[Eng B5] What's so amazing about Grace

[Eng B5] What's so amazing about Grace (by Philip Yancey), 1997

Book overview

Why? Grace, which to author Yancey means God’s love for the undeserving, i.e. all of humankind, and ungrace are possibly the two forces in most active conflict with each other daily across the world.

Grace for Yancey and many others is the one thing the world cannot provide; seeking it is probably ultimately why most people attend church. In the author’s words, "I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else." Many active churchgoers could say the same.

Yancey guides us into a clearer understanding of grace by using stories, in much the same way Jesus did. We read stories of both grace and ungrace at work in people's lives. Sadly, it is stories of ungrace that are more prevalent today, the current culture wars painful acknowledgments of ungrace in our lives as Christians in this country. Yancey helps us understand that ungrace is that state of being in which self-righteousness and pride are a result of thinking that we have somehow earned God's approval and may now stand in judgment in his behalf.

On grace avoidance, Yancey notes that the community that made Jesus angriest was the one that he most resembled on the surface: the Pharisees. He obeyed the Torah and quoted and supported leading Pharisees, who were model citizens of their day. Their legalisms He found toxic: for example, their expressions of love for God had evolved into ways of impressing others. Pray, He said, privately without show.

Contents:
Part I: How Sweet the Sound
Part II: Breaking the Cycle of Ungrace
Part III: Scent of Scandal
Part IV: Grace Notes for a Deaf World