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For a Canadian kid, Atlanta is hot in July. Like opening the oven door and poking your head in to see if the bread is done. As my plane touches down, I pack up Philip Yancey's recent book, What's So Amazing About Grace? and step into the Georgia night. A taxi driver talks of weather and baseball's Braves, but my mind is haunted by a question Yancey raised: "If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of it?"
In many ways, Philip Yancey's spiritual journey parallels my own. Raised in a "Southern fundamentalist" home in Atlanta, he was exposed early to a message of ungrace. Like Shabat elevators in Israel which stop at every floor so Orthodox Jews can avoid pushing buttons on the Sabbath, the Christianity he learned is much ado about externals, about the buttons to push -- or avoid pushing.
"I grew up with the strong impression that a person became spiritual by attending to grey-area rules," he writes, "that you gain the church's and, presumably, God's approval by following the prescribed pattern.... As a child, I put on my best behaviour for Sunday mornings, dressing up for God and for the Christians around me. It never occurred to me that church was a place to be honest." I can relate. Today, several close friends have excluded God from their lives partly because of his children. Sometimes, my heart aches that they would understand grace as I am beginning to.
It is midnight when I arrive at my hotel, looking for a cool room before a busy schedule at the annual Christian Bookseller's Association convention. A smiling woman informs me that my "guaranteed room reservation" is no longer guaranteed. It seems some guests have stayed longer than expected. "We're sending you to another hotel," she apologizes, handing me $15 for the taxi. My response is anything but graceful.
The bill comes to $10, and I pocket what's left, small consolation for the fact that I'm now in a darker area of town. I keep the curtains shut tight against beggars and bums, push my luggage against the door and open Yancey's book again. "As I look back on my own pilgrimage," he writes, "marked by wanderings, detours and dead...