The Gospel Truth

I'm re-reading Don Miller's Searching for God Knows What, and I am struck again by how profound and beautiful and true his writing is. Every time I read anything he's written - whether it's a book or an interview or a blog post - I feel like he and I are sitting having a conversation over coffee, being open and honest about things that are confusing and real.

I thought I would share some of my favourite passages from Searching for God Knows What. I love that Don encourages Christians to be vulnerable, to feel small and in awe of God, and to start believing in a God that is bigger than our imaginations.

"The very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think he is. By that I mean they have Him all figured out, mapped out, and as my pastor, Rick, says, 'dissected and put into jars on a shelf.' You've got a bunch of Catholics in Rome who think one way about God, and a bunch of Baptists in Texas who think another, and that isn't even the beginning. It goes on and on and on like this, and it makes me wonder if God created us in His image or if we created Him in ours."

"In my opinion, there are two essential problems with believing God is somebody he isn't. The first is that it wrecks your life, and the second is that it makes God look like an idiot."

"It seems like, if you really knew the God who understands the physics of our existence, you would operate a little more cautiously, a little more compassionately, a little less like you are the centre of the universe." 

"But if [the gospel] is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind." 

"But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our own understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows. Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation. It's kind of exciting if you think about it. Earthly love, I mean the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order for us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them."

Jillz