Searching for God Knows What
by Donald Miller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Donald MillerEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2004-10-13
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Book Reviews of Searching for God Knows What
Book Review: A Somewhat Helpful Corrective to Formulaic Christianity
Summary: 3 Stars
Miller's aim in this work is to bring the relational element back to the gospel. He feels that the gospel has been hijacked and turned into a religious formula where the emphasis is almost entirely propositional, rather than relational.
He speaks about "the booby trap of believing we gain access to God by knowing a lot of religious information" (200). He goes on:
Rather than Scripture serving as the text that explains God, it becomes a puzzle by which we test our knowledge against our friends', and the views by which we distinguish superiors from inferiors. It is as though we believe when we die, Alex Trebeck will be standing at the gates of heaven to lead us in a mad round of religious Jeopardy: I'll take Calvinism for a seat next to Christ, Alex (201, emphasis in original).
Miller talks about growing up in a very conservative evangelical church and about how he believes this experience distorted, in a negative way, the way he looked at life and God. He goes on to say,
Jesus saved my faith. Several years ago I was getting to the point that the enormous, entangling religion of Christianity, with its many divisions, its multiple theologies, its fondness for war rhetoric, and its quirky, lumbering personality, was such a nuisance I hardly wanted anything to do with it (120).
I confess that I've had experienced the very same struggle that Miller went through with institutionalized conservative religion. Comparing some prominent elements of my conservative Christian experience with the Jesus I saw in the gospel accounts became more and more a jarring and dissonant mental exercise that left me feeling disturbed and disenfranchised. I came to see and understand why many young people who grew up within the confines (I use this term intentionally) of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism would want to not walk, but run away from this religion at the very first opportunity.
Like Miller, this was a sad time in my life. However, it was also that at this time, like with Miller, the Jesus of Scripture saved my faith.
Having said this, I do believe that Miller, perhaps, goes a bit too far in his denunciation of the propagation of "propositional" gospel truth by the conservative evangelical establishment. At one point he states, "...My gut tells me the key to life is relational, not propositional (121)." I'm not sure I would cast the situation in quite these terms. I don't believe there can be a relational element to faith without a propositional element that first precedes it. In other words, I believe not in an "either-or" with regards to a relational versus a propositional gospel, but in a "both-and." Scripture appears to clearly uphold and proclaim both elements.
In the afterword, Miller may address this concern by stating,
While I certainly agree that these [propositional gospel] ideas are critical, true, and quite beautiful, my aim was to present an explanation of the gospel in relational language, dealing primarily with the story from which our theology has been deduced. In this way, this effort might be read as an apologetic, leaning on personality and culture more than math and logic, though I don't feel any of these ideas are less than logical. I did wish, however, to pull our understanding of the gospel out of the formulaic, propositional framework from which it has been sunk and return it, at least to some degree, into the world our broken biochemistry has created (233).
Although I can sympathize with this language and agree that any reduction of the holistic, life-giving gospel into a mere formula, I do not believe that the gospel can be "pulled out" of its "propositional framework" without the risk of severe distortion and endless subjectivity. The gospel, after all, is an external announcement of "good news." In this, it is inherently propositional. Perhaps Miller has swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction?
That being said, I truly appreciate Miller's wit and writing style. His charm and creativity and passion for the subject matter flows through his text in a very clear and distinct way. Regardless of my criticism, I believe that this is a work that definitely needs to be read by conservative evangelicals in order that they would see their faith as perhaps as much a matter of the heart than of the head. It always saddens me when I talk with older Christians who talk about how much zeal they used to have for Christ and His kingdom. Encouraging such ones to fall back in love with the Jesus of their salvation can never be a bad thing.
[...]
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