When the Light Falls on Philip Yancey

A number of years ago I had a dream that scared me cold. I’ve not told too many people about it. Maybe because it happened when we were in the middle of moving half-way across the country and other things captured our hearts and minds through the transition. Or maybe because I was afraid the dream revealed something true about me, and if it did, I didn’t like it.

In the dream, I was suddenly awakened by my son yelling, “Get off of me!” I couldn’t see anything, but I moved quickly to find out what or who was attacking my son. 

Pow! The blow came from my left. I grabbed the arm and twisted it backwards. A blood curdling scream rang through the air.

“Help! Somebody help!” My son, still shouting—I’ve got to find him! 

Two figures emerged from the darkness, grabbing my legs and tackling me to the ground.

“Hold him down. Don’t let him get up,” they grunted to each other.

I scrambled, jerked, and twisted, throwing each of them off as I gathered my strength. I had to reach my son! A huddled clump of darkness lay in front of me. I kicked it, getting it out of the way before it decided to get me. 

“Somebody PLEEEEAAASE!!”

He was closer, now. Why couldn’t I find him? Another blow came, another twist and pull. More screaming, more tackling. I was running out of time, I could feel it. Cool wetness trickled down my face. I knew I was bleeding. I just hoped I could get to my son and free him before I passed out. 

Why is it so dark? Where are the lights?

A million thoughts ran through my head as I tried to gather my wits, find my son, and figure out who was attacking us all in a matter of seconds. Then it hit, as suddenly as the first scream had burst through the night waking me from sleep. The light was so blinding. All I could see was a white wall of nothing. It was almost more disorienting than the dark. 

“What is going on in here?!” The shout came from behind me. 

Finally, I’ve got help, I thought. We can finally get these guys out of our house!

But as my eyes adjusted to the light, I discovered we were in a tiny room. Nobody other than my boys stood before me, my wife at the door behind me. 

Blood lay splattered everywhere. Each of us wore gashes and bruises all around. A chilling shiver slithered down my back as it began dawning on me: the attacker my son was screaming about wasn’t an attacker at all.

It was me.

Not As Emotionally Healthy As I Had Thought

I knew at the time that the dream was a wake up call. I knew I wasn’t as healthy as I should be. But our move was an example of significant changes we were making in the process of pursuing health. I thought the tables had turned and I was headed upward. But in the next two years, things would only get worse.

In February of 2024, I found myself standing at a strangers door knocking. I was there to pickup a valentines bouquet a friend had put together for my wife. She enjoyed doing that every year and selling them to people in the community and I was there to get mine.

Only, it wasn’t her door.

When the stranger opened the door and I realized it wasn’t my friend, I was confused. Why was I here?

I would later take my son snowboarding and forget to bring our tickets along—something I never do. We left the mountain slightly early because he was done and besides, I had noticed the clock said it was a quarter after three and the lifts close at four o’clock. 

Only, after we had been on the road for twenty minutes, my son pointed out how it was 1:50 p.m. Why did I think it was a quarter after three?

I lost sixteen pounds in two weeks, fell asleep at the wheel taking my kids to their homeschool co-op, and preached a sermon I had no memory of a few days later. This, along with missing work meetings and weird conversations with my wife that left her confused and concerned, led us to begin exploring medically what was going on with me.

Only, the doctors couldn’t find anything.

I was having fantasies, but the psychiatrist didn’t think it resembled psych issues. I lost weight and was sleeping all the time, but nothing showed up on the MRI or blood test results.

I couldn’t perform my work and for a few very scary days could hardly do life, but we had zero answers as to what may be the cause.

So, after resting several weeks, we cautiously started going about our life, cutting out as much as we could as not to trigger anything again.

Only, this meant everything that I had found purpose in doing came to a halt and a bunch of junk began to float to the surface.

I thought I was rebuilding after hitting rock bottom prior to our move. I saw myself as putting my family first and doing what it took to help us find healing and wholeness. But through the heart of 2024, I went through a darkness so deep that left me feeling like completely giving up. 

Oh, I held it together on the surface. I was a husband to a beautiful wife and a father of five wonderful kids. I served on the leadership team of our church and help mentor young men trying to find their way in life. I had to hold it together because of all the people I’d let down if I didn’t.

Only, it was becoming really hard to continue holding it together. Sins I hadn’t been tempted with in years began presenting themselves again. Intrusive thoughts I’d never faced started finding their way into my soul. The darkness inside me became exposed and laid bare, and while it was certainly ugly, it was even more hurtful to those I love most.

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The Continual Pursuit of Emotional Health

Before hitting my lowest point, I had started meeting regularly with a local Christian therapist. Perhaps some of what we were working through triggered a lot of my experience, I don’t know. But I know I’m grateful I had him to walk with me through those times. Without his help, and the undeserving — unexplainable — grace of God, I don’t think I’d be here writing this today. I certainly wouldn’t be the new person I am slowly becoming: someone more at peace inside with an increasing self-awareness and the personal fortitude to process emotions in a way that fosters inner peace, healthy relating, and personal growth.

How Philip Yancey’s Confession Affected Me

On January 6, 2026 — epiphany, for those who celebrate liturgical Christmas — Christianity Today published an article about how Philip Yancey had confessed to an adulterous relationship he had been having for eight years. He was retiring from writing and ministry, and stepping back completely from the public light.

I felt two profound emotions simultaneously. Hurt and sobered.

Hurt because Yancey’s writings have played a significant role in my own pursuit of wholeness. Where Is God When It Hurts carried me through a dark time in my youth, giving me the faith to continue on when a lot of life just hurt. The Jesus I Never Knew helped me along the journey of discovering God as a loving father instead of some cold and distant overlord watching to see if I’ll follow Him correctly. His latest book, Where the Light Fell, put words to my own journey of processing how to engage the Church of Jesus when it hasn’t always acted like Him. If my math computes correctly, he was smack in the middle of his affair when he wrote that book, when I was reading it and feeling like someone finally saw me. Boy, it felt like a gut punch.

But I also felt sobered. Even as someone who has written extensively about overcoming sin and walking in freedom, I have stared my still present depravity in the face. I have had moments of failure that brought deep shame and grief to confess. I realized the weight an author carries when I felt hurt by his failure to live out what he believed, even though I’ve never actually met Yancey. I don’t know him. Yet, I spent a day grieving and still feel a sense of disillusionment. This sobered me because I’m an author. I dream of writing more books — I have several on the docket as I type. I don’t write because I want to be famous and wealthy. I write because I get something in my chest that has to come out. It finds its way, even if only to my journal. But I think, in some small way, God has given me a skill to participate in creating order and beauty in the world through words. Yet, there is a very real dynamic that in order to do it well, and sustainably, I have to make money from it. And in order to make money from writing, a lot of people need to find my writing meaningful enough to pay for the message it tells. And in order to find enough people willing to pay, I have to put it in front of a lot more people because not everyone will find it worth as much as the paper on which it’s written. And that basically means I’m famous.

I don’t actually feel famous. But I’ve been introduced as “famous” twice, which made me want to evaporate into the central air system of the building we were in as fast as I could. 

My point is, while I dream of writing books (I have as many book ideas as I have kids, based on the meanings of their names), I find myself incredibly sobered at the weight one carries with the more they publish. 

I don’t want to hurt anyone like Yancey hurt me. Yet I know that if I ever stop pursuing wholeness in Christ and if God ever removed his hand of grace from my life, I will. The former could happen at any time. We face a daily decision to either grow in health or become more dysfunctional. Some weeks it feels like I settle for dysfunction more than growth. But I’m grateful the latter will never happen, at least as long as I don’t turn into someone who mocks God. In that case, Proverbs tells us, He sets his hand against us.

We Will Never Not Need to Pursue Emotional Health

And this leads me to wondering what’s going to happen with Yancey? Or more importantly, what’s going to happen to us?

It’s really none of our business to know every itty bitty detail. I agree he has disqualified himself from ministry and I’m grateful to see him take ownership, even if it comes eight years late. There are plenty of ways he could have rebranded and maintained notoriety while leaning more into the adultery. It wouldn’t have been the first major Christian figure to divorce because of adultery and continue on in their “ministry.” I’m glad he’s not doing that. But there are lots of questions I have, nonetheless. Things I find deeply concerning, even after reading his statements. Nevertheless, as I said before, I don’t know him. So he doesn’t have to answer my every last question.

But what’s going to happen to me and my community in light of this news coming out? The light has fallen on Philip Yancey and it hurts—makes us angry, even. And it should every time hypocrisy gets exposed. It is proper to spend time in grief and lament over these sorts of things.

But is it going to harden us even harder against God and his work of redemption? I see so much cynicism in our day. This only throws fuel on that fire.

If we’re not careful, cynicism toward God and his people, as well as anger toward folks like Yancey, can serve as deflectors of our own sinfulness. Being angry at this horrific sin can make me feel like I would never do such a thing. Feeling negative emotions about Yancey’s actions provides a false sense of health in my own life.

Only, the state of my heart on its own is just as depraved as Yancey’s. As the apostle Paul so humbly displayed, no amount of righteous indignation can make up for the fact that I am the worst of all sinners.

So what? Do we shrug our shoulders and say “But for the grace of God, there go I”? Do we highlight the good fact that he is finally taking ownership and not spend any time exploring the negative parts of his confession?

What the Tale of Philip Yancey Teaches Us

I guess, for myself, I’m taking away at least these two lessons: 

First, a warning. Knowing what it takes to be emotionally healthy is not the same as actually being emotionally healthy. No amount of training or teaching can cover for the fact that we are all people with deep need. We deeply need the grace of God in our every day life. And we are tremendously susceptible to thinking our success, expertise, or experiences somehow lessen our need. That’s true of the friend I had to go pick in the middle of the night the other week because he had gotten into a fight with a buddy at the bar. It’s true of me. And it’s true of the men and women I look to as heroes of the faith, guiding me in my own journey with Jesus.

And it’s true of the very folks who are cynical toward Christianity and the Church.

Nothing makes up for the fact that we as a humanity are deeply depraved. If I am going to have any ounce of influence in other people’s lives, I need to live every moment from this posture. Otherwise, I will inevitably cause tremendous pain to others and bring disgrace to Jesus.

Second, do not wait for the egregious sinful action to pursue emotional health. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking that because you’re not having an affair, you’re okay. We are dynamic people. Every situation in life leaves its mark. And sin resides within all of us, like a virus hiding dormant until the immune system weakens enough for it to spread.

Find yourself hyperventilating and anxious because of a conversation you’re entangled with on social media? Get a knot in the pit of your stomach when a certain preacher says something over the pulpit? Find it hard to look a certain person in the eye? Dread attending certain meetings or events? Lash out at others when you’re tired or pressured? These are all examples of emotional experiences that are worth exploring with a trained counselor. Don’t wait for them to lead to harmful behavior before looking under the hood to see what’s wrong. They weaken our emotional “immune system,” which can trigger sin’s harmful spread.

When emotional health gets ignored, the damaging, sinful behavior will always feel like it comes from out of the blue. But in reality it doesn’t. Regular confession is a doorway to healing and redemption, but it’s only the doorway. Consistent, intentional work must be done to grow in greater emotional health.

I’m sure there are many more lessons I’ll be learning as I continue to reflect on the tale of Philip Yancey. But these are two I find myself coming back to every time I think about it. 

What are you learning as you process the light falling on Yancey’s private life? You can share in the comments below.

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