Searching for God knows what (by Donald Miller)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s fifteen years since I read ‘Searching for God knows what’ by Donald Miller. I recalled liking it very much, and finding it both helpful and thought-provoking. But I couldn’t remember what it was about, or anything in it. So it was more than time for a re-read. 

Donald Miller is an American CEO and public speaker who has written a handful of Christian-themed books. He’s probably best known for ‘Blue like jazz’ which I re-read in 2021 and thought every bit as good as when I read it for the first time. So I was looking forward to sitting down to this one. I decided to read a chapter or so each day for a couple of weeks. 

I recalled that the author’s writing style tends to be quite informal, almost as if he is speaking. It’s a little jarring at first but I quickly got used to it, even if some of the long sentences took a bit of unravelling. The style is quite light-hearted, recounting Miller’s past, and why he started questioning almost everything. 

The book opens with the description of attending a seminar for Christian writers. He explains in detail - some of which is quite entertaining - what he does in the hotel, and what he finds in the first seminar. Everyone he chats to seems to be writing a devotional series. Whereas he has an idea for a novel about a nun taking over South American countries… 

He is a bit confused that the speaker talks about formulas for writing. I’m sure it’s exaggerated, but a lot of Christian books fall into the style described, so it made me smile. I was surprised that he didn’t instantly realise that the seminar was meant for non-fiction rather than fiction writing, and quite shocked when it turns out that he hadn’t even figured out the difference between these two broad genres.

The next few chapters talk about formulas in the Christian world, and how ‘everyone’ grows up knowing them, and missing the point that Christianity is about relationship. This puzzled me, too. I grew up with no idea of Christian formulas, and didn’t hear any of them until I was about nineteen and attending a university mission.  Even then, relationship was always the main thing. 

And then the author says he read a book saying that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, something that has long been discounted. Moses might have made some notes, and is mentioned as writing down some small sections. But the Torah is now considered to be written by a variety of different authors, even though it’s sometimes called the ‘books of Moses’.  

So I had a mild sense of incongruity each time Donald Miller talks about Moses as if he had sat down with a typewriter and come up with the entire contents of the first five books of the Bible. And I also got a bit fed up of his going on and on about Adam and Eve not wearing clothes. I would have shrugged and accepted it all, but I was still irritated at his insistence that everyone grows up knowing Christian formulas about salvation and doesn’t know that what matters is our relationship with Jesus.

But then, around the half-way point, I found that the book was going into greater depth. The writing became less informal - though still easy to read - and the examples more interesting. They still didn’t tally with my experience, however. Miller writes about ‘lifeboat theory’, where everyone tries to assign value to each other. I know there are many who look down on those who are less intelligent (or less attractive or less athletic, etc). Bullying in schools is at an appalling level in many countries. It had not occurred to me that Christians do this too. 

But he’s right. Even though we pay lip service to the need to respect down-and-outs as much as obviously wealthy people, it’s not always easy to do so if a smelly tramp comes into a church service. It’s much easier to donate money to people who suffer in other countries, or help out at local shelters, safe in the knowledge of being well enough off to give time or finance. And the point is made that on any Christian book the author’s picture looks attractive - there’s no room, apparently, for plain or ugly people to write books. 

At least, this was the case twenty years ago when this book was published. I hope we have moved on somewhat. Most churches I have come across (at least in the UK and Europe) are becoming more inclusive of those of every nation, and salary level; where refugees are welcome and people with disabilities are encouraged to take part. Nobody cares, any longer, how anyone else dresses. 

But maybe that isn’t the case everywhere. I don’t know what’s going on in the United States, which still seems to value beauty and wealth, if the media is to be believed. Not that it’s wrong to be attractive or well-off, but it makes no sense to allocate more value to people based on such frivolous attributes. Or, indeed, based on any attributes. Our value is as children of God, our calling to follow Jesus: to be caught up in him, to involve him in our day-to-day lives, to aim to imitate his life and love.

So on the whole I did like the book once again, though I would no longer class it as a favourite. It’s certainly worth reading by those who have read tracts but haven’t really got to know Jesus. And there are many interesting anecdotes, even if some of them had no relevance to my experience. 

But I loved this book the first time I read it. I’m learning that we appreciate different things about books at different stages of our lives. 

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