Soul Survivor How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Yancey Review
Soul Survivor: How 13 Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church building
The volume title says information technology all - especially the emphasis on unlikely mentors. Philip Yancey witnessed, like many people, the injustices, such as slavery and racism, inflicted by the church in the name of God. Instead of walking away from the church, he journeys back in time and examines the life of 13 remarkable men who are not preached about as a fine Christian examples. However, on sorting through these unlikely men'south lives he discovered God's handiwork. Mahatma Ghandi, India'southward 'Not bad Soul', led Republic of india to liberty from colonial rule through absolute irenic ceremonious disobedience. Although he openly rejected Christianity he did not reject the teachings of Jesus. The British used Christianity to justify colonization, dominion, discrimination and segregation. It was against this properties that Ghandi epitomized Christ'south teachings of love, equality and peace. The mentors he examined experienced varied reactions from the church. Truthfully and painfully it reveals the flaws and injustices ministered by the Church. This book doesn't make yous experience disenchanted with the church, it makes you aware that these flaws exist. Therefore, we are not to be blah or live a life of mediocrity. It is through adversity and the lives of imperfect people nosotros can draw closer to God and see His handiwork in our ain lives.
This is the outset book I read by Philip Yancey. His way is easy and he knows his audience includes both Christians and those who are searching. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him because of this.
love love love this book. yes it falls in the christian category, but it's just about people who lived their lives in a way that's leap to inspire you. the 13 mini-biographies give you lot a good sense of these people and yancey helps you to acquire more than about them through suggested readings at the finish of each chapter. i've read iii other books already simply based on what i learned from this volume.
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Edited February 11, 2018 It is rare when you find a book that can modify your whole perception on life. Soul Survivor past Philip Yancey not only inverse my perception, but did what a good book is supposed to do: inspire a person. I will signal out that not everyone will detect it to be then dramatically life-altering. But Yancey had a childhood similar to mine, and his perspective is unique. I know that I'1000 a little tardily in reading this volume (it came out in 2001) simply I couldn't assistance but spread the word about it. The subtitle of Soul Survivor is "How Xiii Unlikely Mentors Helped My Religion Survive the Church building." Yancey is someone who has endured a large corporeality of what he calls "church building abuse." This book profiles thirteen people that taught him most grace and faith, but apart from the church. Similar I said before, every bit someone coming from similar circumstances, I can appreciate what these people meant to Yancey. Some of the more interesting profiles include Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Donne, Henri Nouwen, and Annie Dillard. Yancey gives a cursory history of each person, then tells how each afflicted his life through their actions or their writings. Some of them Yancey knew personally through interviews he conducted for various magazines. Others he knew only through their works. Just each of these interesting people afflicted Yancey in some significant way. He shows through their lives and actions that truthful faith is acted out in real life, not written downwardly and thought of every bit an abstract thought. A truly fascinating read.
This is the most moving and encouraging book I have read in a long time. What I liked best virtually it was how Phillip Yancey doesn't just compile a "pinnacle ten" list of inspiring people and reproduce children's story idealizations of their lives. He interweaves his own journey of faith, growth, and repentance with stories of how each person challenged him to reexamine his life and values, while avoiding the temptation to whitewash them into saints. I was very touched past the 2nd chapter, on Martin Luther King, Jr., in which Yancey talks about his own childhood and boyhood during the desegregation movement, which was spent in churches that actively resisted and slandered King'due south work in the S, and his own long, painful journey out of deeply (religiously) ingrained racism. Only there wasn't a single chapter that I didn't observe fascinating. Some introduced me for the starting time time to figures I had never considered--such equally Dr. Paul Brand, Dr. Robert Coles, and Dr. C. Everett Koop--or read much of--such equally Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Dostoevsky. Others re-introduced me to writers and thinkers I had encountered and enjoyed without knowing much about before, such as G.K. Chesterton, Gandhi, John Donne, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Shusaku Endo, and Henri Nouwen. An easy, engaging read, and highly recommended equally both a moving spiritual autobiography and a wonderful look at the circuitous lives and commitments of thirteen unique men and women.
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August 9, 2011 I read this book in one calendar week, while doing a missions trip with my church to Guatemala. I've long identified with Yancey, who comes from hardcore fundamentalist deep s segregationist Baptist roots; I too come up from fundamentalism and the apocalyptic "low church". His earlier works cleverly slide in progressive, even liberal thought into a larger Christian context that paints a very different Jesus from the ugly model that (rightly) gets all the press. Merely in this volume he explores the people who helped him retain his faith, when all evidence seemed to show that path as 1 of ignorance and detest. Folks like MLK, Anne Dillard, and even Mahatma Gandhi, all who focus in on the very existent person of Jesus and a living, plainspoken, non-frivolous example laid out past Jesus two millenia agone. I needed to read this book. I needed this book at the time I did, helping the poor and least among u.s. on the trip. His stories reminded me that Jesus stands with the downtrodden and defeated, as did near of these characters. And that these people actually living out their faith in sloppy, loose, and painfully human ways exhibit exactly the sort of organized religion that could very well transform the world.
Every few years I seem to come dorsum to this book. I notice it refreshing. The mini biographies are so interesting I go frustrated when Yancey turns to reflecting on himself - which is lightheaded because he wrote the book every bit a type of spiritual autobiography. The reading recommendations at the end of each chapter are very enticing.
This book was a footling unlike than I expected, only I concluded upwardly truly enjoying it. It is a collection of essays about different people whose writings and lives inspired Yancey to keep his faith during spiritually dark times. I personally establish it inspiring and enlightening. I recommend this volume to anyone who has always struggled with Jesus' teachings vs the mode the church behaves.
Interesting, simply inappreciably all-important.
Philip Yancey's writing is a pleasure to read. He's clear and curtailed, weaving through such little details that you go completely drawn into reading. Still, the book is not an piece of cake read, considering it'south a thoughtful reflection on the faith journey of an intelligent writer and too considering it makes you start thinking about where practice yous stand in your own life, faith, relationships. Philip Yancey holds a mirror up to our own failures as well as his own. It'due south a volume that makes you set aside fourth dimension for self-reflection. The most moving chapter for me was the affiliate about Paul Brand, an orthopedic surgeon whose work on leprosy helped me to empathize how hurting can become a gift from God. I take to remind myself every twenty-four hours of that, since the whole earth is full of pain. I also became more interested in the works of Frederick Buechner, Dostoyevsky, and John Donne, some of them presented in this book were added to my "to read" listing.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/782832.Soul_Survivor
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