The Jesus I Never Knew

Yesterday, I finished reading The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey. That means that in the last month, I've completed more books (2) than I had in at least a year prior to that. I'm quite proud of myself, and want to keep rolling with this new trend. If you notice, the next book I'm starting is another Yancey book, Prayer, which is his most recent work. You might deduce from this that I really like Yancey's work, and you would be correct.

The Jesus I Never Knew is the 3rd Yancey book I've finished (along with Reaching for the Invisible God and What's So Amazing About Grace?) and I have yet to be disappointed by one of his books. I really enjoy his work for a number of reasons. First of all, he's not afraid to wrestle with some of the really tough questions of the faith, and he doesn't give pat, Sunday school type answers to these questions. He's readily admitted on several occasions that often he writes a book to work through his own questions on his subject matter, rather than to simply offer help to anyone who would read them. Secondly, as an aspiring journalist myself, I appreciate his journalistic background and what it that brings to his investigation of his book subjects. Lastly, I feel like he and I share a similar approach to God and faith. While he certainly has offered me some new and different insights, I often find myself feeling like he's gotten into my head and written down what I've been thinking about a particular issue, only in a much more clear and eloquent way than I've ever been able to. He's help me crystallize much of what I think about God and how He interacts with us and the rest of His creation. So, while I definitely intend to start branching out and reading different authors and taking in different view points, I figured if I was going to get serious about reading again, it would probably be a good idea to make sure I really enjoyed my first few books.

The Jesus I Never Knew was a real winner for me, and an example of Yancey at his journalistic best, in my opinion. I think one of the hardest things for someone like me, who grew up in the church, to do is to really look at the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels without my "church eyes". If you grow up in church and in Sunday school, you are generally presented with a particular view of Jesus. Now, there's a lot of truth in that view, but Yancey's contention is that we often miss a lot, and we end up reading Scripture through the lens of our preconceived view of Jesus, rather than allowing the Gospels themselves to shape and form that view. I resonate with that thought. He also makes the point that it living on the other side of the resurrection can cloud our understanding of the events in Jesus' life prior to Easter Sunday. So he basically takes a slow walk through Jesus' life as seen in the Gospels, looking at what is really there, and what it all means. Some of it wasn't really earth shattering for me, but I will say there were many things he brought to light that I had never really considered before.

This book has been around for a while, so if you're a Yancey fan, or just an avid Christian reader, you've probably read it long before me. But if not, I definitely recommend it. You'll come away with a more holistic view of just who Jesus was and what his time on earth was all about.