Searching for God Knows What

Finding God Knows What

A Review of Searching for God Knows What

Donald Miller’s most recent book, Searching for God Knows What does a marvelous job of getting to the core of Christianity – Jesus Christ. In the same conversational style he used in Blue Like Jazz he extends his exploration of contemporary Christianity and the Christian’s place in it. Like Bunyan’s character Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, Miller’s pilgrimage introduces us to a cast of characters similar to those we meet on our journeys. His description of the sights and situations along the way without all the Christianese or other Jesus-jargon is refreshing for its directness and candor. He says what many of us have been longing to say but have been constrained by our religious upbringing from expressing.

The book begins with him attending a Christian writer’s conference where the leader tells the formula for writing a successful Christian book. Miller discovers that the Bible and indeed all of Christianity, is not so easily constrained in a formula and the remainder of the book is an exploration of living outside the formula mentality. His conclusion is that life is about relationships. God created us to relate to him and we derive our meaning from our relationship with Him. Since the Fall, we have been engaged in trying to find one substitute after another for our broken relationship with God. Our only remedy is a relationship with Jesus, not a formula.

Miller does an excellent job highlighting some of the concerns that recovering fundamentalists have about their church upbringing. Often there is a sense of “something missing” from Christian experience in church and he does a good job putting his finger on just what that something is – Jesus Christ. We live in a Christless Christian Culture that has so marginalized Jesus that we have become, in many respects, nothing more nor less than a club of people who advocate high morality and ethics. We don’t always practice what we advocate, but we stand for morality and ethics quite loudly. Where we fail is in proclaiming the name, the character, the teachings and exemplifying Jesus Christ in our words and deeds.

Miller concludes throughout the book that we are all on a search for significance. We are looking for meaning and purpose to our lives and an elevation of our mundane existence into something important. There are many offers out there willing to trade what we have to offer for a semblance of significance – stardom, importance, influence, recognition, etc. – but all of the them pale beside that which makes us truly significant. That is our relationship with Jesus Christ. The fact that God sent his Son to love us and impart meaning to our lives is really the crux of Christianity. While this may sound simple or simplistic, Searching For God Knows What is an enjoyable exploration of how important and vital this seemingly simple message is.

by Rick Presley