Does Christianity make you nauseous? Me too, a lot of times, and I'm a professional Christian. It's one of the reasons I like the stuff Philip Yancey writes so much. He cuts through all of the crap while coming from an orthodox position. Some samples:

Yancey believes the message of the church, at least in the West, has been corrupted by a Madison Avenue style ethos. "Jesus never promised God is going to solve your problems," Yancey said. He often finds himself speaking for those who have been wounded by life - and their church experience.

"We should not be making it worse for Christians who are disappointed," he said. Yancey's desire to be a voice for those who are disappointed in life may spring from his own discontented church experience as a young man. "I was raised in a church that was not honest," he said. While hesitating to describe the church of his youth as a cult, or to identify it, he does point to its aberrant theology, particularly regarding racial issues.

Yancey believes the church particularly lost its way in the political and social arena. "It's easy to lose sight of our mission," Yancey said. "We are not to clean up the world," he says. "Jesus didn't try to clean up the Roman Empire."

Instead, Yancey sees the mission of the church in a mixture of metaphorical terms. "We are to be a light on a hill and attract them by appealing to their thirst," he said. "Sinners were attracted to Jesus," Yancey said. "They saw him as a place of healing."

"When I grew up my view of God was a stern judge. Now I see him as a physician."

The social gospel is not completely discounted by the author. "We have to be involved in social issues," Yancey says. "It's a tricky balance," he said.

"'Where Is God When It Hurts?' came out of experiences I had as a journalist. I would interview a lot of people who had been through tragedy and they would tell me consistently that the church made it worse for them, rather than better. They're just trying to get well, and Christians would come in with these very mixed voices, either saying 'You sinned, God's punishing you,' or 'No, no, it's not God, it's the Devil,' and it didn't seem to me that we should be making it worse.