further atrocities against the minority Serbs, burning down houses and churches. [see Noam Chomsky A New Generation Draws the Line or The New Military Humanism or Hegemony or Survival]

In Jewish occupied Palestine, where the Palestinians are the Niggers of Yancey's youth, no attempt, apart from a few peace groups, at reconciliation. The extra-judicial execution of the spiritual leader of Hamas, will have the all too predictable result of escalating the violence and bloodshed. [see Noam Chomsky Fateful Triangle]

Grace is irrational, unfair, unjust, and only makes sense if I believe in another world governed by a merciful God who always offers another chance. “Amazing Grace,” a rare hymn that in recent times climbed the charts of popular music, holds out the promise that God judges people not for what they have been but what they could be, not by their past but by their future. John Newton, a gruff and bawdy slave trader, “a wretch like me,” wrote that hymn after being transformed by the power of amazing grace.

When the world sees grace in action, it falls silent. Nelson Mandela taught the world a lesson in grace when, after emerging from prison after twenty-seven years and being elected president of South Africa, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. He then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with a daunting name, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mandela sought to defuse the natural pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many countries where one oppressed race or tribe took control from another.

Maybe better than most Laurens van der Post (see The Prisoner and the Bomb) who survived a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on Java understood the need of forgiveness:

The only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies. Forgiveness, my prison experience had taught me, was not merely religious sentimentality; it was as fundamental a law of the human spirit as the law of gravity. If one broke the law of gravity one broke one's neck; if one broke this law of forgiveness one inflicted a mortal wound on one's spirit and once again became a member of the chain-gang of mere cause and effect from which life has laboured so long and painfully to escape.

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.

Yancey reserves his strongest criticism for the Church for its lack of grace. If there is no grace to be found in the Church, then where is it to be found? He speaks of a church where a child is slapped by its mother, not for any misdemeanor, but for daring to smile in the House of God. I compare this with the inauguration of a new church that I attended where the joy and happiness and love of the worshipers was tangible. If you could bottle and sell it you would make a fortune, but that is the whole point, grace is not for sale, it is freely given to all those who are willing to accept it, whether they are deserving or not.

This state of ungrace could in many ways be summed by a councillor David Seamands:

Many years ago I was driven to conclude that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness and grace to other people.

To quote Gordan MacDonald:

The world can do almost anything as well or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.

If the Church can no longer offer grace, then what does it exist for, what is its purpose? As Yancey says: 'MacDonald has put his finger on the church's single most important contribution. Where else can the world go to find grace?'

'Ah, what a thing is man devoid of grace', sighed the poet George Herbert.

... I ... think of that line ... when I visit certain churches. Like fine wine poured into a jug of water, Jesus' wondrous message of grace gets diluted in the vessel of the church. 'For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth come through Jesus Christ', wrote the apostle John. Christians have spent enormous energy over the years debating and decreeing truth; every church defends its particular version. What about grace? How rare to to find a church competing to 'out-grace' its rivals.

Grace is Christianity's best gift to the world, a spiritual nova in our midst exerting a force far stronger than vengeance, stronger than racism, stronger than hate. Sadly, to a world desperate for this grace the church sometimes presents one more form of ungrace.

God must weep as he looks out on His people. The worst atrocities are committed by Christians – the Inquisition, Crusades, slavery, apartheid. They don't just commit them, they justify them by wrapping themselves in the flag of the Church. The most barbarous race on earth are West European Christians – after centuries of trying to annihilate each other, we are now practicing our barbarism on the rest of the world. The two most powerful men in the world – George W Bush and his bullshit dog Tony Blair – profess to be Christians, but instead heed the devil and at best practice hypocrisy, at worst evil.

God does though have occasion to weep tears of joy. It was Victorian Christians (see Stephen Roberts (ed) The People's Charter: Democratic Agitation in Early Victorian England) who fought against slavery, child prostitution and the many social evils of the time. Jesuits and other Christians practice Liberation Theology in Latin America, and like the early Christian martyrs, go to certain death at the hands of US trained and sponsored death squads. Martin Luther King stood up for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War and as a result paid the ultimate price ..... Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, F W De Klerk, Rachel Corrie, and many others who I have not named, have stood up for what is right, and in doing so have brought a little grace into the world. Into a world of darkness and evil, a world that lacks grace, little rays of light, of hope.

We could look back and say slavery, Black Civil Rights, Vietnam, Apartheid, were of the past, we know better and behave differently. But do we? Did we behave differently when we attacked Afghanistan and then Iraq? Some of us spoke out, but not enough of us. Do we behave differently when we ignore the plight of 90% of the world's population, when we ignore exploitation and sweatshop factories, when we worship in church wearing the fruits of sweatshop factories? Do we behave differently when we drive to church in gas-guzzling monsters that are literally killing the poor and marginalised through global warming? Do we behave differently when we sit idly by and allow God's creation to be destroyed, the exploitation and torture of species other than our own? How are we different to the Church of Yancey's youth which turned away Blacks and rejoiced when they were beaten on the streets of a country that calls itself civilised?

A favourite sermon of Tony Campolo is to talk of the world's poor, their exploitation, that millions are starving, and in summary that no-one gives a shit. As he predicts, and so far has not been proven wrong, more concern is expressed over the use of the word 'shit' than that millions are starving. What does this say of the state of today's Church, of those 'Christians' who fail to understand the message of their Lord, who at the very least lack grace?

Yancey believes the main role of the Church today, should be to dispense God's grace. He learnt that on a visit to Russia, where God's grace during 70 years of Communist rule, and at times brutal suppression of the Church had taken place, God's grace had been kept alive by the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and the whisperings of Russian grandmothers to their little charges.

Where Yancey appears confused is the role of Christians, Christianity, and Politics. Yancey appears to be saying there is no role, politics is a world of ungrace, and yet at the same time he praises the role of Christians who fought on social issues and criticises the Church for either its failings in addressing social issues or meddling where it should not be and ignoring its core message.

If we look at leaders who profess to be Christian, George W Bush and Tony Blair, we see only evil. Even more so if we look at Theocracies in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

Jesus did not seem to be concerned with who was ruling Palestine, let alone who was the ruler in Rome. He associated with the poor and the dispossessed, not the rich and the powerful.

All species are kept down by their environment, and in turn modify their environment. Man is the exception. It is therefore incumbent upon Man to keep down his own numbers to what the environment can sustain.

Abortion may not have been widespread in Palestine 2000 years ago, but infanticide was, it was not uncommon for women to leave their unwanted babies by the roadside to be devoured by wolves. Rome was founded on one such tale. Homosexuality was widespread at the time, in Greco-Roman academies, older men would have a young boy as a pupil and sex plaything.

Jesus railed against many things, but not infanticide, or what would be seen as child sex abuse today.

Jesus worked at grass-roots level to spread his message, the early Christians followed the same path. Should we not be doing the same today, working at grass-roots, not seeking high office, or any political office? Seeking instead to influence the world around us. We work from the grass-roost upwards, not impose from on high downwards, grace is spread around the world, it becomes contagious.

In such a world the likes of George W Bush and Tony Blair would not be elected, their policies of hitting the poor and weak, of engaging in illegals wars against defenceless countries, would not prevail.

Modern democracy badly needs a new spirit of civility, and Christians could show the way by demonstrating the 'fruit' of God's spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. ...

A state government can shut down stores and theaters on a Sunday, but it cannot compel worship. It can arrest and punish KKK murderers but cannot cure their hatred, much less teach them love. It can pass laws making divorce more difficult but cannot force husbands to love their wives and wives their husbands. It can give subsidies to the poor but cannot force the rich to show them compassion and justice. It can ban adultery but not lust, theft but not covetousness, cheating but not pride. It can encourage virtue but not holiness. ...

Jesus' images portray the kingdom as a kind of secret force. Sheep among wolves, treasure hidden in a field, the tiniest seed in the garden, wheat growing among the weeds, a pinch of yeast worked into bread dough, a sprinkling of salt on meat – all these hint at a movement that works within society, changing it from the inside out. You do not need a shovelful of salt to preserve a slab of ham; a dusting will suffice.

We can replace the politicians at the top, but we simply replace one gang of thugs with another, the people are not set free. We can legislate against evil, against bad behaviour, but that does not work either. If we want lasting change, we have to change people's hearts. That was the mission of Jesus.

The early Christians formed their own communities and did their best to live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus. After centuries of institutionalised ungrace within the Church, many are looking to these early Christians and it is these churches, bucking the trend of falling numbers, who are seeing unprecedented growth in their numbers. Bruderhof, founded over 80 year ago in Germany, have formed their own Christian communities. These churches and communities are not inward looking, like their Christian forebears they are active within the wider community to improve the lot of humanity – St Peter's in Farnborough (ironically host to the world's largest arms fair every two years) supports community projects in India, Bruderhof are very active in Middle East peace efforts and periodically run a weekend collective, to which everyone is welcome. [see Eberhard Arnold (ed) The Early Christians, Richard Riss A History of the Revival of 1992-1995 & Emmy Arnold A Joyful Pilgrimage: My Life in Community]

We live in a world that appears to be driven by ungrace, but there are little patches of green springing up here and there, little patches of hope that tell us grace still survives. That is the positive message that Yancey tries to convey, and why he ends What's So Amazing About Grace? with Jessye Norman singing at Wembley Stadium.

If I was to try to answer the question posed at the beginning, I would agree with Yancey, grace cannot be defined, only inferred, but if I was pushed to give an example which was as close as one could get without committing an act of ungrace, I would quote the lines from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: 'The quality of mercy is not strained ....'

One niggling aspect of What's So Amazing About Grace? is the lack of an index. So many lovely anecdotes, but when you want to find them again, you cannot easily do so for the want of an index.

Philip Yancey serves as editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He is the author of several books on Christianity including: The Jesus I Never Knew, The Bible Jesus Read, Soul Survivor and Rumours of Another World.

Highly recommended!

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Tambien en español Gracia divina vs condena humana.

What started off as a review of Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace? has turned into a personal exploration of grace. Whether for better or worse, I will let others be the judge.

Grace like true love is freely given. It is not given for any reward. And like true love, its rejection hurts.

I was woken early one Sunday morning by my lovely Chinese friend Ximei, it was Palm Sunday, so I caught the news and listened to the morning service on BBC Radio 4. It was broadcast from the Spring Harvest, a gathering of several thousand Christians at the Lincolnshire east coast holiday resort of Skegness (where I used to take my summer holidays as a child but have never revisited since). The topic was grace, God's amazing grace! I had completed my personal exploration of grace, but had not yet uploaded to the net, this was the first time I had listened to the morning service since I had heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu's moving sermon several weeks before. God works in mysterious ways.

Even more curious. A few days after placing this on my web site, I was discussing Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace? with David, rector of St Peter's and the discussion then went on to Desmond Tutu. A couple of days later, I was in London, and bumped into the man himself, well almost. I was in Trafalgar Square and there was a big party for the tenth anniversary of freedom in South Africa, and who should be on the platform, why none other than Desmond Tutu.