Searching for God Knows What

Reading Blue Like Jazz, earlier this year was something of a watershed for me. For a long, long time, I’d been feeling like a misfit in the church. It’s not that I stopped feeling out of place, it’s that I found Donald Miller was there with me; I felt I knew why I was actually a misfit and that it was perfectly okay. Searching isn’t nearly as good as Blue, but it continued the narrative in a very helpful direction.

The basic rationale of Searching is that we’re all looking for something and all the energies we expend, all the grand schemes we plan and all our motivations are to find that something. We’re none of us really sure what it is we’re looking for without Christ because it is he in fact which is it. There are very, show more very few people who can explain the whys of their life with any honesty. Most people don’t even think about it. They just do what their culture tells them to.

And that’s a point that Miller drives home very well in this book in regard to the church. We don’t so much live our life according to the cultural values of Christ but rather do so according to the cultural values of the societies we grow up in. He uses a number of metaphors to illustrate this.

The strongest is that of the lifeboat and I found this very helpful. You are probably familiar with the old debate of a group of people in a lifeboat and one person has to be thrown overboard to save the rest. Who would you choose. Well, immediately, you start to compare each with the rest and to list reasons for/against them being binned. And that’s what living life is like. We’re endlessly comparing ourselves to each other, justifying why we shouldn’t be shunned and why we should be lauded.

It’s a philosophy, Miller argues very convincingly, that should be anathema to Christians. To follow Christ is to forsake lifeboat philosophy and to stop playing that game. And here’s why:

"In the context of the lifeboat (motivated by self-preservation), the characteristics of “other people” become inferior simply because they are not our characteristics. Logic is thrown out the window, or worse, used as a tool to validate our prejudices. Philosophies, ideals, and even religious convictions become weapons for slaughter…the [Jesus sitting in the lifeboat with us, stroking our backs and telling us we are the ones who are right and one day these other infidels are going to pay]… is infinitely more popular [than the Jesus of Scripture] in evangelical culture."

I live in a community that, for better or worse, describes itself as a group of missionaries. I don’t subscribe to that epithet, but nonetheless I am, along with the rest of us, considered wrongly to be somehow ‘up there’ in the Christian hierarchy because I live off donations and work overseas. However, I can tell you that it is this community of Christians needs to hear this message just as much, if not more so than others because it is us who say we are trying to communicate Christ accurately to others. We need writers like Miller who remind us that Christ is not who popular Christian culture tells us he is. He is who he tells us he is himself.

And that’s the whole point of Searching: we’re here for relationship with Christ, not to follow some moral formula. Yet most Christians know the moral code way better than they know Jesus himself. This is sad. I was encouraged to read that Miller says he has done away with any form of formula in his faith. That’s hard to do. I can testify to that because for the last year at least, I have been trying to do the same. The idea that I can keep my faith in God alive by studying the Bible for 30 minutes a day has to be, absolutely has to be, absurd if Jesus is alive and real and living in me. So, I’ve been trying to allow my desires for Christ to motivate me to get to know him more in various ways. It’s working but it’s a struggle not to go back to the old ways and rely on the check list rather than faith.

So, thank you again, Donald, for your candour, honesty and desire to help us do what we’re created to do: know Christ personally. show less

What if the Christian church is so focused on theology that it's lost sight of what really makes one a Christian? Miller contends that the American church has reduced a complex relationship with Jesus Christ to a formulaic gospel of steps to becoming a Christian. In Searching for God Knows What, he seeks to emphasize the relational nature of the gospel and demonstrates how different a worldview this would be from mainstream American culture.

A friend of mine lent this to me months ago because it related to a conversation we were having at the time. Of course, I've since forgotten the original impetus, but it didn't really matter in the end. Miller's style is extremely conversational and not particularly well-written, with a few show more over-the-top analogies to make his points. At least once, he got his facts wrong, as when he says that King Herod had the children of Israel murdered (according to Matthew 2, he ordered that boys under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and the vicinity be killed, not the entirety of Israel). Despite these flaws, from time to time a sentence or a paragraph would make me stop in my reading tracks. He would manage to crystallize an idea or use an illustration that was truly thought-provoking. I didn't always agree with Miller, ultimately. He clearly does not "get" sports, for example, and his politics clash with mine. But I enjoyed the challenge to think about exactly what I believe about my relationship with God, and how this necessarily affects my relationship with others. show less

The title Searching for God Knows What is really applicable to Donald Miller’s writing style — he sort of meanders and wends his way around everyday thoughts about Jesus and God, as well as deep theological ideas — which he manages to approach in a very accessible, self-deprecating, somewhat winsome style. It may not be for everyone, but I find it beautiful in its searching simplicity and humility.

A lot of what he talks about in this book has resonated deeply within me, and is related a lot to some of the things I’ve been writing on this blog. His love for people and knowledge of his own imperfection are both so real. Even though this book is the same thing people have been writing about for thousands of years, none of it feels show more scripted, cliched or tired — it’s fresh and new and very relevant. You can tell his heart is for people to just know that they are loved and valued by God, and that their acceptance in life is not based on the things they do or how many people like them — it’s based fully on the fact that they are loved and valued by God:

“Imagine how a man’s life would be if he trusted that he was loved by God. How could he interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.”

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2011/08/19/book-review-69-searching-for-god-knows-what... show less

I found this book riveting the first time I read it. Donald Miller has a clear, chatty and almost simplistic style of writing that gets right to the heart of what many people are probably thinking. This book is partly biographical - although not as much as 'Blue like Jazz' - and partly theological and philsophical.

He uses examples such as Santa Claus, bearded ladies, and spends a great deal of time thinking about Adam and Eve being naked. He also pulls to pieces the analogy of people in lifeboats deciding who is the most important.

These and other metaphors are used through the book, until he reaches the heart of what he's trying to say: that comparisons are pointless, and the world is shallow. That Christianity is not a religion of show more bullet points or formulae, but a living, loving relationship with Jesus Christ.

The second time I read it, fifteen years later, I found the first half quite irritating in various ways, although the second half was mostly excellent.

Recommended, though not as highly as I did fifteen years ago.

Latest longer review: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2024/09/searching-for-god-knows-what-by-don... show less

This is a revised, updated edition of the book. There's apparently also a lot you can do online (codes, anagrams, etc.) but I haven't done that--and probably won't; my brain doesn't seem to work that way.

This book's thesis is that we all need a relationship with God but that, because of what happened in the Garden of Eden, we don't have one. That causes us to look elsewhere for affirmation (friends, colleagues, etc.). I'm not sure I agree with the idea that we all can only function if we have someone telling us we're worthwhile, but I know everyone likes to be liked, so I'm willing to go with it.

Another main point is that everyone has their idea of who God is and who Jesus is, and that we're probably all wrong because we're trying to show more cast Him/Them in our terms and that, coincidentally, He/They completely agree with how we view the world.

One thing that did strike me was (and this gets back to the idea that we seek elsewhere for affirmation) that he said that religion-baiting is actually Satan's work. For an example, he mentioned that he grew up Baptist and was always pretty smug around his Methodist friends because they had it wrong. Now, though, "It all sounds you innocent until you realize whatever evil thing it was that caused me to believe Baptists are better than Methodists is the same evil thing that has Jews killing Palstinians rather than talking to them, and for that matter, Palestinians killing Jews rather than engaging in an important conversation about land and history and peace."

I do feel like a lot of the time, we define ourselves in terms of being better or worse than other people, and that bothers me.

I think I preferred Blue Like Jazz, though. show less

A very interesting look at Christianity, filtered through the life of Miller. I must say though, while I like Miller's style, the more I read of him, the more I am surprised at how shallow and basic his thinking on theological matters is. I think the theology is basically sound, but it is sound in the same way a pop Christian song is sound -- it's sound more because of how little theology is there rather than how well considered the points.

To illustrate the point, the quotes in the "praise" section in the beginning of the book include names like Brian MacLaren, who would not agree with me at all as to the definition of the Gospel. We are about as far opposed as possible in theology. So if neither I or Brian MacLaren can find a point of show more disagreement in this book (that supposes to explore the meaning of the Gospel), I have to conclude that the Gospel was not very thoroughly defined.

Many people would not care. They would say that Christianity is more about serving and living right. I am happy to say that Miller does not fall into that trap. Shallowly defined as it is, the Gospel is of primary interest of this book.

That's the way it should be. After all, Christians are no where defined as people who live better than other people. We are not "good people," or even often "better people." We are "forgiven people." The good news of the Gospel is not a call to live better lives, though that is often the result of the Gospel. The good news of the Gospel is that, even though we are sinners who deserve nothing less than death for our sins of greed, lust, hatred, and selfishness, Jesus came to earth to die that death we deserve. In repentance and faith we can be forgiven.

I wish that had been more defined in this book, because it's good news indeed. show less

We are all on a search for love - but as the song says, most of the time we are looking in all the wrong places. We seek affirmation from other people, from relationships both real and imagined; when in reality we should be looking only to God for the love we desperately need. In his book "Searching for God Knows What", Donald Miller tells us that we find this not through following the rituals of religion; instead, we learn about God's love through having an intimate relationship with Him. Miller suggests that perhaps Christianity is less about following a set of rules and regulations, and more about falling in love with Jesus. The really stunning thing about this love story is not that we should love Jesus...but that Jesus loves us and show more sacrificed everything for us, to bring communion back to our broken relationship with Him. When you really believe this, it will change not only the way you love God, but the way you love others as well - not as people who can give you the love you need, but as people you can love just for who they are. show less