Want to hear an honest opinion about the local church? How about this one:

“Religion is a big, beautiful, ugly thing. I read recently where Augustine said. ‘The church is a whore and it is my mother.’ And for reasons I don’t understand, Jesus loves the church.� (213)

Searching for God Knows What is Donald Miller’s honest journey to rediscover God. This rediscovery would not be necessary if not for the countless attempts of religious zealots who would rather push their formulaic expressions of the Divine onto people, than to let the person of Christ shine through to the innermost parts of the soul. Miller strips doctrinal positions down to what they were originally intended to beâ€"catalysts into a relationship with the Creator. The Bible is not a manuscript of mathematical expressions and belief statements, but a living document that expresses the unique situation we humans find ourselves in. Our souls yearn to be reconnected with the peace of Eden, but must wade through the garbage dump of comparing and contrasting one another to make ourselves feel better about who we are. As Miller points out “It is as if the voice God use to have has been taken up by less credible voices…it’s just that other people’s opinions, after the Fall, have become very important…â€? (95)

It is this type of thinking that Miller takes out his pen to do battle with. The “lifeboat gameâ€? is one we all playâ€"we look around at everyone else in the world (boat) and whether we do it physically, mentally, or spiritually, we kick out the one who looks different, acts oddly, or speaks out of turn. And why do we do it? Because we were wired to have something outside of ourselves justify the way we do life. According to Miller, that something was God, but we’ve replaced it with a jury of peers in order to appease the crowd. Life seems to be a constant struggle to associate or disassociate oneself to the winnersâ€" The social winners, the political winners, the religious winners. As a humble prophet, Donald Miller will have no more of this nonsense! In an amusing tone, Miller consistently goes back to the nakedness of Adam and Eve as an example. Eden was an easier place to live before the tragic apple-biting incident. Ever since the Fall, we’ve realized our nakedness, not because nakedness is necessarily wrong, but because our eyes have turned to the values of others, and not God. Suddenly, nakedness didn’t seem like such a hot idea without the glory of God in our lives. The odd thing about the “lifeboatâ€? is that we are all in it. Every piece of humanity has been touched by the Fall, something Miller has entitled “Chernobyl.â€? In one of the toughest pages to get through, Miller goes where few have dared to tread and points out that Adam and Eve, and now the rest of humanity, are nothing short of terrorists in God’s plan. Then switching gears, he wonders out loud why God hasn’t treated us the way we have treated terrorists after 9/11.

Every person who goes by the label of Christian should take the time to read Donald Miller’s longings. He wishes for a day when the Christian market would stop looking for satisfaction by being compared to the secular market. He yearns for a generation who capsizes the lifeboat mentality indefinitely and allows the Church to be a haven for the marginalized. Miller can hardly understand why Jesus would love such a damaged institution as the Church and he doesn’t mind turning over every rock, no matter how heavy or politically incorrect, to get his point across. His satirical style is very appealing to those who have yet to embrace the Creator, while at the same time, he manages to keep the Christian audience captivated. This may be the best book ever to do so (minus the Bible). Maybe it’s because he is such a good writerâ€"but maybe it’s because we know he is a little too close to the nagging truthâ€"that we have been doing theology horribly outside Biblical methodology, that we have been excluding others that are not on our “team,â€? and that we have exchanged a beautiful and vibrant relationship with God for a bullet point list of half-truths simply because we found the font more attractive.

Are there gross exaggerations and simplifications in this book? A few. Does Miller go back and forth on his view of the Kingdom of God? This reviewer would have to say so. But dismissing the book on these two findings would be a tragic loss; both for the reader, and for the world that he/she must engage. Even if the content cannot be swallowed, Miller’s conversational style and intimate honesty will be enough to keep you reading. But be carefulâ€"in the midst of casual reading, religious arrogance may be in retreat before you ever realized that Miller’s objections were knocking on your door.

“If our modern methodology is superior to the methodology of historical narrative mixed with music, drama, poetry, and prose, then why didn’t God choose lists instead of art?…Lists rarely sink deep into a persons’ soul…this is, perhaps, why people are so hostile to religion�(57-59)

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