Searching for God Knows What

Sorry if I missed the mark on the last post - I'll have these moments in church when I'm really hearin' what the preacher's saying, and I feel like if the dude just kicked over from a heart attack, I'd stand up and keep bringin' it. That was one of those moments. I'll just stick to lovin' Jesus.

Anyway, I think that the mark of a good book or a good speaker is that when you talk with your friends about said author/speaker, you refer to them by their first name.

I just finished reading "Searching For GOD Knows What" by Don Miller. He's been recommended to me over and over again, and I've heard him talked up and down and all around, and so I expedited him to the top of the "to read" pile and went at it. I was not disappointed. I've heard that "Blue Like Jazz" is his best work, but I was very impressed by his honest style and his winsome, engaging, and down-to-earth storytelling ability. From the things that I had heard about him I expected his writing to be tinged with sarcasm and cynicism, but this was not the case - he definitely confronts some of the quirks and shortcomings of the American church culture, but he refers to the Church as "we" and not "them." His exhortation for disciples of Christ today to move from a formulaic understanding of GOD to an intimate relationship with Him was very heartfelt and sincere. Some interesting passages:

"If you ask me, the separation of truth from meaning is a dangerous game. I don't think memorizing ideas helps anybody unless they already understand the meaning inferred in the expression of those ideas. I think ideas have to sink very deeply into a person's soul, into their being, before they can effect change ... when we take Christian theology out of the context of its narrative, when we ignore the poetry in which it is presented, when we turn it into formulas to help us achieve the American dream, we lose its meaning entirely..."(pgs. 57-58)

"If our minds are not on Christ and we treat Communion like a little religious pill, or baptism like a woo-woo bath, or fast to feel some kind of pain about our sacrifice, the significance is gone. It is the trick of Satan to get us to go through religious motions divorced of their relational significance. It is the trick of Satan to get us to perform religious actions without meaning them ... It would be most tragic for a person to know everything about GOD, but not GOD; to know all about the rules of spiritual marriage, but never walk the aisle." (pgs.203, 205)

Man, I love reading from people who love Jesus. I learn to follow after Christ more devotedly and wholeheartedly, but I also can sense author's authentic and child-like faith float from the page and spurn me on to love harder, live louder, and run with perseverance with the lover of my soul. Thanks for the read, Don.