Searching for God Knows What

Scott Brick narrates the author's message that everyone seeks redemption, though Miller's belief is based more on personal experience than research. With genuine angst Brick relates the author's frustration with his church experiences as a teenager and his return to faith some time later. In an effortless-sounding delivery, Brick portrays the author's dissatisfaction with the way Christianity is taught and practiced today. He describes the formulaic models of many churches, which result in mere bullet points in Sunday sermons. Speaking with warmth and authority, he stresses the author's argument for redemption and the pursuit of faith. Christianity is a fluid relationship, Miller insists, a matter of the heart unlikely to be captured by any formula. G.D.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

September 13, 2004
Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz
, serves as campus ministry leader at Reed College. His writing voice is casual and somewhat eccentric, while his theories—largely derived from experience rather than extensive study—are at times brilliant, at times questionable and rarely supported by outside sources. The book covers a great deal of territory: Miller's walking away from God as a teenager and returning to his faith; the competitive nature of human relationships, painfully demonstrated through junior high memories; the meaning of morality and religion; the essence of true Christianity. But Miller's main theme is dissatisfaction with the way Christianity is taught and practiced. He says the religion ought not to be presented as a formula, its tenets broken down into bullet points to fit modern Western thought patterns. At its heart, Miller argues, Christianity is relationship. Interested people should be presented with biblical stories rather than steps to salvation. Miller also believes that many Christians behave correctly but their actions lack meaning: "The tough thing about Christian spirituality is, you have to mean things. You can't just go through the motions or act religious for the wrong reasons... this thing is a thing of the heart." However, Miller offers only faint suggestions to replace the formulaic or systematic approach to faith that he denounces.