International Grace
A few days ago I got a letter from a Croatian man who introduced himself as the translator of my book What’s So Amazing About Grace? into Croatian. He asked if I would write a preface for the book specifically for Croatia.
“You have referred to the Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian experience during the recent war,” he said. “Although the war ended over 15 years ago, the wounds 
are still here and we are very very far from true reconciliation.” He went on to say that Christians in the Balkans are still struggling with truth and justice, and wonder whether grace can apply without the prior steps of truth and justice.
The Balkan countries still celebrate war criminals as heroes of the nation, often with the church’s approval. Rapes, tortures, concentration camps, ethnic cleansing—these memories of war still haunt the landscape. The translator asked, How can we “do grace” in such a setting? More, how can we keep another Balkan war from breaking out again in several decades?
I did write the preface, beginning with these paragraphs:
If I had originally envisioned this book for a Croatian audience, it would be a different book. How so? I cannot say for sure. The Balkans do not need an American writer to barge in with a limited understanding of your history and culture and offer advice.
For this reason I present this book as a kind of dialogue with you the reader. I depend on you, indeed I urge you, to take what I set forth in these pages and apply them to your own country. At times, as you read, you may find yourself shaking your head and saying, “He doesn’t understand Croatia!” You are right—I don’t. But you do, and it is up to Croatians to come to terms with your recent past as well as your distant past.
I went on to say that as an American I can offer some hope. After all, I grew up in the southern state of Georgia, which endured a brutal campaign by General William Tecumseh Sherman, whom some historians credit as introducing the modern “scorched earth” tactics of total war. His troops burned my home city of Atlanta to the ground, and all over Georgia you can find bronze markers recalling the destruction his armies inflicted during their March to the Sea.
My Philadelphia uncles used to taunt me by asking me to book them a room in Atlanta’s “General Sherman Hotel,” which of course did not exist. We viewed Generals Sherman and Grant as war criminals, and in school we were even taught to scorn President Abraham Lincoln, who had forcibly reunited a divided country. The Georgia state flag incorporated the design of the Confederate flag, and I went to a high school named for a Confederate general. A popular bumper sticker in my childhood featured a cartoon figure of a Confederate soldier with the words, “Hell, no, we ain’t forgettin’!”
Before the Civil Rights Act forced change, we southerners also trampled on the rights of citizens from a different race. In a genteel version of ethnic cleansing, we fought in the courts and sometimes on the streets to keep them out of “our” restaurants, churches, neighborhoods, and schools. One race used to own the other, and I can hardly imagine a starker example of “Ungrace” than the slave trade that brought millions across an ocean to serve wealthy plantation owners. Visit the modern city of Atlanta today, however, and you will find few vestiges of that kind of racial division and regional patriotism. It takes time but wounds heal, justice triumphs, change happens.
Historian Shelby Foote points out that only after the Civil War did Americans start saying “The United States is…” rather than “The United States are….” Our identity as one nation came out of our 
bloodiest war. Indeed, I recently learned that the burning of Atlanta played a crucial role in that re-union. Exhausted by war, the Democratic Party of 1864 adopted a platform calling for peace negotiations based on recognizing Confederate independence and nominated General George McClellan to oppose the beleaguered President Lincoln in that year’s election. News of Sherman’s September triumph in Atlanta helped swing popular support back to the Republican incumbent Lincoln, who pursued the war to its conclusion.
More recent times show that the same pattern of healed wounds can apply internationally as well. Two of America’s closest allies are Germany and Japan, the two nations who opposed us in the most destructive war in history. U. S. ties are strengthening with Vietnam, another nation who fought us in a bitter and bloody campaign. I have witnessed similar scenes of reconciliation in places like Germany, where East and West reunited, and in South Africa, where under the leadership of Nelson Mandela a majority race chose the way of truth but not revenge and in the process forfeited justice for the sake of reconciliation.
For these reasons, I have hope for Croatia and its neighbors. Fortunately, Croatia has outstanding scholars and pastors who are seeking how best to apply theology to their nation’s history. Among the most insightful is Miroslav Volf, who emigrated from Croatia to teach at Fuller Seminary in California and then at the Yale Divinity School. The End of Memory, a magnificent book, includes his comments about memories of the traumatic past: “They need not colonize the present nor invade the future by defining what we can do and become. Past wrongdoing suffered can be localized on the timeline of our life-story and stopped from spilling forward into the present and future to flood the whole of our life.”
Grace is the only force I know of that can block the toxic influence of a painful past on the present and the future. As Volf says, “For in the light of Christ’s self-sacrifice and resurrection, the future belongs to those who give themselves in love, not to those who nail others to a cross.”
For years the Balkans have been a laboratory of what I call “Ungrace,” the law in relationships that echoes one in physics: Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. You have lived with the deadly consequences of that law for centuries. Can the modern Balkans become instead a laboratory of grace? And what would that look like?
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15 responses to “International Grace”
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About Philip Yancey
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him.
Mr. Yancey,
You are by far my favorite author who speak into my life with practical issues I face. We have similar backgrounds in dealing with the God and church of our childhood. How did I ever survive and still maintain my faith? I am a friend of Bill Wilson, and thank God He used that community to strip away all the Pharisaical trappings of religion and legalism in order to restore a vision of God for who He really is. Thank you for touching on our way of life in your book What’s so Good about God? I just ordered your two latest books: Prayer: Does It Really Work and Grace Notes. After twenty years I’m finally getting to attend college for the first time to hone my natural writing talent. Thank you for inspiring me to excellence and to finally utilize my gift to the glory of God.
Hello Mr. Philip Yancey I am Brazilian.
Hello my name is Rafael and I read his book Amazing Grace, was an instrument of God. I learned a lot about difereça of Grace in a society of non-grace.
God bless, Him the Honor and Power,
Peace and Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dezi, I started heading up to bed and came back down to fire up the computer again and write you … for the last time. I’ll stay away from this particular post from now on. First, you are much in my mind, with recent events in your home country and your host country. Second, the most important two worlds that I have experienced have been the missionary enterprise, if you will, as a child, and now the military enterprise, as a spouse. And what I want to tell you as a child of missionaries who loved two people groups Americans do not much love is that God does indeed love the whole world. God never forgets that. He was filled with concern for Nineveh, that great city, even the cattle filling it. (Jonah 4:11) He never forgets one corner of His world, or counts it as lesser than another. He is not confused by the many opinions and justifications each side has … He is not like us!! The only other thing I might say is that, though David, the King, could not build God’s temple because of the blood on his hands, God loved him too. And David loved God. And that’s what I have learned.
You spoke of believing you might find “true hope in His Word.” Absolutely. You spoke of being upset at finding out (in your first note), that the 10 Commandments say Do not murder and not Do not kill. (That’s a new idea to me; I’ll have to look.) To those who use that to justify war, to declare it “fine,” I say not to forget that the 10 Commandments are a minimal, bottom-line, set of commands given at a particular point in time to a people heading towards conquest. God has much more to say to us……. No? Finally, you wrote of the fruit of the Spirit, a list followed by the statement, Against such things, there is no law. A very significant statement. Blessings to you. Courage and hope.
Hello Mr. Yancy, I feel compelled to tell you how much your books have meant to me. I and my family have had some tragic things happen in the last ten years and I believe God lead me to your books to help me get through them. I choose to believe that God grieves with us but also prepares us and strengthens us for things that are coming. I won’t say my faith hasn’t been tested but ultimately I can now say it is stronger than ever. I think the word “grace” has such a deeper meaning for me than it did years ago. I have led a couple classes on your book “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and some of the people in those classes felt it was life changing for them. Thank you so much for what you have done for me with God’s help!
Hi everyone! I’m Hungarian and would like to ask why each book is not available in Hungary ? I went to bookstores in the area, but only two have not found your book. Then I checked the online bookstores too (www.konyv-konyvek.hu). Also there are only two I found your book. What is the reason? Not every book has been translated? It will be expected in the future?
I love the idea of forfeiting “justice for the sake of reconciliation.” That’s what it’s all about. Great article/blog/whatever this is called.
I really would like to thank Steph who elaborated her thoughts in her first comment and showed me a powerful testimony of a young Christian man at Slate Blog, ‘The Wrong Stuff’ dated Dec. 16, 2010 (Conscientious Objector, Josh Stieber). This is powerful because I can see that the Word of God has been active in this young gentleman’s heart all the way otherwise he wouldn’t have taken that risk. That was a fresh reminder of true hope in His Word.
I would also like to let you know that God is working in my heart. Until a few weeks ago, I had been struggling quite a lot in my church life and so had my American husband as well since both of us were aware of our own judgmental attitudes toward conservative Christians. But when God’s message was delivered powerfully through my husband’s preaching at one Sunday service (he’s one of our church’s ordained people) after his mind-wrestling with His Word and lots of prayers with tears, God spoke to him, me and possibly at least some of our congregation, I believe. To me so-called nine Spiritual Fruit (Gal 5: 22-23) quoted at the sermon at the time was something that got me back to the basic — God’s standard, not the world’s standards that I often tend to fall in. His standard is for my ideal integration following Jesus’s image.
With a sharp contrast of the nine Spiritual Fruit, a list of our sinful nature (Gal 5: 19-21) also turned out to be a good reference to convince me that things seemingly related to our warfare such as ‘hatred’, ‘discord’ , ‘fits of rage’, ‘selfish ambition’, ‘dissensions’, and ‘factions’ (NIV) are against His Will for us. Even if some people claim that ‘their missions’ in wars are totally different from what is written in Galatians 5:19-21, it doesn’t make sense to me especially when I see the whole world as His own creation as His beloved one community, rather than seeing a particular nation as the one He prefers. Where people accept killing civilians in wars as their “mission”, my question arises — would He want us to exterminate or totally change ‘different others’ because of the disagreement? I do not think so. I believe any kinds of positive change according to God’s will should begin in me/us, just like the one having occurred to that young American man, Josh Stieber, interviewed at Slate Blog. Changes staring in our own selves seem to be the key to ultimately and truly being open to God.
Personally I imagine that God might be pleased to have more and more people experiencing two or more different worlds, just as Steph does (I suppose), Josh Stieber does and myself (having been going through different church orientations-sort of). I don’t think ‘experiencing two or more worlds’ has to do with visibly different worlds, but with more internal things like different value systems and beliefs. Surrounded by them, we often struggle and cry for help to God. During the time, we might find some underlying backgrounds of different value systems and beliefs. Even if we experience our faith being shaken by the different values, His Word will get us back to His truth, His love, I believe. This kind of “getting-back” experience can be a genuine drive to spread the Gospel to the world, not by capitalism or democracy and never by the force, but by love, respect and humility. People dealing with different values would be given the channels to communicate with those with different values, which might turn out to contribute to desired peacemaking. I may be theologically wrong but I can’t help connect this people bridging different worlds with God’s Word in Ezekiel: “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it” (Ezekiel 22:30 NIV).
Although I don’t know how much I’ve been able to communicate with you in my limited English, it’s been a big blessing for me to get this kind of urge to try understanding what it’s expressed and to try hard on opening up and ‘decoding’ my thoughts in English. God bless!
Having grossly intruded the first time, I’ll attempt brevity, and then cease.
1. I hope I did not add salt to wounds for dezi and others (because I see the compromise and give in to it). I am sorry. 2. There’s an interview of a conscientious objector on a blog at Slate magazine (The Wrong Stuff) dated Dec. 16, 2010. He demonstrates an initial “Patriotic Christian” view, goes to war, and via Gandhi and the Golden Rule (Do unto others etc.), becomes a consc. objector. Thought dezi might like it.
That is all.
I do not have a comment on the above essay but I do have a question for Mr Yancy. I am a physician and deal daily with a multiplicity of physical problems with my patients from very minor to very life threatening. I have read your comments on pain and what the bible has to say about pain, physical disease and Jesus’ healing and reaction to disease and suffering. I am frustrated and lost however when dealing with mental health issues. I feel that the bible especially does not deal with how to handle mental health issues such as OCD , severe depression and anxiety. Sure it tells us not to be discouraged and not to be anxious but the depth of disease that some people face is so much deeper than ordinary people like myself can fathom and in some ways is much more life altering and painful than physical problems such as cancer and heart disease.
Another thought provoking piece of writing and how refreshing to hear someone say “I don’t understand your country”. Bill Fleming’s comment made me think about how key this is. As a denizen of the country that historically caused all the problems in Northern Ireland and at times paid in blood for their interference I know all about lack of understanding. Both politicians and public in the UK have long ignored, or been ignorant of, our being the cause of the problems there and promoted shoot to kill policies as the way to deal with the IRA and the like. I thank to Lord ost days that he has provided us with men of faith and insight who were able to move beyond this.
Problems in the Balkans are, at least in part, the result of European “powers” attempting to redraw borders, and we can only pray God will bring men to the fore who show the grace needed to move past the very real hurts and begin to mend wounds.
Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, Former Canadian UN Peacekeeper in Rwanda and current Senator, is one of those people whom I admire. He has written 2 books, Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children. I will look for the book you recommend, A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. Thank you for title, I am always looking for a good thought provoking book on improving the world.
It is hard to believe that its already been 15 years since the Croation war. I still remember when I first heard of the genocide and camps which at the time I found so hard to believe that after WWII a country would choose such an inhuman act of war. I was a nieve iedealistic 17 year old at then living in a country that doesn’t have a civil conflict in its history of confederation. Although horrified I had no idea of the reality of war, and still don’t, that these people were faced with.
Since then I have met refugees who’s stories of war are nothing short of heroic stories of survival and courage. In the last 15 years the information about struggles such as these has become easier to access and we’ve become almost voyeristic in our need to read stories and watch documentaries about those who survive inhuman circumstances. We sit in the comfort of our homes entertained by movies like Blood Diamond and Lord of War which open our eyes to the realities of the world yet we do little to nothing to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We know that the UN neglects to stop genocide in places it is most prevelent but we do nothing to cry out and force them to act. They choose oil rich countries to fight for over keeping the peace in places like Rwanda and Sudan.
The current trend toward helping the third world and those oppressed by governments through a variety of charities is a positive step toward a better planet. I am thankful to those refugees who shared their personal stories with me, they gave me a gift more precious then any other I have received. Throughout history we have example after example of former enemies becoming partners for the betterment of both. We can only pray that the future generations will step in and stop genocide and that it will truly become a thing of the past.
A very interesting piece Philip and one that resonates deeply with me as someone who lives in Northern Ireland and who works within the peace and reconciliation “sector” in this part of the world.
The story of Northern Ireland and it’s peace process is incomplete- its political and community landscapes are still pock-marked with the legacy of the conflict. That having been said it has been amazing for me-someone who grew up with the worst of the violence to have witnessed the drip-feed of grace bringing gradual but marked change to this small and troubled country.
Change is possible though often heart-wrenching and confusing. Thankfully we have a great tour-guide if an authentic Jesus is invoked and involved. There is no grace quite like his (a guy called Yancey wrote a great book on it once-worth picking up if you have not got it).
Hi dezi, your comments struck a chord with me. I’ve had this conversation before, with my career army officer husband, recently retired. There are two questions, one regarding the dropping of the bombs, and the other regarding the lack of prominence in our minds that this fact holds, that we are the only nation to have dropped atomic bombs on civilian populations. We don’t make much of that fact, but there it is, nonetheless.
I am a US citizen by birth but grew up in Europe during the Cold War. I guess I’ve retained a sense of being wedged in the middle at the mercy of two superpowers, and I’ve also retained a sense of the awfulness of that power. I entered this marriage a wanna-be pacifist, educated in a mennonite influenced school, but unwilling to live in a world where our military just vanished, knowing that I want the security it offers. I live in a place of continued internal tension.
I really don’t see any war as consistent with Christian values, not even the Revolutionary War (which, being foundational to our nation, no American church congregation I’ve ever sat with/among is sympathetic towards questioning). But at the end of long conversations, I can begin to see the human suffering and anger that war is an outgrowth of, the thing that precipitated the war in the first place, and the actions taken during war to bring them to an end (even as the war also causes more suffering.) Then too, I have seen wonderful values represented in the lives of the military people I’ve rubbed shoulders with. The word “service” for many is aptly chosen. Also, many of the Christian service members see themselves on a mission to bring Christ to others in the military, and they view their deployments to war zones primarily in terms of the humanitarian works they will have occasion to do. (We all seek greater meaning for our lives.) Some of the young families remind me of the young families I’ve encountered who are engaged in missions work. One such family even told their kids that their dad was going overseas for a year because God had some people for their dad to help over there. (As a child of missionaries, I raised some cautions there, for the sake of the children, but it didn’t seem I was heard.)
I still don’t understand the ease with which many Christians enter the soldiering profession. I guess what I’d like to tell you is that, yes, there is a place in the US where patriotism and faith/religion converge, yes, it is bizarre, yes, some others do see it too, and that it may be if you find resources to study this “patriotism as religion,” you will not feel so alone in dealing with it. Patriotism as religion often does interfere with the religion we know that wishes to bring all tongues and peoples together in their worship of Christ. Patriotism is inherently dividing, not uniting. And in the end we truly are saying, “our lives were more important.” That is still my conclusion about the “we had to do it, let’s move on” position. We as humans have loyalties that center first around the family, and then the immediate geography, and the country, and only then “the species.” I’m not sure that’s entirely valid, but it certainly is common.
But what I’ve found by living in the military community this past decade, where I really was scared of the brand of patriotism I might find, is that it helps when you don’t see just the surface but listen and listen and listen. You finally get brief glimpses of “the other side.” I lost a neighbor to the war in Iraq. I watched others lose friends. I watched amazing spouses throughout long and difficult and sudden deployments. My respect for them is immense. And they are “my neighbor.” It is easy for me to think about my “could’s and should’s,” but they have enormous and difficult commitments that they live out every day. Living in the military environment has definitely been a “cross-cultural experience” for me. I see I am not writing about the same type of experience you are writing about here, as a Japanese person living in the US and dealing with the comments of church members, but you are not alone in seeing incongruity here, and I do hope you will find more people to process it with and more ways to study it, for I really do think it helps to step back and study it as a cultural phenomenon, and recently, as one occurring in a nation engaged in war. The question is broader than I’ve made it. You certainly hear a lot of biblical language applied to the US in the mainstream, the US as a “city on a hill.” Wish I knew of resources to send your way to help as you process all this in the difficult position of being a foreigner in a strange land!!
Hello, Mr. Yancey.
I’m a Japanese Christian living in one of the Southern states in the US for about three years since I got married to my NY state born Christian man. He’s been in this state for more than 20 years but he hasn’t got any Southern accents and tells me that sometimes he still feels like he hasn’t got accepted by people here.
I’ve been struggling with my church life here. I’m not saying that saying “God bless America” is wrong— rather I think it’s normal to pray for our own countries. But I tend to get daunted when I hear so-called “Christian” people in churches here say (1) that they (US people) ARE special and the rest of the people in the world are NOT; (2) that they should be protected by God; (3) that their dropping of two A-bombs was right since it saved 2 millions of American soldiers’ lives (even though about 100,000 lives in Hiroshima and 70,000 lives in Nagasaki were lost at those times and there have been more lives lost each year since Aug, 1945); and (4) that their “SaviorS” are Jesus AND their troops. I don’t have any intentions to argue whether dropping the bombs was right or not. But sticking to the idea that “WE WERE RIGHT” or “GOD WAS WITH US (whatever they do since He granted them)” matters to me.
I was born after WWII and of course I didn’t experience anything real during the wartime. But our parents and grandparents have told us how hard it was. On the other hand I’ve also tried learning what terrible things my country did to so many nations (especially to neighboring ones) and at Pearl Harbor. These wrongdoings could never be the ones to be justified even if we had had been a Christian nation, I suppose. My nation killed so many lives so brutally — while those precious lives are God’s, not ours.
I was also discouraged and shocked when our Sunday school teacher said that one of the Ten Commandments “You shall not murder” does not include killing civilians in a war so it is justified. Until then I had not known that the verb should be ‘murder’ but not ‘kill’ because the Bible in our language uses a general word to mean “kill” for that verse. And then I thought ‘no wonder general (or at least some conservative) American Christians wouldn’t hesitate to go so aggressive in wars, to be honest. While those people loudly argue about abortion “to protect yet-to-be-born” lives given from God, why are they blind the preciousness of other already born lives somewhere out there in the warfare? To me they seem to be ‘fear-driven’ since they seem to want to exterminate those whom they think they can’t cope with. I wonder if they fear of ‘losing control over the world’ if at all.
Even though we hate certain people, God loves them and this is what we Christians learn from His Word, isn’t it? Why can some people claim that they are the only special ones to be always protected while they claim they are Christians who are to learn to love their neighbors?
Some people’s somewhat hard-core “WE WERE RIGHT” idea seems to go on to say “we are ALWAYS right” to justify themselves in their present and future acts.
It’s really challenging for me to be a Christian here. Every time some people pray “God bless America”, I’d like to pray “God bless all the nations in this imperfect world” and “May You grant us to have citizenships in Heaven”.
Having said all these, I reckon this is my training given to grow enough to be able to forgive those who say “hard-core” stuff since we are all imperfect.
I thank God that we have a Christian writer like you to share our questions and struggles along with our walk at this difficult age.