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C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
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Atlanta
Georgia
History
Trade
Observed
Often
Crime
Crimes
Running
Grace
Unable
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Resist
Power
Politics
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Come
Church
Temptation
Allures
Always
Religion
Confused
Allure
Christian
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Lewis

More quotes by Philip Yancey

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The uncommitted share many of our core values, but if we do not live out those values in a compelling way, we will not awaken a thirst for their ultimate Source.
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The promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.
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Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.
Philip Yancey
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Christian faith is... basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they're foundational and they can transform individuals, families.
Philip Yancey
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The people who related to God best--Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah--treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person.
Philip Yancey
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Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Philip Yancey
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I doubt God keeps track of how many arguments we win God may indeed keep track of how well we love.
Philip Yancey
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We should feel dissonance we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between our mortal and immortal parts theologians trace the fault line back to the Fall.
Philip Yancey
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Most observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.
Philip Yancey
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Prayer is - keeping company with God.
Philip Yancey
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The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament reflect the life of Jesus, what it means for us & what it means for the world.
Philip Yancey
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Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.
Philip Yancey
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By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.
Philip Yancey
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The Quakers have a saying: An enemy is one whose story we have not heard. To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me.
Philip Yancey
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Release what is good.
Philip Yancey
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People want to go back to those old days, but it's probably not going to happen.
Philip Yancey
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The church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor.
Philip Yancey
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[Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.
Philip Yancey
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... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.
Philip Yancey
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One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God's will for the planet.
Philip Yancey