Philip Yancey

Review: Fearfully and Wonderfully

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Yancey

Fearfully and Wonderfully: The Marvel of Bearing God’s Image (Updated and combined edition), Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Summary: A new edition combining two classic works exploring both the wonders of the human anatomy, the value and dignity of every human being, and parallels with the functioning of the body of Christ.

Thirty years ago Dr. Paul Brand and writer Philip Yancey teamed up on two books exploring the wonders of the human body, Brand’s medical practice and its affirmation of the human dignity of even some of the most physically unapproachable and parallels to the body of Christ. I never had a chance to read these works but every person I met who hand raved at the beauty of these works. Now, thirty years later, and having read a new edition combining these two works, I am ready to join the chorus of those who praise the fruit of this collaboration. This writing about how fearfully and wonderfully made is indeed wonderful.

Brand’s distinctive work up until his death in 2003 was his work among those with leprosy, and his critical insight that began with his first encounter with a leper that the insidious part of the disease was its destruction of nerve endings that transmit pressure and pain. Deformities, particularly in hands and feet result from repeated injuries that occur because people don’t feel the pain of fire, or wounds from tools or knives or implements, or even the turning of an ankle. Much of Brand’s work as an orthopedic surgeon was operating on misshapen hands and feet, eyelids, noses, and restoring function and form.

One of the beauties of this work was the power of treating those who suffered from these deformities as persons of great dignity. At one point the book describes an incident where Brand was assuring a leprosy patient that they could arrest the disease with medication and restore some movement. As he did so, he made what he thought a joke as he put his arm around the young man’s shoulder, and the young man began to sob. Brand discovered that the man was crying because no one had touched him for many years.

Another part of the beauty of this book lies in the descriptions of the wonders of the human body. He describes the incredible diversity of cells that make our bodies, and how they all share the same set of instructions on their chromosomes. He describes how normally functioning bodies distribute stress and adjust when tissues are expose to repeated stress. Lepers, who cannot feel, do not. He explores various bodily systems: skin, blood, respiration, bone, and muscle, sensory nerves and brain. So much that we are unaware of reflects incredibly complex and efficient systems to sustain, protect, and heal our bodies.

The third beauty of this book is the insights drawn from our physical anatomy to a parallel Body–the Body of Christ.Brand describes the primitive but effective techniques of vaccinating people using the lymph of previously vaccinated persons to vaccinate others, protecting them from and overcoming deadly illnesses like smallpox. Then follows a spiritual insight into what it means to overcome by the blood of the Lamb, blood that overcomes the infection, and effects of sin.

Descriptions of the wonder of human anatomy, the dignity of every human being and the healthy functioning of Christ’s body weave through this work. These lessons all have one end–to help us understand what it means both individually and collectively to be image bearers, the embodied representations of God and Christ to the world. I came away from reading this work with a profound sense of wonder and thankfulness for the function of my body in all its parts and its whole. The very act of typing these words is a wonder, involving thought, brain centers dedicated to each of my fingers, visual impulses from my eyes, all woven together. How wonderful it is when one works with a team of believers, using our various gifts and skills toward common goals, accomplishing far more together than any of us could individually. Brand and Yancey not only open my eyes with the wonders they describe and their spiritual parallels, they encourage me to look for these wonders in my own life and the world around me, fostering what an embryologist friend describes as doxological fascination, a rather fancy way of describing “fearfully and wonderfully.” That seems to me to be a rather wonderful way to live.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

 

The Battle to Read?

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Reading-books

By Omarfaruquepro (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons

This week, Philip Yancey posted a blog “Reading Wars” that was picked up in the Washington Post under the title “The Death of Reading is Threatening the Soul.” Yancey begins the post noting the change in his own reading practices, from about three books a week (about what I typically read) to much less, and that he is reading far fewer works that require hard work.

He attributes this to the internet, and the tendency to read a paragraph or two and move along to something else, and to skip around from one thing to the next, and be easily distracted. He also notes the constant interruptions of emails and other messaging that wants a reply now.

He quotes a Charles Chu who estimates that it would take approximately 417 hours over a year to read 200 average sized books. Chu is walking proof that it’s possible, having read 400 books in the past two years. He notes that the average American spends 608 hours on social media and 1642 hours watching television. It is not a question of time.

Rather it is a question of seduction. And this is where the battle to read comes in. Between distracting notifications on smartphones, and the temptation to go from there to different social media can consume a lot of time. It’s mind candy, kind of fun really. There’s a video–was that really ten minutes? It lures us away from our books, and makes it harder to concentrate when we sit down to read them.

Yancey joins a chorus of people from Senator Ben Sasse who is trying to cultivate practices of reading in his family to Rod Dreher in his Benedict Option who are urging us to lay aside, or even fast from our technology to make time for deep reading of the printed page. Many business are arguing for setting aside at least an hour a day for reading.

Why does it matter? Isn’t this time one could more productively employ elsewhere? Personally, I reached a decision in my forties, that having passed the peak of my physical powers, I needed to take more time to read, and think, and pray if I was going to be spiritually and intellectually vital and fresh in my work. I could not just keep recycling what I learned in college and the first years out in the work force. I was changing, the world was changing, and the advance of years brought new questions, and questioned previous assumptions.

More than that, I came to realize that there really is something grand about this collective project called humanity–noble and sometimes hubristic dreams, great ideas like the freedom of conscience, and not so great ones like race theory, and great works of art and literature, that capture in a particular piece aspects of the universal human experience. I came to discover in the Christian faith not only the two to three millenia-old sacred scriptures that are our rule of faith and practice, but that conversation of great minds from Augustine and Athanasius to Barth and Niebuhr and Kuyper that sought to understand and apply these truths to their times. Many contemporary writers and speakers, as compelling as they seemed, were pretty thin fare by comparison.

Most of all, what I think I am trying to do as I read is to live an attentive life. I want to listen for God’s voice in the things that I read, and to be open to the possibility that a word of scripture, or an idea on a page might transform my perspective, question my ways of doing things, or lead to insights into how to live or work more in sync with God’s workings in the world. More than that, if God is the real hero of this story and mine but a small supporting role (and even that is something), so much of reading is a walk in the wonder of understanding the works and ways and majesty of God, whether in a book on the latest discoveries in physics, a history of a people, or a biography of a leader of the past.

There is so much more to life than what can be expressed in 140 characters or displayed on my smartphone screen. If we are dissatisfied with the banality of our public discourse, then perhaps a good beginning is to attack our own lack of attention to deep reading of ideas that matter. We might even discover that there is great joy to be found in a rich interior life. We might want such people to be leaders in our communities, and maybe our nation. We might even become them.

In the next days, I want to discuss more of what we can do to give substantive reading a greater place in our lives, and some practices and sources that can get us started.