The first thing I learned about Jesus is that Jesus lost the culture wars. Every time an election year rolls around in the United States I hear things like, "We need to get God's man in the White House." When I put myself back in Jesus' day I realize I have a very hard time imagining Jesus sitting around thinking, "Let's see, who should be God's man in the Roman Forum? Should it be Julius or should it be Octavius or should it be Nero?" You see, the kind of kingdom that Jesus was setting into motion is the kingdom that could work in a country with a Christian heritage, like the United States, or it could also work in a country like Communist China, where for a period of time the church was under great persecution. And, in fact, during that period of time the church grew from one or two million Christians to 30 to 50 million Christians. Jesus said that the kingdom that He was putting into motion is like that. It's like salt, a little bit of salt preserving a large piece of meat. It's like light in the midst of darkness.

I was once on a panel, just about a year ago. It was a large gathering, heavily liberal politically. There were many Jewish people in the audience and I was asked to speak about culture wars. I was kind of the token Christian actually, they told me. And I was on a panel with the President of Warner Bros. and some various distinguished people. When I got up to speak I said, "You know, the man that I follow, Jesus, a Jew from first century Galilee, was involved in a culture war in His day, as well. He went up against a rather rigid religious establishment, and He went up against a pagan empire. But His response to them was not to fight. His response to them was to give His life. And in fact among the last words He spoke on earth were these: 'Father forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.' That's a lesson that we can learn from Jesus about fighting a culture war."

In fact, after that talk, a comedian whose name all of you would recognize came up to me and said, "You know, I have a lot of trouble with Christians. I don't follow the man from Nazareth. I'm a Jew, but I must tell you that what you said about Jesus and culture wars got to me. Because that's the kind of attitude that I need in loving my enemies. I'm a long way from saying, 'Father forgive them, for they don't know what they do.'"

Another thing that I learned from Jesus is that Jesus is not the church. There's a wonderful man named George Buttrick who was chaplain at Harvard, and he used to tell the story of students from Harvard who would come into his office and would sit down in a chair, and with an angry tone would say, "I don't believe in God!" His response was, "Well, tell me what kind of God you don't believe in. I probably don't believe in that kind of God either."

That's the attitude I learned about Jesus as well. So many of us get our picture of who Jesus was from the church. And in my case, growing up in a rather racist, mean-spirited church in the south, it was hard for me as a child to separate out who Jesus was from who the church was. One of the thrilling things for me as I got to know Jesus and focus on Jesus was that Jesus is not the church. And a lot of things that bothered me about my faith, that bothered me about Christianity, when I really began to look at Jesus, weren't so true of Jesus. In fact He turned out to be exactly who I would want my God to be: brilliant, full of surprises, untameable, slippery, but also merciful, loving and compassionate.

Jesus is not the church. But on the other hand, in a very real way, the church is Jesus. You know, Jesus only worked here on Earth for about three years. He didn't affect that many people, just a small corner of the Roman Empire, and in fact when they crucified him, when the Romans crucified him, I'm sure they thought, "We'll never hear from Him again; We'll never hear from this movement again." But as a friend of mine, Walter Wink, once said, "When the Romans killed Jesus it was kind of like blowing on a dandelion. You don't kill the dandelion, you scatter the seeds all over." And what Jesus did, the reason He came, was not to change the Earth all by himself, but was to gather around Him a group of people like you and like me, who could go out and do the work of Jesus in this world.

In fact, a long time ago, over 20 years, I wrote a book called Where Is God When It Hurts?, about the problem of pain, why bad things happen. Several times I've been pinned down on an interview and somebody will say, "Well tell me, in ten words or less, where is God when it hurts?" And now I say, "Well my answer to that is really another question, and that is: Where is the church when it hurts?" Because if the church was doing the work of Jesus -- for the homeless, for the hungry, for the needy, for the hurting, for those in the midst of disasters -- then I don't think people would be asking that question: Where is God when it hurts? They would know the answer, because they would see it in Christians like us. We are, the New Testament says, the body of Christ. Jesus left, but He left that mission for us to carry out.

The last thing that I learned about Jesus in doing this book was that Jesus saves my faith. I'll be honest with you, my back is against the wall when somebody asks me, "Okay Philip, why do you stay a Christian?" I can only give two answers. The first is, I really haven't found any good alternatives. I've looked and I haven't found any that satisfy me.

But the second answer of why I stay a Christian is simply Jesus. In fact, I have found that in a real sense, Jesus saves my faith. The questions that I tend to struggle with, the questions that I write books about take on a different light when I bring them to Jesus. In fact, Jesus has become for me something like a magnifying glass for my faith.

I've got one of those Oxford English Dictionaries at home that's been shrunken down -- nine pages shrunken into one page. And it takes this huge magnifying glass for me to even read the words on the page. I notice when I look in that magnifying glass that the words right in the center are in very sharp focus, I can read them easily, but out in the margins things get kind of fuzzy. That's the way I've found that my faith has become. I've found that I spend a lot of time out in the margins, and what I need to do is start bringing those questions into the center, where it's sharp and in focus.

For example, a question that I have spent a lot of time writing about, questions about how God feels about those who suffer. The answer to that, I have found, is to look at the life of Jesus, to look at how Jesus responded to His best friend who died, to a widow who had lost her son, to His disciple whose mother-in-law was sick. By looking at Jesus I have an actual face. It's a face streaked with tears, that shows me how God feels about those who suffer.

Or sometimes I struggle with questions like unanswered prayer. Why is it that I pray some prayers over and over and I don't seem to get an answer? It helps me to go back and to realize that, in a true sense, Jesus had some of that experience as well. The gospels tell us that He stayed up all night praying for the very best 12 disciples to choose. Yet those disciples included Judas, who turned out to be a traitor. And of course His last night on earth before His death, Jesus threw Himself on the ground and prayed, "Lord, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." And it did not pass. In a real sense the story of the Garden of Gethsemane is the story of an unanswered prayer.

Somehow it helps me as I struggle with my own unanswered prayers to realize that Jesus Himself, God living on earth, had that same experience. Or sometimes I'll get a letter from someone who's read one of my books and it'll say something like this, "Why should I pray at all? If God already knows everything that's going to happen, what point is it to pray?" And that's a tough question. It's a question that I struggle with, and a question I write about. And once again I take a question like that to the magnifying glass. I look at the sharp focus that Jesus gave us on earth. And my only answer to that question is that, when Jesus lived on earth, He saw the need to pray. Sometimes in fact He would stay up all night praying. If Jesus with all of His wisdom, with all of His insight, would see the need to depend on the Father and to spend time in prayer with God, then surely I do as well.

In so many of these areas, Jesus has become the magnifying glass of my faith. He puts things into focus. In a real sense He saves my faith. Now, instead of worrying on the margins out here, the fuzzy areas, questions that I will probably always have, questions that you may have, I try to take those very questions and bring them to what is clear in the Gospel. What is clear, of course, is Jesus.

I've had a tremendous privilege over the past two years to really hole up and think about and get to know Jesus. It's been a wonderful opportunity for me. I know that not everybody can stop what they're doing, quit their job and hole up somewhere and get to know Jesus. It's a wonderful privilege I have as a writer, and that I try to convey and express to others who don't have that privilege. But I do encourage you to get to know the real Jesus. Perhaps you too have questions that need the sharp focus that Jesus brings. Perhaps you too have been raised in a church setting where it's pretty hard to separate Jesus and the church. Perhaps you too get all caught up in the culture wars going on today, and it's easy to be confused about what's politics and what was Jesus' mission in bringing in the kingdom of God into this world.

I encourage you to get to know the real Jesus. He's worth the effort. He's the most important man who ever lived. No one who has met Him ever stays the same. I know I didn't, and I don't think you will either. I hope you get to know that Jesus.

Floyd Brown: Philip, what a marvelous, marvelous talk you gave us. It was so inclusive, you had all the answers there for us to any questions that I would want to come up with as a result of your talk. But there's something that you mentioned in there that really grabbed me, because it's an area that we as Christians or as general citizens in the community today should certainly address. And that is you said the church -- Jesus is not the church, the church is not Jesus, and you were talking about of course, the challenge that exists today. Where are we losing the fight, where are we dropping the ball?

Philip Yancey: You know Floyd, I have a good friend here in Chicago actually, who is as saintly a person as I know, in a good sense, true sense of the word. He runs a hotel for the homeless, and he told me a wrenching story one time, one of the most tragic stories I'd ever heard about a woman who lived in his hotel. She was a prostitute who had a little daughter two years old and the woman's drug habit got so bad that she would actually rent out her two year old daughter to men to earn money to support her drug habit. And she came and talked to my friend and she was crying and she was diseased by then. My friend, after hearing the worst story he had ever heard on the streets of Chicago said, "In all of this time when you were in such great need, did you ever think of going to a church for help?" And he said he'd never forget the look of naive shock that crossed her face. She said, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling so bad about myself, they would just make me feel worse."

And it occurred to me that I think that's where we in the church need to work on. That's the kind of woman who would flee to Jesus, who would go right to Jesus and say, "I need help. I need help." Jesus had this marvelous ability to hate the sin while loving the sinner. And that's one thing that we in the church today, especially as things get so politicized on things like abortion and gay rights. These are important issues, so we have to struggle with these issues, but we can never get to a place where we don't love the woman who chose to have an abortion as well as the baby, where we stop loving people who are involved in sexual activities that we don't approve of. Jesus had that wonderful way of communicating love even to people who weren't living like he would want them to live.

Brown: The key word here is "communicate". I think perhaps the thrust of the church is still where it should be, at least I hope so, but where are we not communicating that: "Here you can get compassion. Here you have a friend."

Yancey: Yes. Well, it's funny but a lot of people have the feeling that church is a place where you have to get your life together and then go to church. You have to wear nice clothes; you have to put on a good smile; you have to act like things are okay. And of course that's not what Jesus came to give. He didn't give us a little private club for people who had their lives together. He gave us a place for needy people who knew where to find those kinds of answers.

Brown: Talk to me about the challenge. We as Christians, or we as believers, we want to get the kind of results that are there all around us. There are more homeless in the world, there are more problems, the problems of abortion, the problems of AIDS, the problem of drugs and this kind of thing. It seems that we're being overwhelmed. But still I read in the press that the church is growing. We're getting more recognition now in writings. People are more aware of what's going on, but nevertheless I look at, in balance, I look at the media and it seems that the church is losing the war. Give me a formula for the church. What would you like to see happen?

Yancey: Well, of course the one thing that the church can do that no government agency can do is write love into the job description. I don't know any government bureaucracy that has love right at the top of the line. When the church starts a program where they're dealing with the homeless -- and the statistics are clear -- church sponsored drug addiction programs have a much better success rate than the average community-based program. And I don't know a single politician out there who's proposing higher taxes, more government programs...The challenge is going to be on the church in the next few years. Because government is basically pulling back and saying, "We can't handle these problems." They're going to be turning to people in the church and the church has that wonderful gift that you'll never find in any government, and that's love. If we begin there, then we can make a difference.

Brown: Love. I like that. It's a good start, love. You were marvelous, Philip Yancey. We certainly enjoyed your talk today, and I'm certain that folks are going to look forward to reading your books, the ones who haven't. You have many of them. Thank you for coming.