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Rumors of Another World
Christian writer Philip Yancey says we need to get better at reading the signs of God's presence.
Interview by Paul O'Donnell

Reviewers have called this "another dark book from Philip Yancey." Do you think you've become darker?
No. [Laughs.] Actually, I hope the opposite. The church has not handled this whole idea of two worlds very well, historically. It often rejects the visible world as full of danger. So you have hermits who go into the desert, and you have the church's reputation as being anti-sex--about which you can make a good case.

What I'm trying to do is bring those two worlds together in a little more healthy way. If you look at sex in a different way, as God's creation, as a gift that he has given us, but one that is best used in a way that he describes, it can be a very powerful rumor of what God is like, what the world should be like. So I'm trying to move toward a more positive embrace of the good things of this world--these gifts of God. That's what we are here to explore and to enjoy--not to exploit, but to explore and enjoy not as ends in themselves, but as pointers, rumors toward what God is really like.

But you do seem somewhat pessimistic about our society.
Jacques Ellul said, isn't it odd that the nations that are most penetrated by the gospel tend to produce societies which are least like the gospel—that's my paraphrase. I travel a lot internationally, about four trips a year, and from the standpoint of the rest of the world, it's seems to be true. What describes America? Well, what describes America is wealth, military might, power, and sexual license. All those would be very different from the kind of values that Jesus spent his life talking about. And yet they would also say America is the most Christian nation on Earth....

But don't Christians often say, "This isn't the real plane of existence, and therefore, I'm not going to invest in it?" Isn't that a danger of belief in general?
That's a huge danger. The church has tilted in that direction a lot. I wrote this book to bring us back to reclaim the world. The church has pretty well given up on the natural world. They no longer even point to it as a rumor, or as an expression of God's creativity. To me the most obvious thing about God is his creativity, his love of beauty. Hiking in the Rocky Mountains, you come across meadows just full of wildflowers that no one has seen for thousands of years. There are the beauties of the Great Barrier Reef. The world is spangled with beauty.

That's the most obvious thing we can learn about God. He is a creative being who honors beauty. That is a loud rumor, and just to give that away to the scientists and let that be their realm to me is to have blinders on.